3. Emory
EMORY
My hands are full with a suitcase in one and a bkr in the other, so I turn sideways and hip-chuck the door open with a move that feels equal parts muscle memory and survival instinct.
The smell hits me immediately. Warm sugar, yeast, and vanilla wrapped around frying dough and the buttery sweetness of fresh glaze.
Doughnuts.
My stomach growls like it’s been waiting years for this exact moment, loud and completely unconcerned with my dignity.
“Excuse you,” I mumble.
The door swings shut behind me with a soft thump, and I just stand there.
Granny is behind the counter, rolling herself in slow, chaotic circles on a stool. Her cast leg sticks out in front of her, ready to boot the next person who gives her grief, while the other taps the floor every few seconds to redirect her spin. She looks perfectly at home.
The counter is the same butcher block Grandpa made by hand. The edges are worn smooth from decades of elbows and pastry boxes sliding across it. My eyes catch on the faint outline of my five-year-old handprint, still there, softened by time but stubborn, refusing to disappear completely.
The chalkboard menu still lists flavors in Granny’s loopy handwriting, punctuated with entirely too many exclamation points and underlines.
The old radio on the back shelf hums along to the same yacht rock station it’s been tuned to since I was a kid, playing a song I swear I don’t know and somehow still know by heart.
Colorful inner tubes still line the walls. Once the backdrop for collisions and laughter and the kind of joy you don’t realize is fleeting until it’s already gone.
The memories don’t ease in.
They stampede.
Granny standing beside me at the counter, showing me how dough should feel when it’s ready. Soft but not sticky. Alive under your palms. Me realizing, right here, that baking wasn’t just something I liked. It was something I needed.
Summer mornings when Jake knocked on the back door before I was even dressed, already grinning because he knew Granny would hand us a sack of doughnuts before we even asked.
Sleepovers upstairs in Granny’s apartment, where the floors creaked and the windows rattled when the wind came off the water just right.
His boathouse behind and catty-corner from the bakery, visible from my upstairs window.
Close enough that we sent Morse code messages back and forth with flashlights when we were supposed to be asleep.
I can still picture the beam cutting through the dark, the ridiculous thrill of waiting for his answer that mattered more than anything else.
And the flour fight. Right here in this kitchen when we were teenagers and dumb enough to think we could clean it up before Granny noticed.
We thought we were in real trouble that time.
Instead she grabbed a bag of flour and started throwing it at both of us until we were all laughing too hard to stand.
I don’t think I realized until now how much of my childhood lived inside these walls.
How much of me still does.
“Emory Madeline!”
Granny’s voice cuts through my thoughts. She turns to the whole shop and throws one arm wide.
“Look, everyone,” she announces, loud and proud and completely unconcerned with my desire to maybe ease back into town without an audience. “My granddaughter Emory is here!”
A few customers turn. There are a couple of awwws. One woman nods this confirms something she already knew. Someone actually claps.
“Why, Madeline Donovan, are those tears I see?” a voice calls, delighted.
“Oh, you hush now,” Granny says, dismissive. “Or I’ll tell everyone about the gravity garment you’re wearing under that dress, Gladys Kravitz.”
Laughter ripples through the shop.
“Emory, honey,” Granny continues, already waving me forward as she rolls out from behind the counter with the confidence of a woman who absolutely should not be moving that fast on one good leg. “I’ve been sitting on this stool like a queen with a court full of idiots all afternoon. I need a hug.”
A man in the corner hmphs.
Granny whips her head toward him so fast her glasses slide down her nose.
“I’m not naming names, but if you’re going to groan like that, maybe don’t do it in a room where everyone knows what you put in the church plate Sunday.”
Someone coughs. Another suddenly finds the floor fascinating.
Granny pats the counter as if she’s bringing court back to order. “Anyway. About that hug.”
I set my suitcase down and cross the bakery in seven long steps. When I wrap my arms around her, she grabs me back with surprising strength. We sway side to side automatically, the same way we always have. If her leg weren’t broken, we’d be hopping too.
It catches me off guard how easy it is, standing here with her.
I close my eyes and hold on a second longer because the truth arrives fast and unwelcome.
I’ve missed this version of myself. The one who used to belong places without immediately calculating the exit.
“I’ve missed you so much, Emory,” Granny says. “It took me breaking my leg to get you back to Blue Crab Bay. At least you didn’t wait until my funeral.”
“Granny!” I pull back, horrified and laughing at the same time. “Do not talk like that.”
But even as I say it, the joke catches a little.
Because she isn’t entirely wrong. It did take something happening to get me back.
She waves a flour-dusted hand through the air. “Relax. I’ll outlive all of you out of spite.”
The man in the corner hmphs again.
Granny ignores him and instead leans back on her stool, squinting at me as if she’s inspecting a biscuit that didn’t rise properly.
“You look thin.”
“I’m fine.”
“And tired.”
“Still fine.”
“And like you haven’t been eating enough doughnuts.”
“That would be true.”
She nods. “I knew it.”
Then she swivels on the stool and points dramatically toward the case. “Chocolate glazed with sprinkles. Two of them. And don’t argue. You look like you need sugar and emotional support.”
I round the counter, and the moment I do, I notice the dent in the back door where someone—definitely not me—once slammed it open too hard while we were racing outside so we wouldn’t miss the Fourth of July fireworks.
For one quick, stupid second, I can hear Jake laughing behind me, loud and breathless, because I’m about to lose and we both know it.
I take a tissue square, slide the tray toward me, and lift the doughnut closest to the edge. Sprinkles scattered bright and cheerful across the chocolate like they’ve never had a hard day in their lives.
When I turn back, Granny’s already bossing a customer into taking the last apple fritter.
“Life is short,” she says firmly, “and your hips will forgive you.”
The woman laughs. Everyone always does.
I lean against the counter and soak in the chocolatey air, the hum of conversation, the comfort of being somewhere that doesn’t expect anything from me except maybe to eat a doughnut and answer a few nosy questions.
“So,” Granny says casually, as if she hasn’t been waiting for this moment all day.
“How long are you staying?”
I peel a sprinkle off my doughnut and buy myself half a second.
“I can stay until you’re back on your feet. Both feet.”
“What about Southern Living?”
“They’re fine with it. I’m on a leave of absence.”
“Fine with it how?”
“The HR approved, editor said family comes first kind.”
“Good,” she says immediately. “Because I can’t reach half the shelves and Frank keeps eating things he’s supposed to deliver.”
“I’m just here temporarily,” I remind her.
She gives me a look over the top of her glasses. “Everything is temporary. Doesn’t make it meaningless.”
Oof. That about knocked me off my feet.
I look down at my doughnut for help.
It gives me nothing.
“And,” she adds, “you can help me later when the town starts asking questions I don’t feel like answering.”
I laugh. “You love answering questions.”
“I love answers,” she corrects. “Questions are just the excuse.”
Then she reaches out and squeezes my hand, her grip warm and steady.
“I’m glad you’re here, Emory.”
I nod, because the second I say I’m glad too, this whole arrangement starts looking less temporary.
I glance down at the doughnut in my hand and already know, with the kind of clarity I do not appreciate, that the part I should probably be worried about isn’t being back.
It’s how quickly everything here starts to matter again.