Chapter 2
Tessa
The problem with learning love the wrong way is that you don't know you've learned it wrong until it's too late. I'd learned it wrong twice.
"Morning, Tessa!"
The back door swung open, and Benjie came in with his coffee in one hand, his apron over his arm. He set the coffee on the counter where he always set it and lifted the apron over his head as he walked.
"Morning, Benjie!"
He went past the small table in the corner and ruffled my son's hair on the way by.
"Hey, Noah! What's that you're reading?"
My son Noah liked coming with me to work on weekends, instead of being left at home with a babysitter.
It was better that way. A babysitter for a Sunday shift would set me back what I'd been putting aside for the few fun things Noah and I did when we could—a movie, an ice cream cone, a small trip somewhere.
"The Lightning Thief," Noah said.
"Oh man, I loved that one. I read it like four times when I was your age."
Benjie and Mrs. Thompson set up a small table for him in the corner, and when he got bored, he'd come find me and ask if he could help.
Mrs. Thompson and Benjie thankfully let him do small things—loading the dishwasher, handing things up from the lower shelves during prep.
Simple enough for a child to get right. He came home from his weekend shifts with flour on his jeans and a kind of quiet pride I'd never seen on him before.
Noah was a good kid, despite what his father had modeled for him, and I was thankful for that every day.
I rolled out the next sheet of croissant dough on the prep table and started cutting it into triangles.
Across the kitchen, the two of them were still talking—Benjie leaning over the corner table now, asking Noah something I couldn't quite hear, Noah answering.
The radio was on low. The ovens hummed. The kitchen smelled like yeast, butter, and the cleaner I'd used the night before.
Benjie came over to the prep table. "Tessa, is the second tray ready to go in?"
"Almost. Give me a minute."
Benjie was Mrs. Thompson's grandson. He was eighteen and on a gap year, taking his time to figure out what he wanted to do with his life. I watched him work sometimes and wished I'd had his good sense when I was his age.
"Hey, the sourdough came out really well," Benjie said from the cooling rack.
"It did, didn't it?" I came around with the tray of croissants and slid it into the oven. "I let it rest twenty minutes longer than usual last night. I think the crumb was tighter for it."
"That was a really good idea."
I'd been working at Mrs. Thompson's since the first week Noah and I came to Havensworth.
The deposit on our room had been small, but I'd come into Havensworth with almost nothing.
I hadn't gone to college, so I knew the work was going to be the kind that didn't ask too many questions—service jobs, sales, cleaning.
I went to a few interviews. None of them were interested in a single mother with no references and a story she didn't want to tell.
Then I'd walked past Mrs. Thompson's window and seen the help-wanted sign.
I didn't know anything about baking. She looked at me for a long second and said she'd rather have a person with a good attitude who didn't know anything than someone who came in thinking they knew her recipes better than she did. She handed me an apron the same afternoon.
"I'll take these to the front," Benjie said, lifting the tray of cinnamon rolls off the resting rack.
"Thanks, Benjie."
I sometimes thought about walking past her window that morning.
I tried not to think about where Noah and I would be if I hadn't.
This job had done more than keep us going—Mrs. Thompson and Benjie had become the family Noah and I needed when we were at our worst. And learning to bake, watching people's faces when they tried what I made, gave me a kind of pride I didn't know I needed.
I was wiping down the front of the case when the bell on the door jingled.
I looked up. The man walking toward the counter was someone I hadn't seen before.
He was tall. Tall enough that I had to actually look up, which I didn't always have to do.
He was built like a man who used his body for work—broad in the shoulders, thick through the chest and arms. Dark hair.
Stubble he hadn't shaved this morning. He came to the counter with the kind of focus that said he had somewhere else to be.
He was good-looking, I let myself notice.
I gave him the smile I gave most customers, the one that was real because Mrs. Thompson had said from the start that the smile was the whole bakery.
Underneath it, I caught the start of a different one—smaller, mine—and made myself put it away.
He hadn't asked for that one. I was thirty-four, a single mother, and I had no business being the woman who smiled at her customers like that.
"Pickup for Reeves," he said.
"Reeves. Right. One second."
I went into the back. The cake had been boxed since seven, sitting on the prep table where I'd put it after I'd written Reeves on the lid in my best handwriting.
Mrs. Thompson had taught me to do that for the regulars.
I liked it now, too. I picked up the box with both hands and carried it out to the counter.
I set it down in front of him. Then I remembered the other thing.
"Wait. One more thing."
I went back through the swinging door, opened the small cooler beside the prep table, and took out the paper sack Mrs. Thompson had set aside. Sam and Jamie, she had written on it in the same careful hand, with my love. She'd asked me to make sure it went out with the cake.
I came back out and set the sack down beside the box.
"Mrs. Thompson wanted Sam and Jamie to have these. Something she made fresh this morning."
He nodded once and reached for his wallet, pulling out a card.
I looked at the card. I looked at his hand holding it.
He had nice hands. I gave myself that one, too. Big hands, the kind that did real work. A small white scar on the back of his left thumb that had probably been a burn. The kind of muscle in his forearms that didn't come from a gym.
"Oh," I said. "It's already been paid for."
He paused for a second, then slid the card back into his wallet.
"Have a good one," I said.
"You, too."
He picked up the box in one hand and the bag in the other and went out. The bell jingled. The door swung shut behind him.
I stood at the counter and let the smile happen, finally, with no one watching. Shaking my head at myself, I went back to wiping down the case.
The rest of the week went by without anything worth remembering.
The bakery had its weekday rhythm—wholesale orders out by six, the morning rush on my own with Mrs. Thompson and Benjie working around me, picking Noah up from school at three.
The man who'd picked up the cake on Sunday kept turning up in my head at odd moments.
I'd be portioning dough or wiping the case down between rushes, and there he'd be.
I told myself to cut it out. He was a customer I was never going to see again.
I was loading the second tray of cinnamon rolls into the case when my phone rang.
I caught the screen on the third ring. Palmetto Creek Elementary.
The cold started low and went up fast. I had the phone to my ear before I'd registered moving.
"Hello."
"Hi, is this Ms. Marin?"
"Yes."
"This is Mrs. Halloran from the front office at Palmetto Creek."
Nothing about a school calling on a Thursday morning was going to be good.
"Is Noah okay?"
"He's okay. He's not hurt. There was an incident at recess this morning, and we'd like you to come in. Today, if you can. The principal would like to meet with you."
"What kind of incident?"
"I think the principal would prefer to discuss that in person. He's safe and sound, ma'am. We just need you to come in."
I closed my eyes.
"I'll be there in fifteen minutes."
"Thank you, Ms. Marin."
I hung up and went to find Benjie. He was in the back, pulling a tray out of the oven.
"Benjie, can you handle the front for an hour or two? I have to pick up Noah from school."
"Of course. Is everything okay?"
"Everything's fine. They just need me to come in."
"Don't worry about the bakery. I'll explain to my grandma."
"Thank you."
I went to the back room, pulled my apron off, and got my purse out of the cubby. The drive to Noah's school was supposed to be fifteen minutes. I made it in ten.
I parked my car and hurried in.
Palmetto Creek was a flat brick building with a covered walkway along the front and the kind of crayon-and-construction-paper signs taped to the windows that all elementary schools had.
I'd been inside maybe four times since Noah started in September.
Drop-offs were curbside. I'd kept it that way on purpose.
I checked in at the front desk. Mrs. Halloran looked up, saw my face, and softened her own.
"Right this way, Ms. Marin."
She walked me down a short corridor and tapped on a door with frosted glass. The principal's name was on it in vinyl letters: Dr. Elaine Whitfield. Mrs. Halloran opened the door and stood aside.
Noah was sitting on the far side of the desk, looking small in the chair, his feet not quite reaching the floor, backpack on the carpet beside him. He looked like a kid who'd been sitting there a while.
"Mom."
"Ms. Marin." Dr. Whitfield was already standing. She looked to be in her fifties, navy blazer, glasses on a chain, the kind of put-together that schools liked in their administrators. "Thank you so much for coming on short notice. Please, sit down."
I took the chair next to Noah. He had his hands in his lap. I wanted to put my hand on his shoulder, but I held back.