Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
Jade stood in the middle of the bakery at six a.m. the next morning, notepad in hand, making what might have been the most depressing list of her life. “Okay, Mabel, let’s see exactly what we’re dealing with.”
The sun wasn’t even up yet, but inside the bakery there was enough light to see every flaw, every sign of neglect that had accumulated like dust in the corners. What had looked merely tired yesterday now revealed itself to be genuinely broken.
“Start with the big things,” Mabel said gently, wrapping her hands around a steaming mug of coffee. “The ones that actually stop us from baking.”
Jade clicked her pen with the precision of a general preparing for battle.
“Right. Big things first.” She walked to the massive commercial oven that dominated the back wall, its chrome surface dulled with age and streaked with grease.
She opened the heavy door and immediately felt the problem—a blast of heat that should have been contained.
“The door seal’s shot,” she announced, running her finger along the cracked rubber gasket. “And the temperature gauge is reading fifty degrees off what my thermometer says.”
Item 1: Oven—door seal replacement, thermostat calibration. Est. cost: $300-500.
Pen scratched against paper as she moved to the display case, its interior lit by a collection of fluorescent tubes that flickered like dying fireflies. Half were completely dark, the others cast a sickly yellow glow that made even fresh pastries look stale.
“Display lighting,” she muttered. Item 2: Replace fluorescent fixtures. Est. cost: $200.
The tour continued with mounting horror.
The commercial mixer’s motor housing was cracked, held together with what appeared to be electrical tape and hope.
The kitchen sink drained with the enthusiasm of a stopped-up bathtub.
The front door stuck so badly that customers had to throw their full weight against it to enter.
The beautiful vintage tin ceiling was water-stained in three places, suggesting roof leaks that had been temporarily patched.
“The hot water takes five minutes to reach the sink,” Jade noted, testing the ancient faucet. “And the water pressure could barely power a drinking fountain.”
Mabel nodded sadly. “The plumber wanted eight hundred just to look at it. I’ve been heating water in pots when I need it hot.”
Jade’s pen moved faster. Item 8: Plumbing overhaul. Est. cost: $800-1200.
By the time she reached the front of the store, her list covered two full pages. She tallied the estimates, her stomach sinking with each added zero.
“Twenty-eight hundred dollars,” she announced, her voice hollow. “Minimum. That’s if I do the labor myself and everything goes perfectly the first time.”
“How much do we have?” Mabel asked, though her tone suggested she already knew the answer wouldn’t be good.
Jade pulled out the ledger she’d found in the kitchen drawer, its pages filled with Mabel’s careful handwriting. Income versus expenses. Loan payments. Utilities. The numbers told a stark story.
“After this month’s mortgage payment, we have about four hundred dollars in the business account,” she said quietly. “And that’s supposed to last until Christmas sales.”
They stood in silence for a moment, the weight of mathematics pressing down on them. The morning light seemed harsher now, revealing not just physical decay but the impossible gap between what needed to be done and what they could afford.
“Well,” Jade said finally, squaring her shoulders with the determination that had gotten her through Boston’s worst rejections. “I guess I’m about to get very good at home improvement.”
She walked to the display case and knelt down, examining the electrical panel underneath. “How hard can it be to replace a few light fixtures?”
“Jade, honey,” Mabel said carefully, “maybe we should call someone—”
“We can’t afford someone,” Jade interrupted, pulling her phone from her pocket. “But I can afford YouTube Premium. And according to this...” She held up the screen, which showed a video titled ‘Replace Commercial Fluorescent Lights - Easy DIY!’ “This guy says it’s a fifteen-minute job.”
The video was narrated by a cheerful man in a tool belt who made rewiring look as simple as changing a burned-out bulb. Jade watched it twice, taking notes on her phone, before announcing she was ready to begin.
“You’re sure about this?” Mabel asked, hovering nearby with the nervous energy of someone watching a toddler approach a stove.
“Absolutely,” Jade replied, though her confidence was mostly bluster. She’d changed plenty of light bulbs in her Boston apartment. How different could this be?
She dragged a stepladder from the storage closet and positioned it carefully in front of the display case. The fluorescent fixture hung down from the ceiling, a long metal housing that had probably been installed sometime during the Carter administration. The first Carter administration.
“First step,” she read from her notes, “turn off the power at the breaker.”
She looked around the bakery. “Where’s the breaker box?”
Mabel pointed toward a metal panel near the back door. “Right there, but Jade, are you sure—”
“Got it,” Jade said, flipping what she hoped was the right switch. The display case lights went out, along with half the overhead lighting. “Perfect.”
She climbed the stepladder and began dismantling the old fixture, following the video’s instructions step by step. Remove the cover, disconnect the wires, unscrew the mounting brackets. Everything was going exactly according to plan until she reached the part about “gently lowering the ballast.”
The ballast, it turned out, weighed a lot more than she’d anticipated and had no interest in being gently lowered. The moment she unscrewed the final bolt, it dropped like a stone, yanking the connected wires and sending her scrambling to keep her balance on the ladder.
“Okay,” she panted, wrestling the heavy metal component. “Not exactly like the video.”
She managed to get the old fixture down and had just started connecting the wires to the new LED panel when she realized she might have made a small error in her breaker identification. The display case was definitely off, but the overhead lights were still on, which meant...
“Wait,” she said aloud, looking at the exposed wires in her hands. “If the overheads are still on, then this circuit is—”
The shock hit her like a physical slap, sending electricity racing up her arms and making every muscle in her body contract at once. She yelped, jerking backward, and felt the stepladder begin to wobble beneath her.
For a terrifying moment, she teetered on the edge of disaster, her arms windmilling as she tried to regain her balance. The new light fixture swung wildly from its mounting bracket, and sparks began to fly from the exposed wires she’d dropped.
“Jade!” Mabel cried.
The sparks became a shower, and suddenly every light in the bakery went out. Not just the ones she’d meant to turn off—everything. The refrigerator motor died with a mechanical sigh. The cash register’s display went dark. Even the exit sign above the back door flickered and died.
In the sudden, complete darkness, Jade heard the distinctive jingle of the bells on the shop door.
A beam of light cut through the darkness—a proper flashlight, not a phone light.
Leo appeared in the circle of illumination, and Jade’s breath caught.
The lanky teenage boy she remembered had filled out into something altogether more substantial.
Broad shoulders strained against a flannel shirt, and his sandy hair was tousled in a way that suggested he’d been working outside.
He still had the same warm brown eyes, but there were lines around them now, and his jaw was more defined, shadowed with stubble.
He took in the scene: Jade perched on a ladder surrounded by sparks, dangling wires, and what appeared to be the electrical carnage of a very amateur repair job.
“So you’re back,” he said, his tone carefully neutral.
“Just for a while,” she replied automatically, then immediately regretted it. It sounded defensive, temporary. Like she was already planning her next escape.
“Things didn’t work out in the big city?”
The question hit like a gentle slap. He wasn’t wrong—things definitely hadn’t worked out—but hearing it put so bluntly stung.
She could see him taking in her current situation: perched on a ladder, hair standing on end, having just blacked out half the building in an amateur electrical disaster.
Not exactly the triumphant return of a successful marketing executive.
There was an awkward pause. She remembered this Leo—the one who’d helped her build that disastrous bridge for physics class, who’d tutted Mrs. Henderson’s groceries to her car when her arthritis was acting up, who’d spent his lunch periods in the auto shop helping underclassmen fix their cars for free.
He’d always been the helper, the fixer. That part at least hadn’t changed, even if everything else about him had.
“So,” she said, desperate to fill the silence, “reindeer, huh? That’s... new.”
A ghost of a smile touched his lips. “Not as new as you’d think. Started about five years ago. Turns out there’s decent money in Christmas magic.”
“Christmas magic,” she repeated. “Is that the official business term?”
“Holiday livestock entertainment services,” he corrected, and now he was definitely smiling. “But Christmas magic sounds better on the business cards.”
Despite everything—the electrical disaster, the awkwardness, the way he’d just casually pointed out her failures—Jade found herself smiling back. “Much better marketing.”
“Right. You’d know about that.” There was no malice in it, just a statement of fact, but it reminded them both of the gulf between who they’d been and who they were now.
“Mabel, where’s your breaker box?” Leo asked, breaking the moment and shifting into practical mode.