Chapter 2

The bell above the bakery door still rang the same way it had the first Sunday Theo ever stepped inside, but the sound had changed for him now. It felt less like an interruption and more like a thread he was allowed to pick up again. He had started coming in with a paper tucked under his arm, pretending the crossword needed solving, but lately the paper stayed folded on the corner table while he watched Mara shape the last of the brioche dough behind the counter.

She always looked different on Sundays. The apron strings sat lower, the hair that escaped her braid curled against the back of her neck, and she moved like the shop belonged entirely to her, no customers waiting to be impressed. Theo had learned to linger near the window until the early rush thinned, then claim the stool closest to the espresso machine. Mara would slide him a cortado without asking the size anymore.

“Still too sweet?” she asked this morning, sliding the small white cup across the zinc counter.

“Still perfect,” he answered, the same exchange they’d had for weeks. Only now the pause after the words felt deliberate instead of accidental. Mara’s thumb stayed on the saucer an extra second before she let go.

They talked about the weather at first—rain that had flattened the awning, the sudden heat that turned the sidewalk soft underfoot—then drifted into quieter territory. Theo mentioned the new group he’d started on Wednesday evenings, six people who had lost partners and were trying to remember how to set a table for one. Mara listened with her forearms resting on the counter, flour dusting the fine hairs there. She told him about the supplier who kept sending the wrong vanilla, how she’d started writing the orders in block letters with a thick marker so the mistakes would be harder to ignore.

“People think baking is quiet,” she said. “It’s mostly arguing with invoices.”

Theo smiled into his cup. “Counseling’s the same. We all pretend we’re listening to feelings when really we’re just trying to get the names spelled right on the intake forms.”

Mara laughed, low and short, the sound catching on something she hadn’t meant to show. She wiped her hands on a towel that already carried yesterday’s work and looked past him toward the street. The bakery faced the small park where Theo’s office sat above the yoga studio. On clear days the two buildings could almost wave at each other.

“I keep meaning to cross over one of these afternoons,” she said. “See what the other side of the block looks like when it isn’t Sunday.”

“You’d be welcome,” Theo said, and the words came out steadier than he expected. “The door’s usually propped open with a brick. The plants need the draft.”

She nodded once, as if filing the information away rather than accepting it, and turned back to the oven timer. The silence that followed wasn’t uncomfortable; it was the kind that let the smell of butter and yeast settle between them. Theo traced the rim of his cup and wondered how many more Sundays he would let pass before he asked whether she wanted the address written down or if she already knew it.

The timer chimed. Mara pulled a tray of cardamom buns from the heat, set them on the rack to cool, and glanced at the clock above the door. Ten forty-seven. Theo had somewhere to be at eleven—a standing coffee with a colleague who wanted to talk about a difficult case—but the thought of leaving felt heavier than it should have. He stood anyway, sliding the folded newspaper into his coat pocket.

“Save me one of those,” he said, nodding toward the buns.

“Only if you promise to eat it while it’s still warm,” she answered. “Otherwise they go to the bench outside and the pigeons get ambitious.”

He left with the promise tucked into his coat along with the paper. The walk across the street took less than a minute, yet he found himself counting the steps, aware of the bakery window behind him like a held breath. Inside his office the plants looked dry. He watered them slowly, letting the excess run into the saucers, and opened the window anyway. The brick stayed wedged against the frame even after the room cooled.

By Wednesday the group had finished their third meeting. One member brought a tin of shortbread her mother used to make; another stayed after to ask whether grief could make a person dream in smells. Theo answered as best he could and locked up later than usual. When he passed the bakery on the way home the lights were off, but a single cardamom bun sat in a paper bag on the sill outside the side door. His name was written on the bag in the same block letters Mara used for invoices. He took it home and ate it standing at the kitchen counter, still warm enough that the sugar on top melted against his thumb.

Thursday he crossed the street at lunch with two paper cups and left one on the counter while Mara was in the back. Friday he found a folded note under the cup when he returned for it: the supplier had finally sent the right vanilla, and the evening light on his office plants looked better than she remembered. He kept the note in his wallet.

Sunday arrived with the first real cold of the season. Theo wore the coat he usually saved for funerals and walked slower than necessary. The bakery was already busy when he arrived, but Mara caught his eye over the line and tilted her head toward the stool. He waited. When the rush eased she poured two cortados and carried them to the small table by the window instead of sliding his across the counter.

They sat without the newspaper between them. Mara’s sleeve brushed his when she reached for the sugar. Neither of them moved away.

“I keep thinking about the park,” she said after a while. “How it looks different when you’re not rushing through it to open the shop.”

“We could walk it sometime,” Theo offered. “After you close.”

She studied the steam rising from her cup. “Next Sunday,” she said. “If the weather holds.”

Theo nodded. The agreement sat between them like something they had both been carrying for months without naming. Outside, the light shifted across the awning, and the bell above the door rang again for someone else. Mara didn’t stand. Theo didn’t check the time. The cortado cooled between their hands, and neither of them reached to drink it first.