Chapter 24: A Name in the Dark

By December the sign outside the glass house said Sold.

The flat above Pell Street Bakery smelled of bread by four in the morning.

It had been her grandmother's flat, with a slanting ceiling, a white iron bed and a window over the street.

Matilda had swept out nine years of dust and hung the quilt on the bed.

Eli had carried up a drafting table and put it under the window.

He had drawn nothing on it for a week.

Now it was covered in paper.

"Judith's out," Dot said, at the counter, reading her phone with her glasses on the end of her nose.

"Out of what?"

"The company. The board voted. It says she's stepped down to spend more time with her family."

"That's kind of them."

"She has one family member left, and he's living in a friend's spare room."

Dot snorted.

"His firm parted ways with him on Monday," she said.

"And Cora?"

"Gone to her mother's in Ohio. The Still Water sign came down on Thursday."

Matilda wiped down the pastry case and did not say anything.

She had loved Cora for nine years, and it still sat in her like a stone she had swallowed.

She was learning to walk around it.

The divorce had been final on a Tuesday.

She had signed the last page standing up, in the bakery kitchen, with flour on her wrist.

The cashier's check from the studio's sale had come the Wednesday after, for one hundred and eighty thousand dollars.

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