Beyond the Spring Breeze novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: Bakery

The bakery was warm and loud and smelled of yeast.

Roz had worked there since she was fourteen, and she moved around the back kitchen the way I used to move around the yard.

She cut me a slice of the pie without asking and set it on a paper plate.

"Eat," she said. "You look pale."

I ate.

It was cherry, and it was perfect.

I thought, with a pang, that she had made it for me a hundred times and I had never once asked how she learned.

"Tell me everything," Roz said.

She hopped onto the flour bin and swung her feet.

"Tell me how he asked. Was it the bench? I bet it was the bench."

"It was the bench."

"I knew it." She clapped her hands. "He's been planning that for weeks. He told me he'd ask you at the water."

"He told you."

Roz stopped swinging her feet.

"Everybody knew," she said. "Dean talks, you know how he talks. He tells me everything."

"He does."

"We're friends, Thea. He's practically my brother."

She said it with a bright open face and not a flicker.

Brother.

I put down the fork.

I had learned something sitting at the head of a boatyard for fifty years.

When a customer lies to your face, you don't argue.

You hand them rope, and you watch where they tie it.

"I'm not sure I'm going through with it," I said.

Her face went very still.

"With the party?"

"With any of it. The wedding. I got an appointment to the Naval Academy, Roz. I signed it this morning."

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