Three Days in Town, and the Barista Already Knew My Order novel · Chapter 13 of 24
Chapter 13: Flour Room
Etienne threw the bolt on the back door while Yvonne's van was still pulling out of the alley.
She had gone out through the kitchen without her coat, with a crate of Grange rolls on her hip.
She had not looked at either of us.
"She'll be back at six," he said.
"Then we have fifteen minutes."
"Maura, I'm sorry. I should have told you in September."
"I'm still angry with you," I said.
"I know."
"Don't talk. Flour room."
He went ahead of me through the swinging door and stopped under the bare bulb.
The sacks stood on their pallets in stacks of four, white and fat and stamped with the mill's name.
At the end of the row a steel rack went floor to ceiling, bolted into the wall, with trays of proofing dough on it under damp cloths.
I took the apron off the hook by the door.
It was his spare, canvas, with long ties that wrapped twice around the waist.
"Take your shirt off."
He pulled it over his head and dropped it on a sack.
"Turn around. Back against the rack."
He turned and put his back to the steel upright.
"Wrists."
He crossed them behind him, around the post, without being asked.
I stood close enough to feel his heat and pulled the apron strings off the canvas.
I wound them around his wrists, once, twice, and knotted them above the bone, snug and no tighter.
"Can you feel your fingers?"
"Yes."
"Pull," I said.
He pulled.
The rack rang faintly and the knot held.
"Okay?"
"Yes." His voice had gone thick. "Yes, it's okay."
"Now listen to me."
He looked at me.
He was bare to the waist, tied to a post in a bakery at a quarter to six in the morning, with flour in his eyebrows and fear in his face.
"You wrote me a note about the road," I said. "And you decided I couldn't be trusted with it."
"I didn't."
"You decided I'd find it strange. You decided I'd be embarrassed. You decided what I needed to see, and you kept it on a shelf for seven weeks."
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of Three Days in Town, and the Barista Already Knew My Order are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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