Chapter 29: The Line at the Counter

The first one came in at seven, before I had finished turning the sign.

He was a big man in a good coat, and I knew him anyway, seven years older than he had been in the hall.

He stood in my doorway with his hands in his pockets and his weight on one hip.

"I need a loaf of the sourdough," he said.

"And to say something."

The girl at my counter looked at me.

I slid the loaf into a bag and set it on the glass between us.

"Say it."

He looked at the three people in line behind him, and the old woman buying rye, and the delivery boy.

"I said you looked like a librarian who lost her library," he said.

"I said it in front of forty people so they'd laugh, and they did.

"It wasn't even a good line."

"No," I said, "it wasn't."

"I'm sorry," he said.

"That's nine dollars."

He paid with a twenty and waited for change that I did not give him quickly.

He walked out with his loaf.

The old woman behind him leaned over the counter.

"What was that?" she said.

"Seven years late," I said.

"Rye?"

By nine the line went out the door and past the dry cleaner.

I had not asked for any of it.

Torin had told the pack on Wednesday that anyone who had laughed at me at the academy was welcome to say it to my face.

He had said they could do it in my shop.

They could pay for the bread while they did.

He had not told me that part until Thursday night, on the phone, and he had apologized for the order in which he'd done it.

I had put the phone on the counter.

I thought about it for a good minute before I decided I was not going to be handled.

So I made my own rules and wrote them on a card.

It was taped to the register: ONE AT A TIME. BUY SOMETHING. NO TEARS ON THE PASTRY.

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