Chapter 5: The Bakery

I took the Sunday bus back to Dayton with a plan I hated.

It had taken me three weeks of nights in a dorm bed to build it.

Calvin had called Jocelyn Ellington his first choice with his last breath.

If that was true, then she was the one he should chase, not me.

I would hand him back to her and be done.

It sounded clean on the bus.

It sounded much less clean when I stood outside her bakery at ten past nine, holding my own elbows.

Ellington's Bakery sat on a corner two blocks from Calvin's office.

I had walked past it a hundred times in my first life.

Once, when I was thirty-three, I had found a white pastry bag in Calvin's car.

He had said a coworker brought it in.

I had gone in the next day to buy a loaf and see for myself.

The woman at the counter had looked at me with a strange, tight expression.

I'd told myself I imagined it.

I pushed the door, and a bell rang.

The shop smelled of butter and burnt sugar.

Behind the counter, a woman about my age was rolling dough, with flour up to her elbows.

Red-brown curls had escaped a bandanna, and a spray of freckles crossed her nose.

She was twenty-six, and she did not look like anyone's second thought.

"We're closed till ten," she said without looking up. "Sunday hours."

"I know. I'm sorry. Are you Jocelyn Ellington?"

The rolling pin stopped.

She looked up, and her eyes narrowed.

"Who's asking?"

"My name is Leah Ellinghaus. I work at Marlow's Diner on Fifth."

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