Chapter 7: The Second Man

The second man walked into my bakery on Thursday at closing time.

I knew him by his walk before I saw his face.

He had been twenty-three when he was my boyfriend, with a soft laugh and a student loan.

Now he was thirty-one, with a dentist's tidy haircut and a gray look around his mouth.

I hadn't seen him in eight years.

"Allegra."

"Hello."

He stood on the mat with the bell still ringing over his head.

"I heard you got engaged," he said. "I drove down from Albany. I didn't tell my wife."

I put down the piping bag.

Teo was in the back room stacking cake boxes.

I heard the stack stop moving.

"Why did you come?" I said.

He took a worn square of white card out of his coat pocket.

It had been folded in four and unfolded so many times that the creases were furry.

He laid it on the counter and smoothed it flat with his fingertips.

*He hurt me. Please make it stop. Allegra.*

My handwriting, in blue ink.

"I've kept it eight years," he said. "I tried to burn it three times. I couldn't."

"I didn't write that."

"Don't tell me that." His voice cracked. "Please. I need it to be you. If it wasn't you, then I did that for nothing."

I came around the counter and touched his sleeve.

He jerked back from me.

"I shot a man," he said.

"I held that card in one hand and the gun in the other, and I shot him in the chest."

"He was a delivery driver. I read about him in the paper the next week. He had two kids."

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