Chapter 23: The Slow Morning

On Monday morning Maren woke before the light and lay still, listening to him breathe.

"Still no," she said into the dark.

"Still hearing it," Jonah said, without opening his eyes.

"It's a smaller no today."

"I noticed."

He turned his head on the pillow and smiled, tired and crooked.

It was the first smile she had seen reach his eyes.

They walked into Netarts at nine for bread.

The village was one street with a post office, a kayak shop and a bakery.

The bakery door was propped open to the salt air.

Maren stopped on the sidewalk and took the cotton gloves out of her pocket.

She had worn gloves for fifteen years, through every winter and every summer.

By the bakery door stood a basket of spare mittens, left out for anyone who was cold.

She looked at the gloves for a moment, and then she dropped them in.

"Maren," Jonah said carefully.

"I know."

"You don't have to do this today."

"I'm not doing it for you." She flexed her hands in the cold.

"I'm doing it because I want a cinnamon twist from a person's actual hand."

She went inside.

A round woman in a flour-white apron stood behind the counter, with her sleeves pushed up to the elbows.

"Morning, hon," the woman said. "What'll it be?"

"One twist. And whatever he wants."

The woman wrapped it in wax paper and held it out across the glass.

Maren took the paper, and the woman's bare fingers brushed hers.

She stood in a dark kitchen at four in the morning.

A radio played low, and her own hands were deep in warm dough.

She was thinking about nothing at all.

It was the most peaceful thing Maren had ever touched.

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