Chapter 9: Dayton's Bluff

I sat.

Liesl slid the coffee closer and watched me over the rim of her own cup.

"I'm not going to ask anything," she said. "I'm seventy-nine. I'm allowed to be nosy, but I'm not going to be."

"Thank you."

"You are wearing his shirt inside out."

I looked down.

The seam ran along my collarbone.

"I'm going to go change," I said.

"After you eat. There's a cheese Danish."

I ate the cheese Danish.

It was the best thing I had tasted all month.

"Where did you get these?" I asked.

"A small bakery in Dayton's Bluff. The owner has a good hand with laminated dough."

She sipped her coffee and said nothing else, and I thought no more about it.

Emmett came out of the bedroom a few minutes later in jeans and a gray T-shirt, with his hair damp.

He saw his grandmother and stopped.

"Good morning, Emmett," she said. "I brought breakfast."

"You've always had a key."

"I have. Today I used it."

He looked at me, and I looked at him, and the corner of his mouth went up.

Liesl stood, collected Pretzel's leash and her cane, and kissed the top of my head on her way past.

"Behave," she told us both. "Or don't. But eat."

The door closed behind her.

"She knew," I said.

"She always knows."

"It's very annoying."

"It's a family trait. I'm told I have it."

"Do you know what I'm thinking?"

"That I have a bad poker face."

"That's the second thing."

He brought me the second cup of coffee, bent down, and kissed me, a real one, brief and warm.

"What's the first thing?"

"The bakery."

I turned the pastry box over on the table.

Stamped on the bottom in small green letters was a name.

Bluff Street Bakery.

"Greta Voigt runs a bakery," I said.

Emmett's face changed slowly.

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