Chapter 22: Rent Day

Maia's POV

On Monday morning, the chain was still across my front door, and the line outside the bakery was longer than it had ever been.

Word travels in Port Averly.

Three hundred and fifty people had watched a ballroom empty on Friday, and every one of them had told a neighbor.

People I had never seen came to the alley to buy a roll.

A woman from the paper stood by the dumpster with a notebook, and Bev was explaining the lease to her at length.

"Thirty-one years," Bev said. "She's not a tenant. She's the reason there's a bakery."

"That's lovely, Miss Hensel."

"I'll bill you for the quote."

Eli was in the kitchen with flour on his shirt, stacking trays, because I had shown him once and he never forgot anything.

He had not asked me again.

I had given him four days to ask, and he hadn't.

Every time I caught his eyes across the ovens, he looked at my bare left hand and then away.

I was beginning to suspect he was saving it for a perfect moment.

I intended to make that harder for him.

At seven-fifteen, the dentist poked his head through the back door.

"Maia. You need to come out front."

I wiped my hands on my apron and went through the shop.

I stood at the window and looked past the chain, and my breath stopped.

Eldon Ward stood on the sidewalk by himself.

He wore a gray overcoat and no tie, and he had no lawyer, no deputy and no assistant.

He held a pair of bolt cutters in one hand and a folded paper in the other.

I had never seen him carry anything.

The line parted around him in silence.

I unlocked the back, went around the side of the building, and came out onto the sidewalk with Eli one step behind me.

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