Shadow of Her: When He Realized Too Late novel · Chapter 3 of 16

Chapter 3: Taylor Street

Annabel gets her old job back at Hargrove's and learns Langston once bought her cupcakes for Jillian, just as Jillian walks in filming.

Jillian's footsteps went up the stairs and into the master bedroom.

I stood in the kitchen holding the envelope against my chest.

Then I took my phone out and called my lawyer.

She had been my roommate at culinary school before she quit baking for law school.

She picked up on the second ring.

"Tell me he signed it," she said.

"He signed it."

"Did he read it?"

"No."

She was quiet for a second.

"Bring it to my office by noon. I'll file it tomorrow."

"His girlfriend saw the heading."

"His girlfriend isn't a party to your marriage," she said. "Bring it by noon."

I dropped the envelope at her office on LaSalle at eleven.

Then I got back in my car and drove west.

I hadn't been to Taylor Street in three years.

Hargrove's still had the same green awning and the same hand-painted window.

There was a line out the door at ten to twelve on a Tuesday.

I stood across the street for a while before I made myself cross.

The bell over the door was the same bell.

The smell hit me before anything else.

Brown butter. Yeast. Burnt sugar on the edges of the sheet pans.

My hands started to shake a little, and I shoved them in my coat pockets.

Wesley Hargrove was behind the counter boxing a cake.

He had flour up both forearms and the same faded red apron.

He looked up.

He set the cake box down without closing it.

"Annie," he said.

"Hi, Wes."

He came around the counter and just stood in front of me.

Then he pulled me into a hug that smelled like cinnamon.

"Three years," he said into my hair. "You didn't even send a Christmas card."

"I know."

"I sent you four."

"I know. I kept them."

He let go and held me by the shoulders and looked at my face.

Whatever he saw there, he didn't say it.

"Come in the back," he said. "take the register."

The back kitchen hadn't changed either.

The big Hobart mixer. The scarred steel table. The radio stuck on the oldies station.

My old apron still hung on the hook by the walk-in.

It had my name stitched on the pocket in blue thread.

"You kept that," I said.

"Nobody else fits it."

I laughed, and it came out wet.

He poured me coffee in a chipped mug and sat across the steel table from me.

"So," he said.

"I'm leaving him."

He didn't look surprised.

"When?"

"The papers get filed tomorrow. I need a job. I need somewhere to live."

"Head baker's yours. Start Monday."

"Wes, you don't have to."

"The guy I hired after you puts cornstarch in the pie crust." He shook his head. "I've been waiting three years to fire him."

"And the apartment upstairs?"

"Empty since August. It still has your old couch."

"I need Saturday mornings off," I said. "I teach a kids' baking class at the community center down the block."

He stared at me.

"Second Kitchen? The one with the teenagers?"

"That one."

"Those kids come in here every Saturday after class with flour in their hair." He shook his head slowly. "They talk about a Miss Annie."

"That's me."

"Of course it is."

I put my face in my hands for a second.

When I looked up, he was studying the chalkboard menu through the kitchen door.

Third line down, in his blocky writing.

Honey Brown. $4.50.

My cupcake.

Brown butter cake, a honey buttercream, a pinch of flaky salt on top.

I'd made the first batch at twenty-two, on a slow Sunday.

"You never took it off," I said.

"It's still the best seller. People drive in from the suburbs for it."

He turned his mug around on the table.

"Your husband did, once."

I looked up.

"About a year and a half ago," he said. "Right at closing. Guy in a nice charcoal coat, parked a Porsche in the bus lane."

"How do you know it was him?"

"I saw your wedding picture in the Tribune. I stared at that picture for a while." He cleared his throat.

"He bought a dozen Honey Browns."

"For Jillian."

"He said, what does a woman like, and I said these. He said good, they're for Jillian." Wesley's mouth went flat.

"I almost told him who made them."

"Why didn't you?"

"Because you didn't come back. I figured that was your call."

I thought about the night he walked in at one in the morning.

The night he said he'd already eaten at Jillian's.

He'd driven forty minutes across the city for something I made.

He'd handed it to her.

He'd watched her eat it.

"Annie," Wesley said.

"I'm fine."

"You're holding that mug so hard your knuckles are white."

I put the mug down.

Out front, the bell over the door rang.

A girl's voice rose over the chatter of the line, bright and carrying.

"Hi, loves! I'm at my favorite little bakery in the whole city!"

I knew that voice.

I'd heard it on my own stairs at midnight.

I got up and went to the kitchen door.

Jillian stood inside the entrance with her phone held up at arm's length, filming herself.

Her cream coat was open.

Biscuit strained at the end of the pink leash, nose to the floor.

"This is where Langston comes when I have a bad day," she told her phone.

Then she swung the camera around to film the counter.

And her lens landed right on me.

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