Chapter 16: Preston's First Night Broke

Preston's POV

By ten that night I had walked eleven miles and spent thirty-one of my forty dollars.

I had never ridden the Blue Line after dark.

A man in a Bulls cap saw me staring at the machine.

He paid my fare and walked off before I could thank him.

I got off in Pilsen because it was the one stop where I remembered a name.

Nan Pelham's bakery kitchen was behind a green door with a hand-painted cake on it.

I knew it because Lydia had told me about it for four years, and I had never gone.

The door was unlocked.

Inside, three bakers in white jackets were shaping dough under one bright light.

They stopped talking when they saw me.

"I'm not here to bother anybody," I said. "I just need somewhere warm to sit."

The oldest of them, a big man with flour to the elbows, looked me over.

"You're him," he said.

"I'm him."

"The husband."

"The ex-husband in forty minutes, if the court is fast."

He tore a piece off a loaf and handed it over, and he didn't say anything more.

I sat on an upturned bucket with my coat on.

It was warm, and the bread was the best thing I had eaten in a week.

"She came here every Sunday," the big man said, after a while. "Did you know that?"

"No."

"Brought us soup from a restaurant she wouldn't name. Sat on that bucket. Asked about my kid's knee."

"I didn't know she had friends here."

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