My Sister Stole My Second Life novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: The Bakery

The street was empty.

A delivery van idled at the far end with its back doors open.

A pigeon walked along the gutter.

The bakery's lights were on behind the blue awning, and the window was fogged from the ovens.

I looked left.

Nothing.

I looked right.

Nothing.

I looked left again, and my heart was going so hard I could feel it in my teeth.

Then I stepped off the curb.

One step.

Two.

The yellow line.

The far curb came up under my sneaker, solid and ordinary, with a crack in it full of weeds.

I stood on it and shook.

Nobody saw.

That was the best part.

Nobody saw at all.

The bell over the bakery door was the old-fashioned kind, a real brass bell on a curl of iron.

It didn't stick.

The baker was behind the counter in a white apron dusted to the elbows, the same stooped old man with the same reading glasses pushed up on his forehead.

He'd never met me in this life.

"Morning," he said. "You're early. Almond's not out for five minutes."

"I'll wait."

"Two?"

I stared at him.

"Everybody wants two," he said. "One for them, one for whoever's still in bed."

I laughed.

It came out wet.

He gave me a funny look and went into the back.

When he came out with the tray, he stopped and squinted at me over the counter.

"Hang on. You're on Hope Street. Second floor, over the hardware store."

"Since Saturday."

"Then you're Mrs. Stanhope." He started to grin, then caught himself and frowned. "Oh, no. He'll kill me. Forget I said anything."

"Said what?"

"Nothing. I said nothing. Two almond." He bagged them fast. "Go home. Act surprised."

I didn't go home.

I sat at the little table in the window with the paper bag and waited.

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