Page 5 of Never Alone
The problem with learning love the wrong way is that you don't know you've learned it wrong until it's too late. I'd learned it wrong twice.
"Morning, Tessa!"
The back door swung open, and Benjie came in with his coffee in one hand, his apron over his arm. He set the coffee on the counter where he always set it and lifted the apron over his head as he walked.
"Morning, Benjie!"
He went past the small table in the corner and ruffled my son's hair on the way by.
"Hey, Noah! What's that you're reading?"
My son Noah liked coming with me to work on weekends, instead of being left at home with a babysitter. It was better that way. A babysitter for a Sunday shift would set me back what I'd been putting aside for the few fun things Noah and I did when we could—a movie, an ice cream cone, a small trip somewhere.
"The Lightning Thief," Noah said.
"Oh man, I loved that one. I read it like four times when I was your age."
Benjie and Mrs. Thompson set up a small table for him in the corner, and when he got bored, he'd come find me and ask if he could help. Mrs. Thompson and Benjie thankfully let him do small things—loading the dishwasher, handing things up from the lower shelves during prep. Simple enough for a child to get right. He came home from his weekend shifts with flour on his jeans and a kind of quiet pride I'd never seen on him before. Noah was a good kid, despite what his father had modeled for him, and I was thankful for that every day.
I rolled out the next sheet of croissant dough on the prep table and started cutting it into triangles. Across the kitchen, the two of them were still talking—Benjie leaning over the corner table now, asking Noah something I couldn't quite hear, Noah answering. The radio was on low. The ovens hummed. The kitchen smelled like yeast, butter, and the cleaner I'd used the night before.
Benjie came over to the prep table. "Tessa, is the second tray ready to go in?"
"Almost. Give me a minute."
Benjie was Mrs. Thompson's grandson. He was eighteen and on a gap year, taking his time to figure out what he wanted to do with his life. I watched him work sometimes and wished I'd had his good sense when I was his age.
"Hey, the sourdough came out really well," Benjie said from the cooling rack.
"It did, didn't it?" I came around with the tray of croissants and slid it into the oven. "I let it rest twenty minutes longer than usual last night. I think the crumb was tighter for it."
"That was a really good idea."
I'd been working at Mrs. Thompson's since the first week Noah and I came to Havensworth. The deposit on our room had been small, but I'd come into Havensworth with almost nothing. I hadn't gone to college, so I knew the work was goingto be the kind that didn't ask too many questions—service jobs, sales, cleaning. I went to a few interviews. None of them were interested in a single mother with no references and a story she didn't want to tell.
Then I'd walked past Mrs. Thompson's window and seen the help-wanted sign.
I didn't know anything about baking. She looked at me for a long second and said she'd rather have a person with a good attitude who didn't know anything than someone who came in thinking they knew her recipes better than she did. She handed me an apron the same afternoon.
"I'll take these to the front," Benjie said, lifting the tray of cinnamon rolls off the resting rack.
"Thanks, Benjie."
I sometimes thought about walking past her window that morning. I tried not to think about where Noah and I would be if I hadn't. This job had done more than keep us going—Mrs. Thompson and Benjie had become the family Noah and I needed when we were at our worst. And learning to bake, watching people's faces when they tried what I made, gave me a kind of pride I didn't know I needed.
I was wiping down the front of the case when the bell on the door jingled.
I looked up. The man walking toward the counter was someone I hadn't seen before. He was tall. Tall enough that I had to actually look up, which I didn't always have to do. He was built like a man who used his body for work—broad in the shoulders, thick through the chest and arms. Dark hair. Stubblehe hadn't shaved this morning. He came to the counter with the kind of focus that said he had somewhere else to be.
He was good-looking, I let myself notice.
I gave him the smile I gave most customers, the one that was real because Mrs. Thompson had said from the start that the smile was the whole bakery. Underneath it, I caught the start of a different one—smaller, mine—and made myself put it away. He hadn't asked for that one. I was thirty-four, a single mother, and I had no business being the woman who smiled at her customers like that.
"Pickup for Reeves," he said.
"Reeves. Right. One second."
I went into the back. The cake had been boxed since seven, sitting on the prep table where I'd put it after I'd writtenReeveson the lid in my best handwriting. Mrs. Thompson had taught me to do that for the regulars. I liked it now, too. I picked up the box with both hands and carried it out to the counter.
