Page 3 of A Veteran's Desire

“This is about as far as we can go.”

Rachel pulls the car to the side of the street and cuts the engine.

We had to wait all morning for our road to open before we could drive into Hope. We’ve heard from those who live in town that there’s damage to businesses on the main street, but we have no idea what state Sweet & Strong is in.

The smell of rotten food accosts me as soon as I get out of the car. I zip my jacket up against the cold and grab a trash bag from the trunk.

“What are you doing?” Rachel has the thick wooden broom from home in one hand and a bucket of cleaning supplies in the other.

“Cleaning up the trash.”

She puts her hand on my arm to stop me. “We need to check the bakery, Han.”

There’s trash spread from one side of the street to the other. Soggy bread rolls with their contents smeared across the asphalt sit sadly alongside clumps of what might have been tomatoes and something that stinks bad enough to make me think it’s old tuna sandwiches. It’s the trash from The Mountain Loaf, the deli a few stores up from our shop. The storm must have been fierce for the trash can to have rolled two streets away.

“We can’t just leave it like this.”

Rachel shakes her head. “Now that the roads are open, people are going to come out and clean up, I guarantee it. Our first priority needs to be our own business. We need to see what state it’s in and clean up. Take care of our own mess first, then we can help where it’s needed.”

As the business side of Sweet & Strong, it’s Rachel’s job to put the business first. She’s the brains behind the cafe; I’m just the baker.

Rachel heads to the street, so I grab the other bucket full of cleaning supplies and follow. We take the passageway that cuts through to Sycamore. The alleyway emerges between Joe’s Hardware and Babyland. There are leaves and trash stacked up by the door, and the sign for Joe’s Hardware hangs loose on one side, but otherwise both shops seem intact.

“It doesn’t look too bad.”

Rachel scoffs. “It’s a war zone.”

I follow her gaze up the main street. The sycamore trees down the center berm have taken a beating. Mangled branches hang loose and scatter the road. Bits of paper and other unidentified debris litter the ground. Some people are converging up by the clock tower carrying brooms and trash bags, the same as us.

“At least the shops don’t look too bad.”

We head up the road and each shop tells the same story, minor damage to signage and dirt from the street. The anxiety that’s been building inside ever since the freak storm hit eases a little.

The bakery is what’s holding the family together. The farm stopped producing anything meaningful years ago. The only thing we get from it is honey from the beehives and fruit from the cherry orchard. The bakery supports seven people: me and my sisters, Rachel’s two kids, and Grandpa. It’s our lifeline. Rachel has been pacing the house for the past two days while the storm raged outside. She would have ignored the stay-in-place warnings and driven into town to spend the night here if her boys weren’t so scared of the storm.

A few more paces and we reach Sweet & Strong, the only business on the main street with its window shattered.

Rachel gasps when she sees the damage. The display cabinet where I left a chocolate cake, a Victoria sponge, and fresh cupcakes covered up and ready to entice patrons in has been smashed. Shards of glass litter the sidewalk and stick out of the chocolate frosting.

The Sweet & Strong sign, hand-painted by Beth, our youngest sister who’s away at art college, lies mangled on the sidewalk, bent out of shape and face down. The portraits that hang on the wall by the door are hanging crookedly and some have come down.

The wind must have been ferocious to reach into the bakery and destroy pictures on the wall.

“Why are we damaged more than other businesses?”

I take a few steps backward onto the street and glance up and down the road. From what I can see, we’re the only ones who have a smashed window. That must have given the storm entry into the shop.

“Bad luck, I guess.”

Rachel doesn’t say anything, but she doesn’t look convinced.

I unlock the door, and glass crunches under my feet as I step inside.

“Oh no.” The heavy stone in my stomach drops.

Rachel is right behind me, and we survey the damage in silence. Every single picture on our photo wall is either smashed or it’s come down. The photos of our parents, me baking with Granny when she was alive, Pops and Granny on the farm when it was a full working farm. Grainy black and white images of our great-grandparents standing proudly next to a line of young saplings which are now the ancient cherry trees.

The photo wall is the heart of the cafe. It’s what keeps us going every day and keeps the locals coming back.