Page 33 of The Sugar and Spice Kitchen

He picked up the list. Scanned it. Set it back down.

“Alright. I’ll start with Mrs. C. and work my way around to Steigler and Schneider. A few of the houses past the bridge.”

“You do that.”

Cole exhaled through his nose. Picked the list back up. Turned toward the door.

That should have been the end of it.

It would have been the end of it, if Emily hadn’t chosen that exact moment to look over her shoulder and add, “I tried to make a batch of Nana’s sugar and spice cookies this morning.” She motioned to a tray of cookies cast aside, the tops moist and sunken in while the edges were burned. “They didn’t turn out; I still can’t read all of the recipe, but I’ll figure it out. Despite certain people and their family’s best efforts.”

Cole stopped.

He should have kept walking. He knew that. Every rational part of his brain told him to put one foot in front of the other, go through the door, get on the snowmobile, and leave her to her flour and her grudges and her bottomless well of Whitaker family grievance.

Instead, he crossed back to her prep station, leaned in close, one hand on the counter beside her, and pitched his voice low enough that only she could hear.

“I’m going to settle this.”

Emily’s hands stilled on her wooden spoon.

“I’m going to find out what actually happened in 2009,” he said, his mouth close enough to her ear that she could probably feel his breath. “I’m going to talk to everyone who was there, everyone who remembers anything. I’m going to prove that my grandfather did not steal those cookies.”

From across the bakery, it probably looked like they were having a private conversation. Intimate, even. Anita glanced over from the soup station and then looked away, pretending she hadn’t. Cassidy’s eyes flicked up from the cocoa pot and back down. Mrs. Bishop leaned toward her and said something behind her hand.

None of them could hear the words. But they could feel the temperature in that corner of the bakery plummet.

Emily turned her head slowly. Their faces were inches apart. Her eyes were dark and furious.

“Is that so,” she said, barely above a whisper.

“That’s so.”

“And you’re going to do this on your own. Interviewing people.”

“About the truth.”

“Your version of it.”

“The actual version of it, Emily.”

She held his gaze. Up close, he could see the exact moment her jaw set and her chin lifted, that look he’d seen ten thousand times since the fourth grade. The one that said: I have already decided what is going to happen and everything you say from this point forward is just noise.

“If you think,” she said, her voice so low it was almost a hiss, “that I’m going to sit here baking cookies while you drive around this town cherry-picking witnesses to suit your narrative, you don’t know me at all.”

“I know you fine. That’s the problem.”

“I’m coming with you.”

“No, you’re not.”

“It’s my nana’s recipe. My family’s history. My town.”

“It’s also my grandfather that’s been accused for nearly twenty years.”

“Because he did it.”

“He didn’t.”