Page 22 of Never Alone
I worked the dough. My face did the thing it had been doing on and off since the firehouse. I didn't let it do anything else.
The night I left Nicholas, my hands had turned the wheel toward Havensworth before my head did. I had told myself, in the seven months since, that it was because I'd stayed here once as a teenager and Nicholas didn't know I'd been here. I had told myself it was the only city he wouldn't think to look. I'd built a story about Havensworth as the city where nobody would recognize me, and I had built a life inside that story.
Standing at the counter with my hands in dough, I finally understood what my hands had known seven months ago.
It hadn't been about Nicholas not finding me.
It had been about coming to a city where someone was who had once tried to save me.
I divided the dough into four pieces. I shaped the first one into a round, tucking the edges under, sealing the seam against the floured counter. Then the second. Then the third. My hands knew the work.
"Mom?"
Noah was at my elbow with his book tucked under his arm, the way he always tucked it when he wanted both hands free.
"Hey, bud."
"Can I help?"
I looked at him. There was flour on the cuff of his sleeve from earlier, a small streak he had not yet noticed. His hair needed cutting. His eyes were on the dough, not on me. He had been quiet all morning because he was being quiet for me, the way Noah was quiet when he could feel something working insideme, and now he was offering to come into it with me, the way a kid did when he was tired of standing on the edge.
"Yeah," I said. "I'd love that. Wash your hands first. You can fold boxes for me."
He went to the sink. I watched him push the sleeves of his shirt up—the careful way he did everything—and reach for the soap.
I pulled the stack of flat pastry boxes out from under the counter and set them on the prep table near where I was working. Noah climbed up on the stool with his hands still damp, picked up the top one, and started folding—bottom flap first, sides, and tuck the top. He had done it before. He gave it the kind of focus he gave any task he had been given on purpose.
The boy in the booth could wait.
The boy in the booth had waited eighteen years. He could wait the rest of the afternoon while I made bread with my son.
I'd shaped the four loaves and put them in cold proof for Monday's bake. The dough work was done. Noah had folded boxes for an hour, then asked if he could lie down on the sofa in Mrs. Thompson's office. I'd told him yes. He'd been asleep for twenty minutes.
Benjie had texted that he was on his way back.
I was at the front, wiping down the case, trying to think about anything in this city other than Cole Weston.
I was failing.
The bell on the front door jingled.
A couple came in—a man and a woman, maybe my age, maybe a little younger. The woman had her phone in one handand a small leather purse in the other. The man held the door for her and let it swing shut behind them.
"Hi there," the woman said. "We need a sourdough and one of your country loaves. We're going to a friend's tonight."
"Sure thing." I came around to the case. "The country loaves I just put up are tomorrow's. The ones we have today are on the second shelf. Sourdough's right there."
"Perfect."
I bagged the sourdough and a country loaf in two paper sleeves, tied them off, and brought them to the register. The woman handed me her card. I rang it up.
She was looking at me. The way someone looked at you when something was almost connecting in their head, and they hadn't gotten there yet. I kept my face on the register. I handed the card back.
"Thank you. The receipt printer's been finicky lately—do you want it in the bag or by email?"
"Bag's fine. I'm sorry—you look familiar."
"Oh?"
