Monday
The next morning, Stella awoke with sore limbs and a heavy heart. She resolved to get a loaf of bread. Maybe she’d catch Antonio on a break and off-handedly mention all the times she had a chef walk off the line during service. Big egos filled kitchens, a truth as sure as the smell of burnt artichokes never washed out of linens. Each time a chef abandoned her felt like the end of the world, but she always made it work and Antonio would too. After all, he’d been running this bakery forever. Then again, she realized with a start, forever was a different animal in a medieval Italian village than it was in the land of tweets that went from enraging to stale in a matter of hours. Perhaps, for Antonio, his business felt fledgling, vulnerable.
When she arrived in front of Forno Antico, s
