I opened the bakery at six on Saturday as usual.
This was not unusual. Saturdays were our busiest morning — the neighborhood came out for weekend pastries the way it came out for nothing else, unhurried and deliberate, people who had been eating efficiently all week allowing themselves the particular luxury of something made with care. By eight the line was out the door and Renee and I moved through the morning rush with the focused efficiency of people who had done this enough times that it had become a kind of choreography.
By 10:30, the rush had thinned. By eleven the bakery held four customers and the comfortable quiet of a Saturday morning finding its pace.
At 11:03 the bell above the door chimed.
I was behind the counter. I did not look up immediately — I was finishing a note on
