Chapter 16
1395 Words
Isabelle's flight was at seven in the morning.
I knew this because Jade mentioned it at Sunday dinner the week before, the way Jade mentioned most things — in passing, casually, embedded in a longer sentence about something else, the information arriving before you had time to prepare for it. Six weeks in London. A major international conference, then client meetings, then a deposition she had been preparing for since October. She would be back mid-January.
Six weeks.
I had done the math before Jade finished the sentence and hated myself for doing it.
The farewell brunch was Saturday morning at the Calloway brownstone — Patricia's idea, executed with Patricia's characteristic warmth and excess. French toast and fresh flowers and the good coffee Gerald saved for occasions, the whole family arranged around the kitchen island in the particular way they arranged themselves when something was happening that mattered.
I came because Jade asked me to come.
I told myself that was the only reason.
Isabelle was bright that morning — genuinely, not performed. She was the kind of woman who moved toward things rather than away from them, and London was home in its way, the city where she had built herself before Marcus, and there was something in her that lit up at the prospect of returning, even temporarily. She talked about the conference with the focused enthusiasm of someone who was excellent at their work and knew it and hadn't stopped finding that fact energising.
Marcus stood beside her at the kitchen island with his coffee and his quiet presence and the particular expression he wore when he was watching her — something warm and settled that I had trained myself not to examine too closely.
I ate my French toast and talked to Gerald about the West Village buildout and smiled in the right places and was, by any observable measure, perfectly fine.
Patricia pulled me aside in the hallway before we left, the way she sometimes did — a hand on my arm, a brief squeeze, the warm specific attention of a woman who noticed people carefully.
"You'll come for Christmas dinner," she said. Not a question.
"I'll be here," I said.
She looked at me for a moment with the expression she sometimes had — knowing without being intrusive, seeing without saying. Then she kissed my cheek and went back to the kitchen.
I was at the bakery when Jade texted that Isabelle's flight had taken off.
I read the message standing at the counter with flour on my forearms and the morning rush still an hour away. Outside, the December street was dark and cold, the city moving in its early-morning way — delivery trucks and dog walkers and the particular loneliness of pre-dawn New York that I had always found, somehow, more companionable than oppressive.
Six weeks.
I put the phone face down on the counter and went back to the dough.
Renee arrived at six-thirty, came into the kitchen, looked at me, looked at the three trays of croissants I had already prepared, and said, "She left."
"This morning."
She poured her coffee. "And how are we feeling about that?"
"We are feeling like we have a full Saturday ahead of us and approximately forty croissants to finish."
"Mmhm." She took her coffee to the register. "That's what I thought."
He texted on Wednesday.
Not about Isabelle. Not about anything significant — just a question about the West Village buildout, whether the contractor had resolved the plumbing issue I'd mentioned at Thanksgiving. A normal question. The kind of text you sent to someone you knew when something reminded you of a conversation you'd had.
I answered it. He responded. We went back and forth for ten minutes about pipes and permits and the specific frustration of renovation timelines, and by the end of it the conversation had drifted, the way our conversations drifted, into something easier and warmer than its starting point.
Marcus: How's the new menu coming?
Ava: Slowly. I'm working on a cardamom honey cheesecake that isn't cooperating.
Marcus: Define not cooperating.
Ava: The texture is wrong. Too dense. It needs something.
Marcus: What does your instinct say?
I looked at the message for a moment. In the kitchen behind me, Renee was doing inventory.
Ava: More time. Most things just need more time.
A pause. Then:
Marcus: Yeah. Probably.
I set the phone down and went back to the cheesecake and did not think about what he meant by probably because thinking about what he meant by probably was not useful and I was a practical woman with a business to run.
Thursday came.
I was not thinking about Thursday.
I was thinking about the cheesecake texture and the West Village contractor and the new hire Renee wanted to bring on for the opening and the December wholesale orders that were larger than last year's and needed managing.
I was not thinking about the window table.
At nine fifty-seven the bell above the door chimed.
I was at the counter writing the day's specials. I finished the word — seasonal — and looked up.
Marcus stood in the doorway.
He was in a dark coat this time, properly dressed for December, and he looked the way he looked when he had made a decision and arrived at it without full comfort — resolved but not entirely easy about the resolution.
He met my eyes across the bakery.
"I know I said I wasn't coming back," he said.
"I know you did," I said.
A pause.
"Isabelle's in London," he said.
"I know."
"That's not —" He stopped. Seemed to consider the sentence he was building. "I'm not here because she's in London. I want to be clear about that."
"Okay."
"I'm here because it's Thursday and the tart is good and I —" He stopped again. Something moved through his expression, briefly unguarded. "I missed the conversation."
The bakery was quiet. The morning light came through the windows at the low December angle, catching the glass cases, making the space feel warmer than it was.
"Sit down, Marcus," I said.
He sat.
I plated the tart — the cardamom brown butter, his, the one I had made without consciously admitting I was making it for him — poured the coffee, and came around the counter.
I sat across from him.
He looked at the tart. Then at me. Then at the table between us.
"This is a bad idea," he said, quietly. Not accusatory. Just honest.
"Probably," I agreed.
He picked up the fork.
"Tell me about the cheesecake," he said.
So I did.
We talked for an hour. The bakery filled and emptied around us, the Thursday morning doing what Thursday mornings did, and at the window table two people sat with coffee and pastry and the conversation that had always been too easy between them and I thought: here we are.
He laughed at something I said — the full version, briefly, the one I had been collecting for years — and I thought: here we are again.
When he left at eleven he paused at the door the way he sometimes did, hand on the frame, half-turned.
"Same time next week?" he said.
The question was casual. The question was not casual at all.
I looked at him across the length of the bakery — the dark coat, the gray eyes, the man who had come back on a Thursday because Isabelle was in London and he had missed the conversation, which was either the most innocent thing in the world or the least.
"Same time next week," I said.
He nodded. Something settled in his expression — relief, maybe, or something that was the cousin of it.
Then he was gone.
Renee appeared from the kitchen before the bell had finished settling.
She looked at the empty window table.
She looked at me.
She picked up his empty coffee mug and carried it to the back without a word.
That, from Renee, was the loudest thing she could have said.
I stood behind my counter in the December morning and thought about six weeks and Thursdays and the particular danger of conversations that felt too good to stop having.
Then I went back to the cheesecake.
It still needed something.
I was starting to think most things did.
- Writer
