The Last Batch

The fair was dying down by four. Sunburned kids, tired parents, one goat that had been screaming all afternoon. I was boxing the last of the pie slices when I heard his voice behind me.

"I'll take that apple crumb. The last one."

I knew the voice before I turned around. Five years, and I still knew it.

Tim. Thirty-four now. Standing there in a blue button-down with the sleeves rolled up, looking like he never left Fallon at all.

"Kristy." He said my name careful, like it might break.

"Hey!" I kept boxing. My hands did not need my brain's permission, thank god. "Pie's two dollars. All proceeds to the youth group."

He put a five in the jar. "Keep the change."

"That's generous."

"That's guilt. I'm about to eat your last apple crumb and I know how you feel about people skipping line."

I looked up at him then. He was grinning. Same grin. A little more gray at the temples, which honestly worked on him.

"You look good," he said.

"You look like a feed store owner."

He laughed. "Half right. I'm half of one."

Here's what you need to know about me. Kristy, forty-four, own the only bakery in Fallon, Rise & Shine, been running it six years now. Happily single. Emphasis on happily. I built a whole quiet life out of flour and early mornings and saying no to complications, and it was a good life.

Tim was the last big complication. We dated eight months, five years back. He took a management job with a feed-store chain two states over and I let him go without making a scene, because that's what reasonable adults do. We said nice things on the phone. I cried in my car for twenty minutes and then went home and baked a double batch of sourdough and that ended it.

Or that was that, supposedly.

"You're back," I said. Stupid thing to say. He was obviously back.

"For good this time." He leaned on the table, careful not to touch my cash box. "Greg and I are opening our own store. The building next to the diner, the old hardware place."

"That's a good spot."

"That's what Greg says. He's the money half. I'm the know-about-feed half." He picked up the pie box. "Greg and his wife moved out here two years ago. He's been on me about it ever since. Says a man shouldn't live where he can't get a decent cinnamon roll."

"Candi makes the cinnamon rolls."

"Candi still works for you?"

"Since day one. She runs my counter better than I do."

"Good." He paused. "You look really good, Kristy."

"You said that."

"I meant it twice."

Well. There was a flutter. Right in the middle of my chest, where I don't keep flutters. I put the lid on the box a little harder than needed and told myself it was heartburn. Fair food. It happens.

"How's your mom?" he asked.

"Good. She moved into the senior apartments on Mill Street. Plays canasta on Tuesdays like it's her job."

"And you? Still...?"

"Still what?"

"Still married to the bakery."

"I open at five thirty, Tim. I'm not married to it. I'm in an arranged marriage with it."

He laughed again. I had forgotten how easy it was to make him laugh. Or maybe he was just being polite. Hard to tell after five years.

"So the fair," he said, looking around. "You do this every year?"

"Every year. I lose the pie contest every year to Doris Klein and her rhubarb."

"Rhubarb's a strong category."

"Don't get me started. The judges are her nieces. It's rigged. I've made peace with it."

"You have not made peace with it."

"I have made peace with it on the outside."

He grinned again and I busied myself stacking empty pie tins. Candi was supposed to be helping me pack up, but she'd vanished twenty minutes ago with a funnel cake and a look on her face I didn't trust.

"How long are you staying?" I asked. "At the fair, I mean."

"I meant the town, but sure, I'll stay till they close." He took a bite of the apple crumb. Chewed. Stopped chewing.

"What?"

"This is why I came over here, actually." He held up the fork. "This is the best pie I've eaten in my life. Including the ones you made when we were..."

He trailed off. I let him.

"Thank you," I said. "The secret is the crumb topping. Butter, brown sugar, and spite."

"Spite?"

"Rivalry with Doris. It's a seasoning."

He ate another bite and I watched him do it, which was a mistake, because watching a man enjoy your cooking does something to a woman. Something I had filed away under Closed.

"So the store," I said, changing the subject to safer ground. "When does it open?"

"October, if the permits come through. We're living above it. Greg and Sara have the big apartment, I've got the small one." He said it casual, but he said it. The single one lives alone above the feed store. Noted, brain. Filed. Stop it.

"That's convenient," I said. "Being above your work."

"You would know. You live above the bakery."

"That's different. That's commitment. That's love."

"Is it?" He looked at me. "The bakery, I mean. You love it?"

"I do. Most days."

"And the other days?"

"The other days I love the nap I take behind the counter."

He laughed. I counted that as a win and immediately hated myself for counting.

A kid ran past and knocked over my stack of tins. We both knelt to pick them up and bumped heads. Not hard. Just enough to make us both say ow at the same time, and then laugh, and then be kneeling close together in the grass with pie tins between us.

"You still smell like cinnamon," he said.

"You still smell like feed."

"I do not. I showered."

"Old habits on a man, Tim. You smelled like alfalfa the whole eight months we dated."

"And you dated me anyway."

"I did." I stood up with the tins. The flutter was back. Worse. It had moved down into my stomach, which was insubordinate. "Look, it was good to see you. Tell Greg welcome to town. Try the sourdough on Fridays, it's better than anything today."

"Kristy." He stood too. "Can I ask you something?"

"If it's about the pie contest, the answer is yes, it's rigged."

"It's not about the pie." He wiped his hands on his jeans. "Would you get coffee with me sometime? When you're not busy. When the shop's not..."

"Yes!"

I said it before I thought about it. That's the truth. He got one word into asking and my mouth answered on its own, like it had been waiting five years for the question.

He blinked. "Okay. That was easier than I practiced for."

"You practiced?"

"I practiced in my truck for forty minutes this morning. All of it went better than that."

I laughed. There it was again. The flutter, doing whatever it wanted, unmanaged.

"Saturday," I said. "After the morning rush. The diner. Around ten."

"Saturday. Ten. The diner." He held up the pie box like a trophy. "Thanks for the crumb."

"Don't tell Doris you got the last one."

"Never." He turned, then turned back. "It's really good to see you, Kristy."

"You too, Tim."

He walked off toward the feed-store booth, where his partner Greg was running some kind of petting zoo disaster. I watched him go for exactly two seconds, which is all I allowed myself.

Candi appeared out of nowhere, funnel cake in hand, powdered sugar on her chin.

"So," she said. "That was Tim."

"Your Tim."

"He was never my Tim. He was a Tim that occurred briefly."

"Uh huh." She took a bite of funnel cake. "You said yes to something. I could see it from the face you made. Your yes face."

"I don't have a yes face!"

"Babe. You have a whole face for it. You look like you bit a lemon and liked it."

I started stacking tins again. She watched me with that grin of hers, the twenty-nine-year-old divorced and thriving grin, the one that meant trouble.

"Saturday," she said. "Ten o'clock. I already know, don't even."

"Who told you?"

"You just did." She dusted sugar off her chin. "This is the best day of my whole summer."

"It's coffee."

"Sure it is." She picked up the cash box and headed for the truck, humming something smug.

I stood in the grass a minute longer. The goat was still screaming. The light was going orange over the green. Five years of quiet, and one slice of apple crumb had gone and rattled the whole shelf.

I was going to need to bake about this.

I baked about it. That's what I did.

Monday morning I was at the bakery at 4:45, ten minutes early for my own ten-minute-early self. I made cinnamon rolls. I made a lemon pound cake. I made a batch of oatmeal cookies that were going to taste like denial, and I didn't care. By six the whole place smelled like a Sunday in a town that doesn't exist.

Candi came in at seven, took one look at me, and set her purse down slow.

"Okay," she said. "What happened."

"Nothing happened."

"You're stress baking. You never stress bake. You planned bake. This is a panic loaf."

"It's a cinnamon roll, Candi."

"It's a panic roll." She hung up her jacket and leaned on the counter. "Talk."

"There's nothing to talk about. I agreed to coffee with an old... person I used to know. It's coffee. It's Saturday. It's ten in the morning in a public diner with a waitress present."

"You said all that at the fair."

"I'm saying it again because you keep looking at me like that."

"Like what?"

"Like you're about to say something I'll regret hearing."

She grinned. God, that grin. "You had cheeks at the fair, Kristy. Pink ones. You don't do pink. You do flour-white and sensible."

"That was the sun."

"It was four in the afternoon and you were under a canopy."

"Reflected heat."

"From what? The goat?" She picked up a pan and started loading the case, which was her way of settling in for a siege. "Look. I'm just saying. Go find him. Or let him find you. Whatever this is, it's been sitting in you for five years and it's leaking out your face."

"I am fine alone."

"I know you're fine alone. You're great alone. You're the alone-est happy person I know." She slid the tray into the case and shut the glass a little harder than needed. "But fine alone and happy alone aren't the same thing, and you've been fine instead of happy for a while now, boss."

"He left, Candi. He took the job and he left, and I decided that was information, and I read the information, and I made a decision. That's the whole file."

"He took a job. Five years ago. You were both different people."

"I was a perfectly good person."

"You were a person who cried in my walk-in cooler and told me to mind the case."

"I never cried in the walk-in."

"You did. March. I brought you a donut and you were sitting on the flour sacks doing the ugly kind."

I remembered the donut. I didn't say so. "That was one bad day."

"One bad day, five years long." She wiped her hands on her apron. "He's back. He's opening a store. He asked you for coffee and you said yes before he finished the sentence. Babe. The file's not closed. The file's on the counter and it's open."

I picked up a rolling pin. Not to use. Just to hold. "I like my life."

"I know you do."

"I built it on purpose. Six years. This bakery, my apartment, my mom on Mill Street playing canasta every Tuesday like clockwork. Nothing in my life requires maintenance I didn't sign up for."

"Tim isn't maintenance, he's..."

"Don't say weather."

"He's weather," she said anyway.

I pointed the rolling pin at her. "You're twenty-nine. You'll understand at forty."

"I'm divorced at twenty-nine, which makes me