• • •

A couple of hours later Walter had left for class and Charlie was checking the daily bakery stock against the list. Croissants. Eclairs. Scones. Three kinds of cookies. Date squares and raspberry bars. Whole wheat and pumpernickel loaves. The Starlight Bread she and Walter had baked this morning was on shelves in the back of the bakery, cooling before the loaves headed to the freezer, where they rested until the town threw its annual Starlight Eve bash in the square on December 24.

Suddenly her Sweet & Salty television schedule didn’t seem quite as grueling. How did Cass do this every day? Some of the items, like the cookies and bars, could be made every other day, but the Woodburn’s sourdough was baked fresh daily. Charlie checked the sourdough loaves in the oven and saw they had about thirty minutes to go. She couldn’t smell anything but suspected the bakery was filled with delicious scents. Charlie had hoped her sense of smell would have come back by now, but it had only been a day since the accident. And she wasn’t exactly resting like she had been told to do at the hospital.

The bakery opened at nine o’clock, which meant she had just under an hour before she had to start greeting customers. Thank goodness for Walter. Things were almost ready to go.

Charlie decided a few moments of rest would be fine. Just to briefly close her eyes, which felt gritty and sore from lack of sleep. Before she dragged herself upstairs she found a bandage in the bakery’s first aid kit and applied it to her wrist, covering her tattoo. Then she lay on Cass’s couch, telling herself she would set her alarm for fifteen minutes. Plenty of time left to finish the bread and get the coffee brewed for the morning rush. Setting her phone beside her, she leaned back onto the pillows and closed her eyes.

• • •

Charlie woke up not because of her phone’s alarm, but because of another alarm—this one painfully loud. Confused and disoriented, she sat up quickly and instantly felt dizzy. She reached for her phone but it was no longer beside her. Where was it? With a grunt of frustration, she glanced at the kitchen clock and saw she had been asleep for forty-five minutes. Which meant the bakery was opening in minutes. The fire alarm screeched so loudly she had to cover her ears as she ran downstairs from Cass’s apartment.

It only took her turning the corner from the staircase into the bakery’s back room to understand precisely what the problem was. Smoke billowed from the ovens. And even though Charlie could smell nothing, it was clear what had happened. She’d burned the sourdough loaves.

“No, no, no . . .” she mumbled, racing into action. First, she turned off the ovens, making the decision to pull out the burning loaves rather than leaving them in the ovens to char further. Quickly putting on the industrial oven mitts that went past her elbows, Charlie opened the doors one at a time and grabbed the blackened loaves; the billowing smoke made her cough and her eyes water. Then she opened the front door and all the windows, despite the cold winter air, and reached for one of the cardboard menus from the countertop before jumping on a chair to try to disperse the smoke away from the fire alarm in the ceiling. She nearly toppled over with another wave of dizziness, but managed to stay upright.