Secrets Baked With Love: A Gentle Small-Town Bakery Mystery

Sugar and Sorrow: First Frost | The Note

The first frost came to Havenwood on a Tuesday, and Elsie McMillan saw it before her feet ever touched the floor.

She lay in bed a moment longer, watching the window. The glass had gone white at the corners, feathered with ice, like someone had brushed it with sugar. Beyond it, the maple in her front yard stood bare and black against a pale gray sky. Its last leaves had let go in the night. They lay scattered across the lawn like coins nobody had bothered to pick up.

"Well, Samuel," she said to the empty side of the bed. "Winter's knocking."

Nobody answered. Nobody had answered for eleven months now. She still said good morning to him anyway. It was a habit she did not want to break, because breaking it felt like losing him twice.

Elsie swung her legs over the side of the bed and found her slippers with her toes. The floor was cold through the soles. She pulled her robe tight, the blue one with the worn cuffs, and padded down the hall with one hand trailing along the wall. The house was quiet in the way of houses with one person in them. She knew every sound it made. The tick of the clock in the front room. The hum of the refrigerator downstairs. The little knock the pipes made when the heat came up.

She knew all of them, and none of them were Samuel's whistle.

In the kitchen, she set the kettle on and stood waiting for it, looking out the small window over the sink. Her garden was done for the year. The frost had seen to that. The marigolds she had babied all summer were bent and brown, and the basil had gone black overnight. She should feel sad about it, she supposed. Mostly she felt tired.

The kettle began its low rumble. She reached for the good mug, the one with the chip on the handle that she could not throw away. Samuel had chipped it the Christmas they moved in, thirty-nine years ago, dropping it in the driveway with the first box of dishes. He had wanted to toss it. She had kept it out of spite, and then kept it out of love.

She made her tea strong, the way he used to tease her about.

"That tea could strip paint, Elsie girl."

"Then don't drink it, Samuel McMillan."

He always drank it.

She carried the mug to the table and sat in her chair. Not his. His chair still faced the window, where he used to sit with the paper and complain about the headlines. She had not moved it. The paper still came, too. She kept meaning to cancel it and kept forgetting, or not forgetting. The stack by the door was getting tall.

Outside, Havenwood was waking up.

She could see a slice of Maple Street from her kitchen window, and she watched it the way she used to watch her shows. Mr. Kowalski came out in his flannel shirt and swept the frost off his porch steps, same as every cold morning, even though the frost would be gone by nine. The Whitaker girl rode past on her bicycle, late for something, her scarf flying behind her like a red flag.

And down at the corner, the lights of the Buttercup Bakery were on.

They were always on. Six in the morning, six days a week, for as long as most folks in town could remember. Bea Hawthorne opened that bakery the way the sun came up. You did not have to think about it. It just happened, and the whole town set its clock by the smell of cinnamon that drifted up Maple Street by seven.

Elsie wrapped both hands around her mug and felt the knot in her chest ease a little, seeing those warm yellow windows.

Some ...