The bakery smelled like cinnamon and yeast by 7. And Marjorie was already elbowed deep in dough when Ren came through the back door. "You're early," Marjgerie said, not looking up. "Couldn't sleep." "That boy again?"
Ren tied her apron without answering, which was its own kind of answer. And Marjorie let it be. They worked in comfortable silence for a while, the ovens ticking as they warmed, the radio low in the corner, playing something from decades before either of them was born. At quarter 8, Frank came in for his coffee cap pulled low against the wind outside. "Storm's coming this weekend," he said, settling at his table.
"Nee's been telling me since Sunday." "Never wrong." "Better be wrong about Friday," Ren said, sliding his coffee across. "Grandma's got a surgery. Don't need bad weather stacked on top of it.
Friday will be fine, Frank said with more certainty than his knee probably deserved. Old bones lie about a lot of things. I've learned not to trust every ache. He watched her for a second the way he'd started doing since yesterday. Not suspicious, just curious in a patient, unhurried way.
You riding the 712 again this morning? I already did. Came in on it. Why? No reason.
He sipped his coffee, just wondering if that Colton boy found something better to do with his mornings. Ren's mouth pulled into something that wasn't quite a smile. I doubt it. She had no idea, wiping down the counter a few minutes later, just how right she was. Two blocks away, Grant Colton woke up in a mood he couldn't fully explain to himself.
He told himself it was nothing. Told himself Monday had gone fine, that watching the quiet girl swallow another round of humiliation without a word had felt exactly as satisfying as it always did. But some small unexamined part of him had noticed something Monday morning that he didn't like thinking about. A flicker half a second where her hand had come up off her knee, fast, sharp, controlled, and then folded itself back down like nothing had happened at all. He didn't have a name for what he'd seen.