You all right? I'm fine," Ren said and reached for her apron. "Just a long ride." Marjorie studied her a second longer than she needed to, the way people in small towns do when they suspect there's a whole ocean under a very calm surface. Then she let it go, because that was the deal in Cedar Hollow.
You didn't push. You noticed and waited and hoped somebody eventually told you the truth on their own. The morning passed the way mornings did. Bread came out of the oven at 8, coffee brewed at 8:15. By 9:00, the retirees were in the same six or seven faces every day, trading gossip over cinnamon rolls and black coffee.
Ren liked the mornings at the bakery. Liked the heat of the ovens, the rhythm of it. Scoop, weigh, fold, bake. It asked nothing of her except her hands and her attention. No decisions that mattered, no lives on the line.
For a year and a half that had felt like enough. Some days it still did. Other days, like today, with a dented trident charm sitting heavy in her jacket pocket, it felt more like hiding than living. Around 9:30, a woman named Ruth Anders came in for her usual order. And while Ren rang her up, Ruth leaned on the counter and lowered her voice.
I heard about this morning, she said on the bus. Ren kept wiping down the espresso machine. News travels fast. It's a small town, honey. News doesn't travel.
It just hangs in the air and everybody breathes it in eventually. Ruth shook her head. That Colton boy, his mother would be ashamed, God rest her. She was a kind woman. I don't know what happened between her passing and now, but that boy's turned into something she never would have recognized.
People change, Ren said non-committally, sliding a paper bag with a cinnamon roll across the counter. Some people change because life humbles them, Ruth said. Other people just get worse the longer nobody stops them. I worry it's the second kind with him. She paid, tucked her change into a worn coin purse, and buttoned her coat back up against the morning chill.