A Measure of Happiness (10 page)

“You didn't hire the fifteen-year-old kid,” Barry said.

“I was never going to hire the kid.”

Katherine's help-wanted notice in the
Hidden Harbor Gazette
had brought out a few women looking for nine-to-five jobs, a gentleman asking whether he could greet customers at the door, and a boy with dirty hands, who—even if he washed his hands—wasn't available during school hours. During a moment of weakness, after the kid had brought Katherine homemade croissants and when the look on his face had reminded her of Celeste, she'd considered hiring him for cleanup duties. But then she'd told him she needed more hours, and he'd stomped out the door, really reminding her of Celeste.

Barry stared after Zach, and his eyes narrowed. “Do we know him?” Barry asked, using the plural pronoun Katherine thought they'd abandoned.

“No, not really. He's new in town,” Katherine said, but Barry's face remained turned toward Zach, his expression intent.

Celeste passed loaves of sourdough from the trays to Zach, and Zach arranged them on the shelves.The two of them were orchestrated as though they'd been working together for years. Their voices thrummed the air, like background music, too low to hear the words. Then Celeste laughed, and the notes tumbled Katherine's gut. Glad, because Zach was making Celeste happy, but worried, too. If food was the way to a woman's heart, humor was the fastest route to steer her into bed.

Nurse Terry flew into the bakery with a roar of rain and wind. She pushed the door shut behind her, lowering the storm's volume, and slid the hood of her rain jacket from her head. Katherine readied the nurse's daily order—a plain croissant and a carton of OJ from the mini-fridge behind the counter. Katherine gave the OJ a shake before dropping it into the bakery bag. Fast-food drive-by restaurants had nothing on Lamontagne's.

Terry laid her money on the counter, hugged her order to her chest, and looked Katherine in the eye. “You take such good care of me,” Terry said.

“Morning to you, too, Terry,” Katherine said. “Stay dry out there!”

Barry thrust his chin toward Zach and Celeste. “So, the young guy, your new hire, what's his bakery experience?”

Katherine quelled the urge to roll her eyes. “I don't need someone with bakery experience. I need someone who'll work hard, someone who's ready and willing to learn. Someone who can get here before six.”

Barry positioned his hands as if he were holding a clipboard. Then he drew a checkmark in the air. “No bakery experience,” he told the clipboard. And then, to Katherine, “Patient avoiding the question.” He drew a second checkmark.

“Don't shrink me.”

A third. “And prickly.”

She'd give him prickly.

Katherine's pulse sped up, responding to her directive. She took a shallow breath and inhaled the mellowness of freshly baked bread, but the aroma didn't reach her mood. She stared Barry down and inhaled from her toes. Breathing in his rain-scented clothing made her want to bury her nose in his neck and inhale his skin.

Barry's gaze wandered back to Zach. This time, Zach looked up from his task. Celeste straightened and stretched her back, reminiscent of Katherine.

Katherine was sure Celeste would be horrified to have unintentionally picked up one of her quirks.

“Does the young guy—?”

“Zach.” Now that she knew his name, she couldn't allow him to go nameless. A few hours after he'd been born, a nurse had come into Katherine's room with the paperwork. To her surprise, she was asked if she wanted to give her son a name. Even though there was no way she'd ever know whether the adoptive parents would keep the name, not naming her son would've seemed like an insult.

Katherine liked the name Zach. She wished she could tell Zach's parents that she approved of their choice.

As if they'd ever approve of her.

“Does
Zach
have any restaurant or food service experience?”

“Nope.”

“Any relatives who live in the area? Friends or family we know personally?”

Katherine's pulsed tripped over its own feet. “Not that I'm aware of.”

Barry dropped the clipboard act. “Peculiar response.”

“Only one I've got.” Katherine slipped behind the showcases and examined her stock.

Barry fisted his hands and set them atop the bakery case. He flicked his gaze to Zach. “I know why you hired Zach.”

Doubtful,
she thought, but her pulse chose to believe otherwise.

“He looks a little bit like you,” Barry said. “And we tend to trust people who look familiar.”

“I don't see it.” Katherine kept her gaze on a row of black-and-white cookies, and her face warmed.

“He's a good-looking young guy.”

“Barry!” Katherine said, and Daniel, the guy who wasn't too young for her, glanced up from his newspaper.

As if Barry had raised his voice, he now lowered it. Another shrink trick? “What I meant was, he's in good shape.”

“What do you think of me?” She wasn't one of those over-forty ladies who wore skintight clothes to cinch her expanding waistline, flocked to doctors to tighten her sagging skin, and went after men young enough to be their sons in a desperate attempt to shore up their sagging egos. She didn't have a sagging ego. And the rest of her she was too busy to notice.

Barry steepled his hands atop the bakery case. “He's staying through closing, after Celeste leaves for the day. Am I right?”

“So?”

“You want to know what I think of you?”

“Don't Jung me,” she said, referring to the method of echoing the patient's concerns.

“I know you're human,” Barry said.

Katherine held out her palms, shook her head.

“I know you've been anxious . . .” Barry said. “Nervous in the bakery alone.”

Katherine gave a quick, sharp laugh. Barry thought she'd hired Zach as a bouncer for the bakery. She almost wished she could explain to Barry how hilarious that was. Almost.

“I'm not anxious. Why should I be anxious?” Katherine said, although her gaze wandered across the room to the yellow booth cushion that was lighter than the rest. The inability to match the original shade served as a reminder, cruel in its subtlety. A quick glance, and the yellows appeared to match. No customer could tell the difference. No one had noticed Katherine had covered up evidence of a crime, the violation. That itself felt like a violation.

Celeste headed across the café toward the coffee station.

Barry made big, sweeping motions with both hands, ushering her over. “Celeste will settle our disagreement.”

Celeste mouthed,
Of course,
crossed her heart, and headed their way.

Katherine widened her eyes in a way she hoped Barry would notice, but Celeste would ignore. Katherine turned her head from side to side, every so slo—

“Has Katherine seemed out of sorts to you,” Barry asked, “a teensy bit anxious?”

“Why would she be anxious?” Celeste asked.

“Because of the break-in?”

“What break-in?”

Belatedly, Barry registered Katherine's wordless plea and clamped his mouth shut.

“What the hell?” Celeste said, and then looked to Katherine, as though she'd spoken her name. “There was no break-in. If there was a break-in, Katherine would've called me.”

“Even if I had your phone number, which I did not, I wouldn't have called you. What possible purpose would calling you have served? What could you have done, other than worry? You were hours away.”

“I'm here now,” Celeste said, somehow managing to look like both a three-year-old dropped off at nursery school for the first time and a fierce, capable young woman. “So tell me.”

Katherine slid her gaze to the ceiling and shook her head. She waved her hand through the air. “There was an incident, minor damage—”

Celeste looked to Barry for confirmation.
Medium,
Barry mouthed.

“Black graffiti on the walls and a booth. Childlike, really. Like a tantrum. A disorganized tantrum.”

Celeste's eyes narrowed and then widened. “The booth by the bread shelves? The one farthest from the door?”

“That would be the one. But like I said, nothing to worry about. I took care of it. I took care of everything.”

Celeste tapped a bakery clog against her shin.

“What are you doing?”

“Kicking myself for not asking you about the booth. I thought it looked different. I noticed the red trim. But then I didn't trust my own memory. Maybe you'd always had one booth with red trim instead of green.”

Damn.
Red? Green? The two colors appeared muted and often similar to Katherine. She shouldn't have trusted her own eyes.

“And then I forgot about it,” Celeste said.

“Then you remembered,” Barry said.

“Always listen to your gut,” Katherine said. “Otherwise, your gut stops talking to you.”

“Or I could've waited for the owner of the bakery I've worked at since I was sixteen years old to tell me about the robbery herself. No, wait, your gut told you not to call me.”

Katherine pressed a forefinger to the center of her lips. Her customers didn't need a serving of gossip along with their morning coffee. “There was a burglary, not a robbery,” she said, her voice lowered to a three-foot range. “A robbery means a break-in, while the home or business owner is on-site. I wasn't on-site.”

Zach continued to transfer loaves of sourdough onto the bread shelves, his head bent into his task. The grouchy construction worker, Jeff, sipped his coffee, indifferent. His cheerful compatriot, Daniel, alternated from pretending to read the paper to glancing across the room.

Katherine doubted anyone could hear her and Barry's conversation, but vibes were contagious. Talking about anxiety made her anxious. Was it any wonder she'd never gone to a shrink?

Barry glanced at Daniel. Then he reached a hand up to Katherine's face and slid a lock of hair back into her cowlick. “My work here is done.”

She'd never
paid
for a shrink.

“Your work as a troublemaker? Your work stirring and muddying calm waters?”

“Sometimes you need to stir the waters to see what rises to the surface,” Barry said. “A wise woman once told me that.”

“A shrink friend?” Katherine asked.

“You.” Barry held Katherine's gaze until the rest of her saying surfaced.

“See you tomorrow,” Barry said, and went out to the storm. The door jingled in his wake. The sound of the rain pounding the pavement amplified and softened. He passed by the window and through a circle of light, as though an early sunup had pierced through the storm. He looked younger, maybe a dozen years younger, the age he'd been when they'd first married and before everything had complicated and caved.

But of course the trompe l'oeil was nothing more than the predawn streetlight's illumination and wishful thinking.

“What if you'd interrupted the burglar?” Celeste whispered, her concern a mirror of Katherine's when she'd found the bakery trashed and she'd worried for Celeste.

But, of course, Celeste had been at school, miles away, safe and sound. “Then I suppose he, or she, would've become a robber.”

At first, the police had assumed the intruder had hoped to find money in the till, or a safe that was easy to pick. But the open and empty cash register drawer had remained untouched, and no prints had wreathed the safe's numbered wheel, save for Katherine's.

Unable to take anything of value, a burglar would've, at the least, left with a keepsake. Something, anything, to prove he'd been there, if only to himself.

The intruder had broken into Lamontagne's to vandalize, to let Katherine know he'd traipsed through her sacred space. He'd left her evidence, made a statement, given her proof of his powers. Nothing was removed from the bakery except for Katherine's peace of mind.

“Have the police figured out who broke in? Who'd do such a thing? It's not like you have any enemies,” Celeste said, having come around to another of Katherine's misguided assumptions. “It must've been a stranger, someone from another town?” Celeste said, but her statement sounded like a question.

“Actually, the police think it must've been someone who knows me, due to the damage.”

Celeste shook her head. Her hand covered her mouth. “I should never have left. What if someone had hurt you?”

“No one's going to hurt me. If someone broke into the bakery again, I'd handle it myself.”

Celeste grinned. “What would you do? Challenge them to a bake-off?”

Katherine gave Celeste a good, long stare. What in the world did Celeste see when she looked at her? A divorced, childless, middle-aged woman whose world began and ended at the door to her eponymous bakery? Katherine could take care of herself; she'd never had a choice. “Come in the kitchen with me for a minute.”

“Zach—”

“Will be perfectly fine.” Zach, Katherine was certain, could handle himself. “He'll find us if he needs us.”

Inside the kitchen's stockroom, Katherine turned on the light—a pendant with a single bulb—and shut the door behind them. The dimness of the space and the need for secrecy brought to mind a tiny bathroom and the sharp smell of fear. “I have a gun,” Katherine told Celeste.