Tony
Myra left to take Dot and Gen home after the dinner. The bakery was strangely empty and quiet. The ovens were off, their massive iron maws cold for the first time in years. There was no dough to prep, no flour to sift. The bakery was not going to open on Monday. For the first time in my adult life, the silence of the shop didn't feel like peace—it felt like a tomb. There was no reason to stay, no reason to prep, and certainly no reason to exist in the hollow space between those walls.
There was no reason to sleep in the upstairs apartment anymore—even if the exterior stairs had been intact. The heart had been cut out of the building.
I didn't wait for Myra. I couldn't. Every time I looked at her, I felt the urge to drop to my knees and beg her to stay, to tell her we could make it
