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Lauren Knodel pushed the key into the old-fashioned lock and wiggled it gently. There was a knack to this old thing, and she finally felt it click. Then, she turned it, and the lock sprung.

She braced herself, taking a deep breath and closing her eyes for a moment, before she pushed open the door to her mother’s bakery—empty and abandoned on the main street of Raspberry Ridge—and stepped inside.

It had been years since she’d been in here, but everything looked the same.

Her mother always left those big bowls on the back shelf.

Her mixer was spotlessly clean. It was her pride and joy.

An expensive piece of equipment that she had saved for years to buy when Lauren had been younger.

Lauren remembered the celebration when her mom had finally been able to purchase it and how she had guarded it fiercely, protecting it and yet showing it off by making everything visible from the other side of the counter.

In fact, almost everything that her mom did in the bakery was visible from the other side of the counter.

It was one of the reasons why folks in Raspberry Ridge had always loved her shop.

It wasn’t just a bakeshop with amazing smells and tantalizing desserts.

It was a place where one could go to learn, be entertained, see what was on the menu, and actually see it be prepared. There were no secrets.

Even now, a yeasty smell rose around her, mixed in with the dust. A little bit of vanilla, cinnamon, and Lauren could close her eyes and see her mother pulling a tray of puffy golden cinnamon buns out of one of the double ovens built into the wall.

She would have the icing ready and smooth it on while the buns were still hot. There would be a line of people waiting to purchase them, and the cinnamon buns would be gone before the pan cooled.

Her mother had a touch, a gift, and her mom had always said that Lauren had inherited it. Lauren hadn’t wanted to have anything to do with it.

She sighed, closing her eyes and stepping in, closing the door behind her before opening her eyes again and looking around trying to figure out what had changed.

Her. She had changed. She had grown from the spoiled, immature, egotistical girl who thought she knew everything but really knew nothing.

Deep inside, she had been scared and intimidated and petrified, and the tragedy that she had been a part of had attached to her, chasing her from this small lakeside community to the city of Cincinnati, where she worked for a while before she fell in love and got married.

And then, after three miscarriages, a lot of miscommunication, and the death of her mom—she decided to pack up and come back.

She spent years caring for her mother. All for naught.

Now, she needed to figure out what to do with this, her mother’s pride and joy.

The shop where her mom had lovingly prepared each and every delectable dessert and baked good that she’d happily sold to her friends and neighbors.

She fed her daughter here, made a living here, and they lived in the back and upstairs.

There was a bit of a backyard with a shady grove of peach trees providing shade in the summer, delicious fruit in the fall, and the promise of both of those things all winter long, as the bare branches reached to the sky.

Even now, the tiny fruits were growing, ripening, getting ready to burst into flavor and juicy deliciousness in another month or two.

The trees had been neglected for years, and Lauren had no idea whether they would bear good fruit in their neglected state or not.

Her mom had always cultivated them, pruned them, and sometimes even sprayed them. But Lauren had done nothing. She had been too busy caring for her mom and ignoring her failing marriage while it fell apart.

Her jaw tightened, and she stopped thinking about peach trees so that she could stop thinking about her marriage. It was as dead as the branches in winter.

Even if she didn’t have an official divorce yet.

Cannon, her husband, would soon file. He wasn’t the kind of man who would be alone for long.

Successful and charismatic, good at his job, building a million-dollar business from nothing, he would be a catch for someone.

Lauren turned away, her eyes sweeping the storefront once again.

She didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t go back. And she didn’t know how to move forward. Unless she opened her mother’s shop again. But…could she?

She didn’t know how to run a business, had never paid attention.

Her husband had done it, her mama had done it before that.

But her? She worked at a job, but she knew that running a business was different.

There was so much more responsibility. A person didn’t just work the job, they had to do pricing and inventory and taxes and all the backend things, like making sure that there was insurance, and what about employees?

She had no idea how to do any of it.

Not for the first time, she wished for Cannon’s wise advice.

He was a good man. A really good man. But…

the years of taking care of her mom and the miscarriages that she’d endured before that had taken their toll on their marriage, and their communication had become almost nonexistent.

They allowed their relationship to die. And she walked away.

Is that what happened? she questioned herself, because she wasn’t sure anymore.

Losing her mom had taken the last of her strength, the last of her will to explore and challenge and thrive.

She just wanted to curl into a ball and do nothing.

What was this? Depression? This weight on her chest, this dark cloud hanging over her, and the idea that life would never be fun again.

Maybe it was the idea that she had missed so much of her mom’s life because she’d been selfish.

She pursued what she wanted and hadn’t considered how devastated her mom must have felt to have her only daughter leave, and not just leave, but leave with a big smile on her face and an attitude of “this town isn’t good enough for me, I need to find something big enough to hold me. ”

She had basically thumbed her nose at everything her mama built, the town that she moved to to raise her, and the friends and neighbors who had supported her throughout her childhood.

She walked over to the place where the counter folded up. She lifted up the moveable piece, like she had a million times in childhood, and slipped through so she stood behind the counter, where her mom practically lived.

She took a few more steps to her mother’s prized mixer, the huge one that sat on the low shelf built just for it and could hold enough dough to feed the town.

It was the one that her mom had used every morning after that glorious day when she had finally been able to afford to buy it.

Lauren tested it with her fingers, sliding them over it, seeing the dust rub off the mixer, and thinking about her mom and the many hours that this mixer had spent turned on in the kitchen, with townspeople laughing and joking at the few tables that were set around, or sitting at the bar, while her mom made them their specialty coffees, getting more and more complicated over the years, and shared laughter and tears and life together.

Her mom had known just how to do all of that. To handle it all so perfectly. To balance the intricacies of making a business profitable, making a living from it, and still having friendships and feelings and making people feel like her shop was their second home.

But now, her mom was gone. All the wisdom, all the recipes, all the knowledge. It was all just memories. Whatever was left.

She took a breath, and her stomach growled. She realized she hadn’t eaten since the day before, sometime. Maybe breakfast? She wasn’t sure. She had driven here from Cincinnati and slept upstairs. The apartment held memories too, but not like this did. This was where life happened.

She had bought a few groceries at the store in Blueberry Beach, the last one she passed before she got here.

Enough groceries to make her mom’s specialty.

Nutella banana bread. It was easy but so, so good.

It had been her favorite back in high school.

She didn’t know when Nutella came out, but her mom had discovered it at some point, and it instantly skyrocketed to Lauren’s favorite baked good of all time.

She had gotten the recipe from her mom, and it had become her signature bread.

That, along with the cheesy bread that her mom made so well—she had a knack for it too, and most people said she made it even better than her mom.

That would take a little while, but on a whim, she had brought the ingredients for that as well.

First, she needed to clean the dust off the equipment and the counters and…wade through the memories so that she could possibly pick up the pieces of her life.

She thought about her husband, the life she had expected to build with him.

It was her fault as much as his. She had to take the blame where it was due.

She had been devastated by the miscarriages, and…

it seemed like he didn’t care. And then, with her mom getting sick, she moved her mom in and put all of her being into caring for her mom.

There hadn’t been anything left for her husband. That had been on her.

But her husband had been busy working, making his business successful, and basically paying for everything. She had quit her job as a teacher so that she could stay home and be with her mom. She hadn’t even talked to her husband about it; she had just done it.

He’d not complained. He was a good man. Still, it was hard to forgive him for the fact that he couldn’t comfort her in her loss. Not over their children, not over her mom. He just kept working.

It irritated her to the point she couldn’t stand it anymore.

Plus, she had a deep longing to come home.

And now, she was finally here. All she had to do was figure out how she was going to make a living.

If she could open the baked goods shop and make it as successful as her mom had over the years.

Or was the era of the small mom-and-pop bakery completely over?