Page 4 of The Whisper Place (To Catch a Storm #3)

The bakery stood in the shadow of downtown, across the street from a parking ramp and a steel and glass high-rise building that looked like condos or a bougie hotel.

The old, converted house was tucked between two brick buildings and sat back from the street on a weedy path.

I hadn’t even seen it at first. It was the smell that drew my attention, wheat and sugar and cinnamon floating in the air, making me pause on the sidewalk.

A pink neon sign mounted to the siding read Pastries & Dreams in an oddly familiar font.

A few bikes were padlocked to the railing and an open sign in the window turned my feet in the bakery’s direction, like my nose had hijacked my body.

I’d slept in my car in a Wal-Mart parking lot on the edge of town and used the bathroom inside the store this morning, changing underwear, brushing my teeth, and working a handful of dry shampoo through my hair before tying it back up in a knot—but I hadn’t bought anything to eat.

I had snacks and water in the car and even though there was twelve thousand dollars taped under my seat, I wasn’t touching that until I reached my destination—wherever that might be.

I parked on a side street and wandered through downtown, passing joggers in sweats and homeless people tucked into corners and sleeping on benches.

I followed a squirrel through a cobblestone street, past a playground, and out to the sidewalk where the mouthwatering scent of cinnamon stopped me mid-stride.

Pastries & Dreams. I shouldn’t, but before my head could catch up and put a stop to the impulse, I’d already opened the creaky wooden door and stepped into an enclosed porch-turned-dining area.

Small bistro tables lined both sides of the room, and two students hunched over steaming cups at the far end of the space.

I moved into the next room lined with bakery cases and a coffee station.

No one was behind the counter, but the sound of clattering dishes came from deeper within the house.

“Total Eclipse of the Heart” belted on a speaker overhead and a silent TV in the corner played the Colin Firth version of Pride and Prejudice , the one Mom and I used to watch while comparing each scene to the book.

Mr.Darcy rode a horse across the screen, looking constipated and full of himself, but still pretty hot.

I leaned into the nearest bakery case, instantly torn between a maple pecan scone and a giant slice of coffee cake with cinnamon oat crumble piled on top. My stomach growled.

“There are no bad choices.”

The voice shot my spine straight and I turned, feeling like I’d been caught doing something wrong. The woman behind the counter wiped down a serving tray and put it away. “I mean in that case there’s no bad choices. Outside of it?” She shrugged and winked. “An infinite number.”

I swallowed. “Maybe I should just crawl inside and live there.”

“I’ve tried. The headroom is shit. What can I get you?”

The pastry labels didn’t have prices on them. Five dollars. I could spend five dollars here, but I wanted coffee, too. “I’m not sure.”

“Take your time.”

Pulling on gloves, she moved to a sheet of freshly baked cookies and started stacking them in another case.

Her bright pink hair swooped over one shoulder in a long, thick braid, with a black silk rose clipped behind her ear.

A flour-covered apron was tied over a charcoal wide-necked T-shirt.

She wore a silver hoop in one nostril and the kind of winged eyeliner that always smudged and made me look like a natural disaster victim. On her it was impeccable.

A timer went off in the back and she disappeared for a second, giving me time to find the menu board and add up the cost of a small drip and a scone.

$6.50 plus tax. The coffee cake was more.

I bit my lip and watched Colin Firth ask Jennifer Ehle to dance and murmured the words along to the silent TV as she turned him down cold. “Mr. Darcy is all politeness.”

“The best Elizabeth Bennet of all time. I will take no questions on the matter.”

“Agreed.” I swiveled back to the counter. The baker was setting a tray of muffins topped with chopped walnuts down to cool. “But Matthew Macfadyen is the best Darcy.”

“Fuck right out of my store.”

I didn’t know what surprised me more, that she would throw customers out over fictional men or that she owned this place. She didn’t look much older than me.

“He has anxiety. It explains why—”

“It explains why he’s not proud, which invalidates the entire premise. You can climb into the case now. You clearly need to make better choices.”

Normally I shrank from confrontation, trying to smooth the edges of whatever conflict rose up around me, apologizing, deflecting, agreeing with anything to get out of the situation as soon as possible.

But something about this baker, about this place, felt different.

Maybe it was the cinnamon, the memories of Sunday mornings baking in the kitchen with Mom while her favorite movies played in the background, her determination to introduce me to Meg Ryan, Julia Roberts, and Audrey Hepburn.

Maybe it was the baker’s energy, the flour-dusted warmth radiating off her even as she pointed at the bakery case and ordered me to climb inside.

I stepped up to the counter and pulled out my wallet. “You can be proud and anxious at the same time. I’ll take a maple scone and a small dark roast.”

An hour later, the scone was a core memory and a mess of crumbs on the table.

I was on my last sip of coffee, long cold but still biting and delicious.

Sunday-morning traffic had picked up considerably.

I watched the chaotic influx of university students and hotel guests from across the street, some of them taking orders to go, but most crowding into the tiny porch dining room and snatching up a table as soon as it was available.

A couple holding to-go cups and a newspaper pretended not to stare at my empty plate as they loitered by the entrance.

I sipped the last dregs from the empty mug, cradling it in my hands, and watched the kitchen until they gave up and left.

I should’ve let them have my table, but the view was fascinating. I didn’t have a phone to scroll or a book to read or a class to study for, and without anything distracting me, I’d spent the entire hour immersed in the bakery and the woman behind the counter.

She didn’t have any help, which she mentioned to a few customers who commented on the wait time for their breakfast sandwiches. “My morning person had a medical issue, so it’s all me until I can hire someone new. You looking for a job?”

Her smile was quick and sharp and her tone shut down any further bitching before it started.

It was amazing, actually, how well she handled everything on her own, pivoting from the coffee station to the bakery cases to the kitchen with two or three items in her hands at all times, constantly moving and bending and reaching like some complicated dance in time with the opening and closing of the front door.

A group of eight students came in, girls in black and gold sweats with bleary faces, all talking over each other and crowding up to the counter. I couldn’t pretend to drink my empty coffee anymore. Reluctantly I got up and skirted the group as I looked for the tub to leave my dirty dishes.

I didn’t know where to go after this. I had to find my car, get back on the freeway, and pick a direction.

It made sense to keep going west. Mentally, I traced a route on the map, saw mountains rising up to greet me on the horizon, and beyond them, an ocean.

Would I stay there? How far did I need to go before it was safe to stop driving?

I almost missed the dish tub because it was completely buried under dirty dishes.

There was no room in the tub or the cramped counter space around it to fit anything without playing a dangerous game of Tetris.

I glanced at the woman behind the counter, who was still smiling and answering questions but clearly outnumbered by the swarm of students texting, taking pictures of the bakery cases, and debating cold press vs. drip.

“Just leave it anywhere,” the woman called to me, but the group of girls blocked her view of the tub. She couldn’t see how full it was.

An industrial-size sink was barely visible through a doorway to the kitchen. Before I realized what I was doing, I’d moved around the counter and brought my dishes into the kitchen. The sink was already half-full of pans, but there was room for my small plate and mug.

I ducked back out, but the baker hadn’t seemed to notice me. She was ringing up an order. On an impulse, I grabbed the tub and hauled the whole thing back to the kitchen, stacking the dishes neatly in the sink.

I was on my way back to the front when my surroundings hit me.

The kitchen was gorgeous in a completely different way from the rest of the converted house.

It looked like multiple old rooms had been combined and gutted, making way for a bright and airy space.

A massive butcher-block work surface took up the middle of the room, while the walls were lined with commercial fridges, stacked ovens, and two giant stainless-steel mixers.

A mini greenhouse stretched in front of a bay window, housing pots of rosemary, mint, chive, and peppers.

Jalapeno, it looked like. I took a step closer.

“Uh, hi?”

I whirled around as the baker popped an egg soufflé in the microwave and set a croissant on the butcher block, slicing it neatly in half. The front room had somehow gotten even louder.

“You said to leave the dishes anywhere.” But I still felt a flush of heat in my chest and cheeks as I realized I’d violated her business’s private space. I wasn’t supposed to be here. I shrank away, feeling myself getting smaller, moving into a crash position my body knew like breathing.

“You emptied the dirties?” She glanced from the sink to the tub, which I’d lifted in front of me like a shield.

The microwave beeped and she added the egg on top of the lettuce, tomato, and cheese she’d piled on the croissant, barely looking at the food as she did it.

Her gaze was somehow cutting and exhausted at the same time.

“I’m sorry. It just looked like—”

“A hundred dollars.” She snapped the gloves off and picked up the plate.

“What?”

“I’ll give you a hundred dollars if you stay and wash them.”

“I—” But she was already gone, disappearing back to the counter and the endless line of customers.

I stood frozen in the kitchen, unsure what had just happened.

I should go. The sun was up and I was wasting daylight in a town whose name I couldn’t actually remember.

But I knew I was still in the Midwest, which wasn’t far enough.

I needed those mountains at my back. I should find wherever I parked my car and hit the highway, follow the map until it ended, until I was somewhere uncharted and new. A place where they couldn’t find me.

I knew all that and still I couldn’t make myself leave this room.

It was more beautiful than any kitchen I’d been in, with the light flooding in from the window, the thriving plants lining the greenhouse, the smell of sugar and coffee swirling in the air.

Like a dream I’d had but couldn’t quite remember.

I wanted to live right here, in the space where the sunbeams met the butcher block and made it glow.

I took the tub back to the counter, where the line of customers was now out the door, and started collecting the rest of the dirty dishes.

Three hours later, the Sunday-morning rush finally died down into a quiet hum of students studying and scrolling to The Cure’s “Just Like Heaven.” I’d run the dishwasher twice and washed every pan by hand, drying and stacking them neatly into organizers in the cabinets, and then wiped down the surfaces that were coated in a fine dusting of flour.

I was figuring out how to get the mixer attachment and bowl off one of the giant mixers when the baker appeared with a handful of twenties. “Thank you.”

As soon as I took the bills, she sagged against the refrigerator, like the money had been the last thing holding her upright. Pressing the heels of her hands to her temples, she rolled her neck out and groaned. “Cancer.”

Was she asking about my sign? I pocketed the money, abandoning the mixer since apparently my shift was over.

“My morning help came down with a nasty case of ovarian cancer.” She opened her eyes, staring sightlessly through the bay window into the trees in the backyard.

“It was so sudden. One day she was hauling trays and complaining about her cable company, and the next . . . they’re giving her four months max.

Your whole life gone in a blink. Can you imagine? ”

“Yeah.”

She turned, scanning me with a piercing gaze. I looked away. “Well, thanks. I gotta go.”

“Can you bake?”

I stopped mid-exit, but didn’t dare turn around to face her. She was offering me a job. I could feel it and a huge part of me leapt at the idea of being in this gorgeous space every morning, spending my days creating edible magic. But I couldn’t. Could I?

“I don’t live here. I was just passing through.”

“To where?”

I shook my head.

“Listen, the kitchen looks amazing. Better than it has in months. I can’t find anyone in this entire city who wants to start work at 4:00 a.m., and my mental health literally cannot take any more of this.

I dreamed I was drowning in a vat of flour last night and when I woke up it didn’t feel any different, you know?

I love this place, but it’s swallowing me whole. I don’t know what to do.”

“Eat the whale.”

The words slipped out before I even knew I was speaking. The baker frowned at me, looking confused, until the front door opened. She groaned and pushed herself off the refrigerator. “If you’re still in town tomorrow, you know where you can make some money, okay?”

I nodded. My heart was pounding, like I’d just given myself away.

She paused at the doorway. “I’m Blake.”

Panic crawled up my chest as I realized she was waiting for me to tell her my name. I swallowed and looked past her at the TV. Say something. Say anything except your actual name. The silence drew out uncomfortably long, until the customer at the counter started talking, drawing Blake’s attention.

I headed for the back door and threw a weird wave over my shoulder.

“Darcy.”