Page 34 of Soft Serve

Paloma straightens behind the counter.

"We're open," she says pleasantly. "Get in line."

The taller reporter smiles with his mouth. "Ms. Reyes, a comment on the statement released this morning by Mr. Whitaker."

"No comment," she says. "Tub or cone? One, two, or three scoops?"

"Mr. Whitaker," the second one says, turning to me, "can you clarify what you meant by building something that matters. Are you referring to the partnership or something personal?"

I step forward before I can think better of it, not to shield her, not to speak for her, just to put myself between the question and the woman who has already told me once this morning that she can handle herself.

"I meant exactly what I said," I tell him. "Nothing requires clarification."

"The board has reportedly called an emergency session," the first reporter says. "Do you have a response?"

"I have ice cream," I say. "Which I'd recommend, the honey peach in particular."

Mrs. Calder, who has appeared at her stool with the timing of someone who lives for exactly this, makes a sound of approval into her coffee.

The reporters exchange a look.

Theo, appearing in the doorway with the precision of a man who has been standing just outside it for several minutes, crosses his arms and says nothing, which in Hearts Bend communicates everything.

The reporters leave, and the door swings shut behind them.

I feel the shop exhale.

Paloma meets my eyes across the counter.

I wait.

She holds my gaze for a long moment, and I can see her thinking, measuring, doing what she does with information, storing it somewhere precise and carefully before she decides what to do with it.

She doesn't give me a yes.

Not yet.

But she doesn't look away either.

And when she turns back to the next customer and says, "What can I get you?" her voice has the warmth in it that I've been learning to listen for underneath everything else she projects.

I go back to my station. The morning continues, it isn't resolved, but it isn't over either. And I'm learning, slowly and with more difficulty than I'd like to admit, that those two things are not the same.

Chapter 11

Paloma

Iam not waiting for him to fix it.

I want to be clear about that, at least to myself, at least in the privacy of the early morning kitchen where the freezers hum their steady note and nobody is watching, and I don't have to perform any version of fine.

I am not waiting.

I am working, which is different, which is something I know how to do with every part of myself engaged, the rhythm of it holding me together the way it always has, the way it held me together when my grandmother got sick and when she died and when the shop felt too big and too quiet and too full of her at the same time.

Work is not an avoidance; it is just the thing that keeps me honest.

By six thirty, the first batch is running, and the coffee is made. And I have gone over the morning prep list twice without retaining any of it, which tells me something about the actual state of things that I'd rather not examine too closely.