Page 115 of Spiced!

That was the entire message. Four words. Typed. Centered. There was no signature.

I looked at the card, then I looked at Hector.

Hector wore the expression of a man who had put considerable thought into this and was waiting for it to be received at its full value.

“Thank you, Hector,” Doña Carmen said.

“The place isn’t the same without you behind the counter,” he said.

“Adrian has been managing well,” she said.

Hector looked at me and offered a weak smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. It barely reached his lips. “Your conchas are better than they were last month.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“I didn’t say they were good. I said they were better.”

“I appreciate the distinction,” I said, not bothering to tell him that I’d been making his conchas, despite Doña Carmen running the place, for the better part of the last decade, and that they had not changed one bit in that time. Some battles weren’t worth the fight.

He bought three conchas and left.

Doña Carmen looked at the card one more time, then set it beside her coffee and stared out the window. She never stared blankly out the window. The woman rarely sat still for more than a moment. I was fairly certain something was running through her mind, something she would only speak about when her thoughts were fully proofed, like our bread.

By ten-thirty, the first wave was done.

I cleaned the marble, set the second proof, started the coffee, and sat down across from Doña Carmen at the small corner table where we had ten-thirty coffee most mornings. This was our time, thirty minutes of not working that was still, in its own way, us working, because the conversations we had at ten-thirty were the ones where the real business of the panadería took place.

I wrapped my hands around my cup as she poured, and we drank in the comfortable silence. Then she set her cup down, released a long breath, and locked her gaze onto mine.

“Adrian, I’ve been thinking.”

She didn’t rush it.

That was the thing about Doña Carmen, she said what she meant at exactly the pace it needed to be said, and you learned that interrupting wasn’t an option and hurrying her was a recipe for disaster.

“My husband wants to travel,” she said. “We’ve talked about it for years, seeing Portugal, Spain, returning to Puerto Rico.” She turned her cup in her hands. “We’re not getting younger.”

I kept quiet because, well, what could I say?

“My wrist,” she said. “It’s not serious, but it has reminded me of something.” She looked at her hand, at the brace she still wore, at the hand that had been making bread in this kitchen for fifty years. “Things end, not badly, just when it’s time.”

“Doña Carmen—”

“Let me finish,” she snapped, then reached out and took my hand, something she’d only done twice in all the years I’d known her. “You have been running this kitchen for weeks,” she said. “But, in truth, you’ve been running it for longer than that. You know this. We both do.” She looked up. “Mr. Espinosa got his café con leche three minutes early today.”

My brows furrowed. “He mentioned it.”

“He mentioned it because he noticed. He’s been coming here for thirty-one years, and he noticed three minutes.” She paused, a distant smile filling her eyes. “The bread is right, Adrian. The conchas are better than last month. Don’t tell Hector I agree with him. He’s insufferable when he’s right. The empanadas are yours now, not mine. They have been yours for two years, though you haven’t admitted it.”

I stared into my coffee.

“I want to retire,” she said. “Not today or next month, but soon. I want you to have this place.”

I was sure I could hear the second proof working in the proofing drawer, the soft sound of something settling correctly into itself.

“My husband has been talking to our accountant,” she said. “The arrangement he has in mind is favorable. I’m not offering you a gift. You’ll pay for it, because you should, and because this place deserves to be bought properly and not handed over like something someone is tired of. The terms are good, generous even, because you are like a son to me. I want you to know that. You know that, don’t you?”

My mouth opened, but something had crammed itself down my throat and only a gurgle escaped. My allergies must’ve reacted at that exact moment, too, because my eyes filled to overflowing. All I could do was nod and stare back into my coffee.