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Vivian is planning a wedding across the borough. I know this because Cousin Jenna texted me about a venue in Bay Ridge, and I wrote back good luck to them and put my phone in my apron pocket.

And the shop makes money.

I still don’t quite believe that. Priya and I do the Monday numbers in the office on the new steel cot, and the numbers keep going the right direction. March beat February. The first three weeks of April beat March. Half of it is the leftover attention from Christmas, and I know that curve will fall back down to earth eventually. But the other half is people who came in once for the piping hot gossip and came back for the croissants and the coffee.

“You know what this means,” Priya says. “It means we can fix the compressor.”

We giggle, and then we do indeed fix the compressor. A man named Wendell makes four grand for three and a half days’ work. He sings while he tinkers, which is a pain in the ass, but when he leaves, the walk-in holds at a reliable thirty-seven degrees without any of the godawful racket it used to make. I kinda miss his singing when he’s gone.

Then, for the first time in three years of owning this building, I plan ahead.

I get a legal pad, write MAY-JUNE-JULY at the top, and draw columns. The deck oven has a hot spot on the left that I’ve been rotating trays around since the day I bought it. There’s a guy in Ridgewood who rebuilds them. Nine hundred to have him look at it, maybe twenty-two hundred to do the work, and if I do it the week after Memorial Day, I can run everything through the convection for four days and only lose the bread.

The curb comes out of insurance, mostly. The contractor says it’ll take until the third week of May for the apron and the bollard, but we’ll be fine making do until then.

On a fresh page, I write FRONT OF HOUSE and list what I want.

Four small tables instead of two. A real espresso setup, not the slow-as-molasses contraption behind the register. A case with lights in it that actually work. Paint. A second person on the counter for the weekend shift so Jolene isn’t out there alone during the Saturday morning rush.

I take the whole day off on a Wednesday, which I have never done. I sleep until nine, which feels illegal. Priya and I book her cousin’s place in the Poconos for the second week of August. Another thing to look forward to. A future. A hope. A dream.

It feels so, so good.

Best of all—or so I keep telling myself—is that Kane doesn’t come.

Not once. No text, courier, or envelope on my desk with something of Connor’s inside it. Nothing.

Josef and his merry band of fellow introverts stay stationed outside the back door, as per usual. At this point, I think of them as part of the building.

But Kane himself stays on his side of whatever line we drew. Some nights, I wonder if I imagined the whole winter.

Most of the time, I don’t hate it.

At night, I do.

Because night is when I climb into bed in my quiet house, look over at the nightstand, and see what rests there.

The photo album.

I start at the beginning every time.

Us in the closet with my hair coming down, caught with locked lips.

Orthodox Christmas, with forty-something Makovs crammed into one frame and me sitting on Kane’s thigh, glaring, fighting a smile.

Kane in the strawberry apron at four in the morning with his sleeves shoved past his elbows.

The lopsided cake that says HAPPY 32 LILAH with a band of dense crumb through the middle of it that only I would notice.

I squint at my own face. I look happy, don’t I?

I still do. That’s the trouble. It’s the only place I’ve ever seen it.

Every night, I get to the end and consider throwing it all away. But I always stop myself. Destroying these pictures wouldn’t remove the fact that they happened. It would only mean I’d chosen to lose the memories.

And I’ve spent my whole life having things taken away from me.

I don’t need to add this to the pile.