Page 75 of Shatter

She's small and fierce, with forearms like a longshoreman's and a laugh like a car backfiring.

She runs her kitchen like a ship's captain.

Off-key humming follows her around the kitchen, the same four or five songs on a loop.

Most days she calls me "baby," and once, when I dropped a full tray of sourdough loaves, she called me a word in a language I didn't recognize, and the delivery driver choked on his coffee.

In eight weeks, she hasn't once asked me where I'm from.

She hasn't asked why my hair is two colors, or why a prospect in a Raiders cut sits in his truck across the street some mornings until the sun comes up.

This morning, she stops beside me at the steel table and watches me fold butter into dough for a long time without a word.

"You've done this before." She picks a flake of dough off my wrist and eats it. "Not in a bakery."

"In a kitchen." My hands keep moving. "At night, when I couldn't sleep."

"Mm." She nods, slow, like I've handed her something important. "Good hands. Hands remember what the head wants to forget."

She walks away before I can ask what she means.

I stand there with my palms flat on the cold dough.

My eyes sting, and I don't know why.

On Fridays, she hands me an envelope with Katie written across the front in her square, blocky print.

I count it twice in the walk-in.

I always come out even.

The morning delivery goes to Beans & Babes on Tuesdays and Fridays.

Six dozen assorted muffins, four dozen scones, a sheet pan of cinnamon rolls wrapped in plastic, and whatever else Aziza decides the world needs this morning.

The first time she sent me, I sat in the truck in the parking lot for five minutes with my hands locked on the wheel before I could make myself get out.

It's a coffee shop.

A cheerful, sunny coffee shop with mismatched armchairs and a corner full of toys, and I sat outside it like it was a police station.

Now I know where the back door sticks and which espresso machine hisses before it breaks down.

I know how Meghan takes her coffee.

"Oh, thank Gods." Meghan meets me at the counter this morning with her arms out for the first tray. "If I don't get a cinnamon roll in the next ninety seconds, I'm going to commit a crime."

"You'd get caught." I slide the tray into her hands. "You'd leave icing fingerprints on everything."

She laughs and sets the tray on the counter, and pulls one out before I've even let go of the plastic wrap.

The shop is loud this morning.

Two moms with strollers crowd the window table, and a cluster of women has taken over the big table by the play area.

I know some of them now.

Vail, home from work, with her feet up on an empty chair.