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The bakery hasn’t changed a bit since I came last week. Tucked into a busy street, a hand-lettered sign out front, cozy tables nestled inside, and a glass case I have personally driven across the city for on bad days.

I love this place.

We walk in, the little bell goes off, the whole place smells like butter and sugar, and I stop in front of the case, and I forget, briefly, that I brought a child.

Because there it all is. Behind the glass. Rows of it. Croissants with layers you can count. A cinnamon roll the size of my face with the icing pooling in the center. Éclairs. A lemon tart with a top so smooth it looks lacquered. Cupcakes lined up in a perfect grid, chocolate and vanilla and one with sprinkles on top I want to propose to.

I lean in. My whole body just drifts toward the glass, and everything else in the room goes soft at the edges, and there is nothing on earth except me and the display case and the very serious business of choosing.

“...and that’s why I don’t think cereal counts as soup, but Grandma says it does, so we don’t talk about it anymore. Olivia?”

“Mm.”

“Olivia!”

I surface. Bo is standing beside me, looking up, entirely unbothered.

“You weren’t listening,” he says.

“I was listening to the cupcakes,” I say, which is the most honest thing I’ve said all day.

He nods slowly, like this is a reasonable condition. “You had the face.”

“What face?”

“The really-want-it face. Grandma gets it at the jewelry counter.” He points at the case.

We order. I get the lemon tart, because I’ve earned it, and a caramel iced coffee. Bo studies the case with the focus of a scientist and lands, after genuine deliberation, on a plain vanilla cupcake.

We eat our treats and Bo tells me about his week between bites, in the detailed, slightly-out-of-order way he tells me everything.

There’s a kid named Theo who’s his best friend on Tuesdays and Thursdays, because that’s when they have the same lunch. His aide, Ms. Tran, lets him do his math worksheet standing up, because sitting for math is “a lot.”

He got a hundred on a spelling test. He does not like group projects, because “you get the same grade as people who did less, and that’s not how anything should work.”

“You’re not wrong,” I tell him.

“I know.” He picks a crumb off the wrapper. “You’re easy to talk to. Most grown-ups change their voice when they talk to me. You don’t.”

I don’t know what to do with that. So I do what he does. I tell him the truth. “That might be the nicest thing anyone’s said to me in a year.”

“You’re welcome,” he says, and goes back to his cupcake.

Then he finishes the last bite, and he goes silent, and his face falls. He looks down at the empty wrapper like it did something wrong.

“Hey.” I set down my fork. “What’s up?”

He smooths the wrapper flat on the table before he answers.

“Vanilla cupcakes are my dad’s favorite,” he whispers. “And I just ate one. Without him, while he’s at work.” He looks up, genuinely troubled. “That feels bad. Is that a bad thing I did?”

“It’s not a bad thing. But you know what would fix it?”

He waits.

“We could bring him one.”

Bo goes very still as he ponders this.