Original fiction · Chapter 2 of 2
The First Two Loaves
“My grandmother didn't have a sister,” I said.
Edith pulled the stool out with her foot. “She did on that lease.”
They'd worked the night shift at a grocery warehouse together. When the original bakery owner agreed to rent them the shop, he asked if they were family. Grandma said yes before Edith could say anything. Then she added that Edith was her sister, because it seemed to her like a word he wouldn't ask them to explain.
Edith had put up half the deposit. She'd also come up with the loaf. She remembered making it from leftover dough and a jar of applesauce they found in the storeroom. Grandma sold the first two loaves before the door had officially opened.
“Then why was it called Anna's bread?”
“Because she was the one they saw.”
Edith left after two years to look after her mother. She said Grandma had offered to put both their names on the bakery window before she went. Edith had told her it was too much trouble. The longer she stayed away, the harder it became to tell anybody that it had mattered to her after all.
I looked at the grocery store agreement. They were paying for a local story as much as they were paying for a reliable delivery. I'd told their buyer it had been my grandmother's recipe. I could remember how easily I'd said it.
“Do you want your name on the wrappers?” I asked.
Edith thought about it. “I want to know if you still make the crust the way we did.”
We mixed a small batch. When I reached for a cup of flour, she tapped my hand. I waited. The dough came together on its own after another minute. We baked the loaves while customers bought the previous day's bread out front. The new ones made a faint ticking sound when we set them down to cool.
The grocery store bought fewer loaves than it had first offered. We agreed on two deliveries a week. I ordered a short run of wrappers with both names and left a stack by the register so Edith could see them before anyone else.
She read one, turned it over and asked for a pen. On the back she wrote the oven temperature. Then she put the wrapper under the bread box, right where I'd found the card.
