Three Sisters Divided Over a Limestone Bakery Built in Nineteen Sixty-Eight

next to her, filled with her personal coffee mug, a small brass desk clock, and three sweaters she had left in the back office. The brass bakery keys lay next to her box, their metal surface cold in the late afternoon air.

“I am ready,” she said, her voice quiet now, stripped of its usual theatrical pauses.

I stood behind the counter, my hands flat on continue reading …