The Baker's Wife (3 page)

“It was a short trip.” Metaphorically speaking. She had been willing to stay behind bars for another twenty-five years. For life. But she had not been so lucky. “You play guitar?”

“Since before I could walk. My older brother taught me.”

“The two of you are close?”

He shrugged. “I got better at it than him. You know how that goes.”

Diane guessed she did, but not in the way he meant. “I never had a brother,” she said. They traveled another mile before she added, “It's probably a good idea to steer clear of jealous siblings.”

The kid—Diane could hardly think of him as a man in spite of all the hair on his arms and face—laughed as if they shared some inside joke. “You sound like my mom. But my brother's got his own thing going, you know? He'll find what makes him happy, and then we'll be okay.”

Diane stared at him, disbelieving that
her
mother's very words from decades ago were pouring almost verbatim from this boy's mouth. Her mother had been so terribly wrong.

But he rambled on, and Diane didn't have to say anything else. Eventually she collected the backpack.

“Just drop me at the next off-ramp,” she said.

“Take you into town?”

“No need. No one's up waiting for me. I mean, at this hour.”

It was a little before three when she thanked him and wished him good luck with the guitar gig and slammed the car door, then set out eastward for the city limits. She walked just off the road's shoulder through darkness, remembering the terrain by scent rather than sight. She passed harvested fields that smelled like dry grass. The inseam of her jeans made a sound like a zipper as she walked, her heavy thighs brushing together.

Diane lifted her chin and imagined she could see the distant ridges of the Sierra Nevada, which rose gently from the horizon like the rim of a shallow bowl. The Great Central Valley was a bowl, in fact, and the fog its favorite winter stew. She wished for sunrise to come early over the mountaintops. She wanted to see them, needed proof that they were unchanging and reliable. Because everything else, including what was planted in these fields and who lived in her childhood home today, was probably different now.

The nighttime chill passed through her cotton sweater and the thin T-shirt underneath it. It was time to purchase a real jacket. On the other hand, she thought, people like her didn't deserve warmth. And she was fat enough now that she practically carried her own insulation. She shouldn't need more.

Six miles passed under her feet like a dream. Fog followed her, a ghost of the past, nudging her onward and gathering density.

By the time she arrived in town, the damp had penetrated her hair and her clothing. A streetlight allowed her to catch her reflection in the plate-glass window of the old battery shop. Her appearance was limp and discouraged. Just what had she expected to do when she got here?

You're crazy, and you look like it too
.

Diane turned away from her reflection and stepped out of the spotlight.

Crazy's nothing. Crazy is all that's keeping me going right now
.

You can always go back. The other women won't even know you
were gone
.

The six-mile walk back to the highway was too great a distance to face. She hesitated. The sound of a puttering engine caught her attention, and she turned her head as a slow-moving motor scooter passed her, cautiously heading east like Diane, its light-colored frame a skeleton animating the fog.

The bike passed through the intersection, and the shallow runoff drain that carried water from the blacktop into the street sewers under the sidewalk caused the scooter to bounce once. An object flew into the air like a flea off a dog, then hit the street inaudibly under the noise of the engine and separated into two pieces.

“Hey,” Diane said, barely able to hear herself. Then, embarrassed by her own reticence, she said more loudly, “Hey!”

The driver kept going, oblivious or uncaring.

Diane went into the street to see what the object was. She saw it glinting in the gutter inches from a storm drain. A cell phone.

Several of the women in the halfway house had these phones, had spent a fair chunk of their release funds on the technology, which Diane thought was an impressive but unnecessary invention. Why would anyone want to be at the constant beck and call of the telephone? Of course, that was a dumb question for someone like her to ask, someone who had no one to call.

Diane picked up the two pieces and turned the parts around in her hands, guessing how they might fit together. They snapped into place.

She would have to figure out how to use the thing, with its shiny black face and minimalist buttons and icons that everyone else seemed to understand. No—she was smart. She could figure this out if the owner didn't come back looking for it. If he did, she'd give it up. The thing looked expensive, and there was no point in going back to jail over something as silly as a ball and chain.

That accidental joke cheered her up a little. She decided not to hike back to the highway. She let her backpack fall forward across her stocky body and put the phone into the small zippered pocket on the front.

She kept walking in the same direction, retracing the steps she had taken nearly every day of her life as a child, with Donna by her side. Donna, skipping instead of walking home from school or church or the grocery store. Home was a straight shot down Main Street from nearly anywhere in town. In her mind Diane heard the
skiff scuff, skiff scuff, skiff scuff
of Donna's feet next to her gliding over the sidewalk. Her momentary cheer vanished. She covered her cold ears with her hands.

Almost two hours after leaving the bass player's car, she found herself on the corner of Main and Sunflower, standing in front of the old drugstore her parents once owned, stunned. She'd expected anything but lights on within. The exterior had been painted red, and the tiny scalloped awning looked blue in this light, with a white stripe on the curving edges. Simple curtains had been drawn back to the edges of the French-paned bay windows, one on each side of the inset door. Like a child, Diane placed both hands on the glass and gawked.

It was a bakery now, with sloping racks half filled with fresh bread where the shelved cigarette boxes used to be, and glass display cases and café tables rather than rows of shampoo and aspirin and prepackaged snack foods. Blackboards with colorful chalk lists of breads instead of advertisements for cosmetics covered the walls. Only the wood floors were the same.

A man about Diane's age emerged from the storeroom— probably a kitchen now. He carried a large baking sheet loaded with oversized muffins and slid this into one of the glass cases next to a tray of bagels. His lips were pursed to whistle a tune she couldn't hear.

He straightened and wiped his hands on the white cloth tucked into his jeans. He lifted his head, noticed her.

Diane jerked back. She'd left handprints on the window. The man glanced at the large digital clock hanging over the kitchen doorway—4:59—and came around the display cases toward the door. She turned away and walked as fast as she could, squaring her load on her back. Behind her she heard the tumbling sound of a lock being turned, then the jingle of a tiny bell on an opening door.

“You want to come in?”

The invitation startled her so much that she stopped and turned around. She wanted nothing more than to go in, except perhaps
never
to go in. Why would he allow it? He leaned out over the sidewalk, bracing the door.

“Y-You're open?” she asked.

“Open due to fog,” the man said, eyeing her lightweight clothing. “Weather's nicer inside.” He had the gentle look of a harmless man who smiled a lot and liked to eat a little more than he ought to. “Hungry? The muffins are still hot.”

Do I look hungry? Are you one of those people who thinks fat girls
are always hungry?

She was ravenous. She hadn't eaten since breakfast the day before.

Diane shifted her weight to one foot and glanced back into the bright room that was golden and warm.

“I can bring one out to you if you'd rather,” he offered.

It could be no more dangerous inside than it was out here. And going in would put her that much closer to where she wanted to be anyway. She nodded her thanks without looking at him and walked back to the bakery, then entered, slipping her backpack off her shoulder.

The sweet scent of expanding yeast and crisping crusts caused her to sigh. Goose bumps rippled down her arms and legs, receiving the dry warmth of the room. He let the door fall closed without locking it again and pulled out a chair for her.

No one had ever pulled out a chair for Diane Hall.

She sat slowly, wondering, keeping her eyes averted so he wouldn't see her blush.

“Coffee's not on yet,” he said, going back around the case. “But my wife should be here any minute. She'll have my hide if I try to work that thing.” He nodded to an espresso machine at the other end of the counter while placing one of the muffins in a wicker basket lined with waxed paper. He brought it back to Diane's table and set it in front of her. “You want an orange juice or something?”

His kindness made Diane wary.

“Would water be okay?” she said.

His eyes crinkled at the corners. “Can't think of why not.”

Which made her feel a little stupid, though she doubted he meant to. While he went to get a glass, she leaned over the smell of pumpkin pie spices and candied pecans that floated up from her unexpected breakfast. The soft cake warmed her fingers when she picked it up. She bit into the muffin's crisp-soft mushroom top. There was no food like this in prison. Maybe not in the entire world.

He set the glass of water next to her basket and extended his hand. “Geoff Bofinger.”

His fingers were dusty with flour. She let it transfer to her palms.

“Diane,” she said around the wolfish bite she'd just taken. There were crumbs gathering in one corner of her lips. She hated her own idea of herself.

“Stay as long as you like then, Diane. I've got loaves to get out of the oven.”

After he walked back into the rear of the shop she thought to say, “What do I owe you?”

“Nothing,” he said as he vanished into the kitchen. “First-timers are on the house.”

She'd never heard of such a thing, but times had changed while she was inside.

At the end of the L-shaped counter and cases, in the rear right corner of the dining area, a universal sign on a push-through door indicated there were bathrooms on the other side. She'd have known this without the sign. Unless there had been remodeling since she'd last used those toilets, yet another door beyond the ones marked for men and women would lead to a rear stairway and a small apartment above the bakery.

That door would probably be locked. Her parents had always locked it.

She wondered.

Diane stood and peered through the round glass window in the top half of the swinging door. The hallway beyond was dim. She shouldered her backpack and picked her muffin out of the basket. She took another bite and crossed the room, pushed through that door, and walked right past the bathrooms to the end of the hall, which still smelled like the bakery but wasn't as warm.

The red stenciled letters that spelled out the word
private
were scratched up but legible. Diane reached for the round stainless-steel knob with the keyhole in the middle.

She gripped it, and it turned. The fact required her to reevaluate: how far was she willing to go with this? She had come to this long-anticipated moment so swiftly, so unexpectedly, that she hadn't properly prepared.

But that was only an excuse, wasn't it? What kind of preparations could a person really make when the time came to stare a demon in the face?

Diane went through. She entered the landing at the bottom of a dark stairwell lit only by emergency lighting on every other step. Her sweaty fingers let go of the knob before she meant to, and the heavy door slammed, bouncing the cannon boom around the small space like her heart within her ribs. She took a calming breath and waited for her pulse to fall.

When it did—or at least when it wasn't so high up in her throat—Diane wiped her free hand on her jeans and gripped the skinny wood handrail. The stair treads were lined with warped nonskid mats that gave in to her weight as she ascended.
Pop-pop,
pop-pop
.

At the seventh popping the door below her opened, startling her into dropping the remainder of her muffin. The ball of bread took the descent two steps at a time, raining crumbs, and came to rest at Geoff Bofinger's feet.

“Help you find something?” he asked kindly, as if she were truly lost and not invading his privacy.

She hesitated. Such a man deserved no lies, but the truth might be unnecessarily cruel. “The sign out there, uh, said there were bathrooms?”

He looked back down the hall as he stooped to pick up her food. “Right there. I sometimes walk right by them myself this early in the morning.”