The Rounds I Made

The next morning, Clara asked if I wanted to help at the front counter.

She had already set the day’s loaves on the cooling racks. The bakery smelled of warm flour and cinnamon, and the windows held a thin skin of rain. My ankle still complained if I stood too long, so Clara had put a chair behind the counter where I could reach the paper bags and the order slate without getting up.

“Only if you feel up to it,” she said. “I can manage the customers.”

I knew she could. She could count coins by touch, hear which bell had rung, and find a dropped crumb on the floor faster than I could. I also knew I wanted to try. Wanting it didn’t make my hands stop feeling clumsy when the door opened.

“I can sit,” I said.

“That sounds like a sensible plan.” She turned a tray with a practiced movement, then left it close enough for me to smell the cinnamon rounds cooling on it. “Those are yours, by the way.”

I looked at them. Mine meant I had measured the flour and stirred the dough while Clara talked me through the steps. She had corrected the oven time before they burned. The rounds had come out uneven, with one that had spread wider than the others.

“I helped,” I said.

“You did the work.” Clara’s tone stayed easy. She didn’t make me agree.

For a while, there were only ordinary orders. A loaf, two oat cakes, a small bag of dried apple slices. I passed each one over the counter and listened to the coins land in the dish. The customers spoke to Clara in the familiar way people did when they knew her. Some nodded to me, too. Some studied my face before deciding what to say.

I tried to look busy with the paper bags.

When the bell rang again, a woman with a russet coat paused just inside. I recognized her as one of the customers who came in after market mornings. She ordered a seed loaf from Clara, then lowered her voice slightly.

“Is that the human boy who’s staying with you?”

The paper bag in my hands crackled. Clara’s ears angled toward the woman. She waited.

The woman wasn’t whispering. She wasn’t speaking to me, either. I could have let Clara answer. That would have been easier, and she might have said something kind enough to close the question without making me part of it.

I set the bag down.

“I’m Toby,” I said.

The woman looked toward me. “Hello, Toby. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to talk around you.”

I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to say to that. I was used to questions that had a right answer and a wrong one, even when no one explained the rules. My eyes went to the seed loaf, safely wrapped in paper.