Page 403 of The Winslow Brothers

I walk toward the doors behind me, the ones that lead to the dock where all the truckers drop off ingredients and supplies, but when I swing them open, there’s nothing.No one.Not a truck or a delivery in sight.

“There’s no delivery!” I yell over my shoulder, and she’s quick to respond.

“Yes, there is, and it’s for you!”

What is she talking about?

Instead of continuing our shouting match through the bakery, I walk toward the front, swinging open the divider door with ahard push. It crashes against the wall, and Lydia glares at me from her perch behind the register.

“Easy on the muscles, John Cena.”

I put a hand to my hip. “There’s no delivery at the back.”

“I know,” she answers and grabs a brown-paper-wrapped box from the shelf beneath the register. “This is the delivery I was talking about.”

I take it from her hands and stare down at it with a furrow of my brow. “What’s this?”

“I don’t know.”

“Okay…?” I look up to meet her eyes. “But where did it come from?”

“A messenger dropped it off this morning.” She shrugs, slides open the glass cabinet, and starts to move sugar cookies from a tray to the inside display.

“They dropped it off this morning, and you’re just telling me now?”

“It’s been a busy morning, Rach,” she explains, her voice tinged with frustration, and keeps focused on her cookie task. “Did you get the photos done?”

Apparently, I’m not the only one on edge today.

“Just need to make a few edits, but yes, boss.”

“Okay. Can you email those to me? I’d like to post one later this evening.”

“Yeah. No problem,” I answer, waiting for further instruction. When none comes, I prompt her myself. “Do you…uh…need anything else?”

“Nope!” she calls over her shoulder. “It’s all good in the bakery hood!”

Is it just me, or is she acting really flipping weird? Whatever. I don’t have the time or the emotional capacity right now.

I spin on my heel and head toward the back, the package still clutched between my fingers. Ialmostget back to photo edits, but my curiosity over the mystery box wins out.

I set the package on the stainless-steel countertop and snag an unused knife from one of the kitchen drawers. One delicate slice through the line of tape at the center, and two of the cardboard flaps pop open.

Holy shit—my mother’s book.

As I pull it out of the box, a small note slips out of the pages, and the scrawl is so familiar that I know who the writer is before I see his signature at the bottom—Love, Ty.

Tears prick behind my eyes, and I have to set the note and the book back down inside the box just to gather myself. I haven’t even read the damn thing, and my face is already a soupy mess.

“Rachel, you need to read it,” my sister says unexpectedly, wrapping two arms around my shoulders and pulling me into a tight hug from behind.

“I don’t think I can,” I whisper to Lydia and the kitchen and to anyone else in the mystical mix of sugar and sweets that couldbe listening. At this point, I don’t think I could blink without the safety pins that are holding me together ripping open.

“Yes, you can,” she says and tenderly runs her hand down my hair. “You both deserve for you to read it.”

“I take it the messenger told you who it was from, huh?”

Her quiet laugh fills my ears.

---