The Baker's Wife Read Free Page B

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.
    â€œHey,” 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