Софи Райан - Buy А Whisker

Lily’s Bakery was the only place to get a decent cup of coffee before seven a.m. in North Harbor, Maine. We had no fast-food outlets, no drive-throughs. The slower pace of life was what attracted so many tourists, that and the gorgeous scenery along the Maine coast.

As usual, Lily was behind the counter when I tapped on the door. She kept the shop locked until seven thirty but let in regulars like me who stopped for coffee and a muffin to start the day. She smiled and came to open the door, and the warmth of the small space with its delicious aroma of fresh bread and cinnamon wrapped around me.

Lily ran Lily’s Bakery with some help from her mother and another baker. She’d been selling her baking since she was twelve. The small building on the waterfront that housed the bakery had been left to Lily by her grandfather. She’d opened the business when she was twenty and had been running it, successfully as far as I knew, ever since.

“Hi, Sarah,” she said. She was wearing skinny jeans and a pink thermal shirt with her long, dark hair up in its usual high ponytail. When she was in the kitchen, she kept her hair under a Patriots ball cap.

“Good morning,” I said, trying not to yawn.

I could smell the rich, dark-roast coffee. I stopped by the bakery a couple times a week, and it was always made by six thirty. Lily had her morning routines, and she kept them like clockwork. She’d told me once that she got everything ready for the morning before she left the night before so she didn’t have to waste time going down to the basement, where she kept a lot of her supplies.

Lily reached for the pot, and I handed her my stainless-steel mug. I looked in the glass-front display case as she poured, wondering if a chocolate éclair could be classed as breakfast food.

“You really need to have some protein at breakfast,” she said.

I looked over at her. “I need some breakfast at breakfast.”

She smiled, which I thought she didn’t do enough of. “What’s in your refrigerator, Sarah? You don’t have to stick to traditional breakfast food in the morning, you know.”

I took the mug she was holding out and recited the contents of my fridge. “Three eggs, two tomatoes that taste like the carton the eggs are in, and a spinach quiche that fell.”

Lily looked confused. “Quiche doesn’t fall.”

I moved to the end of the counter for the insulated carafe that held cream and the glass-and-stainless-steel sugar-cube dispenser that looked like a futuristic spaceship.

“It does if your hands are wet when you pick up the dish,” I said, adding cream and two sugar lumps to my mug. “Half the egg-and-cheese stuff went on the floor, and the spinach all slid to one end.” I stirred my coffee and screwed the lid on. “And then I kind of forgot to set the timer when I put it in the oven, so the spinach turned out extra crispy.” I walked back over to her. “Let’s just say I don’t think even the raccoons would eat it if I dumped it in the backyard.”

I could see Lily was trying not to laugh. “Hang on a minute, Sarah,” she said. She went back to the kitchen and returned after a minute with something wrapped in waxed paper. “Here. An apple-raisin roll with some Swiss cheese, on the house.”

“Thank you,” I said, taking it from her.

Lily walked me to the door. I glanced at the inky sky through the big front window. There was something smeared on the glass, I realized.

I took a step closer to the window. “Lily, were you egged?” I asked.

She nodded, folding her arms defensively over her chest. “This is the second time.”

“Because of the development?”

“Yes.”

About two and a half months ago, a developer from Massachusetts had proposed a mixed-use project—housing and business—for part of the harbor front, unique to the area and environmentally responsible. It had the potential to increase tourist traffic, and since all the businesses along the harbor front depended on visitors for a big part of their income, everyone had gotten behind the idea. Everyone except Lily.

“Did you call the police?” I asked. It looked like the culprit had used an entire carton of eggs on the window.

“I did,” she said with a shrug. “But it happened in the middle of the night. There isn’t much the police can do. No one was around, and I don’t have a security camera.”

She eyed the smeared glass for a moment; then she looked at me again. “It’s been more than just eggs.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Someone switched a canister of sugar for salt in the kitchen, they canceled a delivery of cardboard cake boxes and waxed paper, and I’m pretty sure someone let a mouse loose in the store.” She pulled a hand over her neck. “I can’t prove any of it has anything to do with the harbor-front proposal, but realistically, what else could it be?”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Egging the windows and switching sugar for salt is childish. You don’t deserve this kind of thing just because you don’t want to sell the bakery.”

Lily exhaled slowly. “Some people don’t see it that way.” Then she shook her head. “Luckily, the egg will come right off with the ice scraper I use on my windshield.” She pasted on a smile that told me the conversation was over. “Anyway, I need to get back to the kitchen. Have a good day, Sarah.”

“You too,” I said. “Thanks for breakfast.”

Elvis’s whiskers twitched as I climbed back into the SUV. He eyed the wax-paper-wrapped sandwich and then looked expectantly at me.

“You can have a tiny bite of cheese when we get to the shop,” I said, pulling my keys out of my jacket pocket. He immediately settled himself on the seat, looking straight ahead through the windshield, his not-so-subtle way of saying, “Let’s get going . ”

My store, Second Chance, was a cross between a secondhand store and an antiques shop. We’d been open for less than a year. We sold everything from furniture to housewares to musical instruments—mostly from the fifties through the seventies. Some of our stock had been repurposed from its original use, like the tub chair under the front window that in its previous life had actually been a bathtub, or the quilts my friend Jess made from recycled fabric. I often went in to the shop early if I had a project on the go. At the moment I was working on removing five coats of paint from an old wooden dresser that dated to the early 1900s.

I’d worked in radio after college until I’d been replaced on the air by a syndicated music feed and a tanned nineteen-year-old who read the weather twice an hour. As a kid I’d spent my summers in North Harbor with my grandmother. It was where my father had grown up. I’d even bought a house that I’d renovated and rented. When my job disappeared, I’d come to Gram’s, at the urging of my mom, to sulk for a while and ended up staying and opening Second Chance. The store was in a redbrick house, built in late 1800s, in downtown North Harbor, Maine, just where Mill Street began to climb uphill. We were about a fifteen- to twenty-minute walk from the harbor front and close to the off-ramp from the highway, which meant we were easy for tourists to find and get to.

I parked the SUV at the far end of the parking lot. Elvis already had a paw in the top of my canvas tote, his way of letting me know he had no intention of walking across the lot to the back door. I scooped him inside the bag and grabbed my breakfast.

The first thing I did when I got inside was nudge the heat up a few degrees, grateful that my brother, Liam, had checked the old house from top to bottom before I’d bought it. He’d discovered that the old furnace was on its last legs, and I’d managed to get the seller to knock several thousand dollars off the purchase price.