“I know.”
“She’d hate that.”
“I know.”
“She’d probably tell us to sell half this junk.”
Emma looked at her daughter.
“She kept a cracked mixing spoon for thirty-seven years.”
“Because she said it was seasoned.”
“It was wood.”
“She had theories.”
Emma smiled despite herself.
Rose sat in Reid’s old chair.
For a while mother and daughter listened to the bakery next door.
The building had changed beyond anything Reid and Lena could have imagined when they converted the abandoned smokehouse.
The original room remained at the center, but additions surrounded it.
Two large ovens.
Storage.
A flour room.
Office.
Loading entrance.
A small retail counter.
Twelve employees now worked there through the year, more during holidays.
The name over the door remained LENA’S BREAD.
The lettering had been replaced twice, but each version copied Emma’s childish first sign closely enough that the uneven letters remained recognizable.
Rose looked toward the window.
“Are you going to keep it?”
Emma frowned.
“The bakery?”
“Yes.”
“It isn’t mine.”
“Technically it is now.”
That sentence hurt.
Lena’s will had been simple.
A portion of the bakery passed to longtime employees through a trust.
The ranch itself had already been transferred gradually to Emma and Rose.
The remaining business share came to Emma, who had never wanted to own a bakery and now found herself controlling the largest portion of one.
Emma said, “Lena planned for the workers.”
“Yes.”
“She didn’t plan for me to run it.”
“No one expects you to.”
“What do you expect?”
Rose hesitated.
“That you don’t make decisions because you’re grieving.”
Emma stared at her daughter.
“That sounds suspiciously like something Lena would say.”
“Unfortunately.”
Rose smiled.
Then she became serious.
“The bakery is profitable.”
“For now.”
“The accounts are good.”
“Lena kept them that way.”
“She also trained people.”
Emma looked toward the adjoining building.
“She trained everybody except the person who inherited her share.”
Rose leaned back.
“Maybe that was deliberate.”
Emma almost laughed.
Then she remembered something.
“Her ledger.”
“What?”
“Lena kept a personal ledger separate from the business books.”
Rose frowned.
“I’ve never seen it.”
“Neither have I in years.”
“Where?”
Emma looked toward the old bedroom.
“I don’t know.”
They found it the next morning.
Not inside Lena’s desk.
Not with the bakery papers.
It was under the bottom drawer of an old kitchen cabinet, wrapped in brown cloth and tied with baker’s string.
Rose held it up.
“That is unnecessarily dramatic.”
Emma touched the cover.
“No. That’s Lena.”
The book was thick.
Leather cracked at the spine.
Pages added.
Receipts tucked between sheets.