My husband and his mother locked me on our fifth-floor balcony in the freezing cold while their dinner party carried on inside. He slid the bolt himself, then turned up the music. I pulled my phone from my apron and called my dad: “Bring Travis and Logan. And don’t forget to grab the soldering iron”…

My mother-in-law inspected my father’s shoes before she congratulated us on getting married. Dad had polished them at the kitchen table that morning, according to Mom, with a dish towel she had specifically told him not to use. I knew this because a small patch of black polish had survived behind his thumbnail, and because Mom had already forgiven the shoes but was still considering the towel.

“Well, Donald, no necktie for your daughter’s big day?” Beatrice said, raising her voice enough to include the nearby tables. “It’s a formal banquet, after all, not a downed power line in the woods.” Dad looked down at his shirt as though a tie might have appeared since he last checked. I stood beside Julian with my bouquet pressed against my waist, wanting somebody to change the subject before my father had to answer.

“A silk necktie gets caught in high-voltage lines, Beatrice,” he said mildly. “And I left the dirty muck boots in the truck. Shined up these dress shoes special for you.” A few guests laughed, grateful for somewhere pleasant to put their eyes. Julian smiled too, and I took that smile for agreement with Dad because it was my wedding day and I wanted to believe we were all enjoying the same joke.

Dad was a utility lineman, and I had spent my childhood learning that a ringing telephone could take him away from almost anything. Mom called the dispatch board his second wife, although she always packed him something substantial when that wife called during supper. His hands had little permanent cuts around the knuckles. On my wedding day, those hands held mine carefully while his new shoes squeaked across the dance floor.

“You hear that?” he asked. “Paid extra for the musical ones.” I laughed against his shoulder, and for a minute I stopped keeping track of whether Beatrice approved of the flowers, the food, or the people I belonged to. Dad danced like a man carrying something fragile through a crowded workshop. He had never been elegant, but I had never doubted where I stood with him.

Before Julian and I left, Dad caught my elbow beside the car. “Remember the soldering iron, Katie?” he asked quietly. I straightened a fold in my veil and told him not to start. Beatrice was blunt, I said, and particular about appearances, and she would warm up once she knew us better. I heard myself explaining a woman who had just insulted him, but I was too pleased with my marriage to sit with that thought.

The soldering iron was an old family expression. When boys at my grade-school bus stop threw my mittens into a snowbank and called me fat, Dad listened without interrupting. I begged him not to go knocking on anybody’s door. He promised he wouldn’t, then told me that if they bothered me again, I should say my father would come with his soldering iron.

He appeared at the crosswalk the next afternoon anyway, carrying a spool of copper wire over one shoulder. One boy asked whose father he was, and Dad told him, then politely inquired whether he had brought gloves or intended to borrow somebody else’s again. The trouble stopped. After that, asking for the soldering iron meant I needed him to come, without making me earn his help by explaining myself properly first.

“I’m right down the road,” he told me beside the wedding car. I kissed his cheek and said I knew. Then I climbed in beside Julian, who had brought me greenhouse tulips in January and listened while I described the bakery I wanted to open.

I was twenty-six when we met, already working with dough and fermentation for a living. He made my plans sound less like a private indulgence and more like something two people could build together.

That mattered to me. Plenty of people liked hearing that I baked; fewer wanted to hear why a rye starter behaved differently after a cold night or why the water temperature mattered before the first mixing. Julian let me talk. He had a way of leaning forward as though whatever I was explaining would be the most useful thing he learned all day. I mistook being listened to for being understood, which is an easy mistake when someone handsome has brought flowers in a snowstorm.

We moved into Beatrice’s fifth-floor condominium in Duluth while we got the business going. “Just temporarily,” Julian said, setting our bags inside her entryway. I was grateful for the room and embarrassed by how much I needed it. My savings and my parents’ wedding gift would cover the first stone-deck oven and help secure a vacant shop, but they would not stretch to every dream at once.

Beatrice liked the idea of a family enterprise. She said it with her whole hand spread across the table, as though the three of us were already seated at the head of something. I pictured early mornings with Julian, bread cooling on racks, and a little place where customers would learn my loaves by their crusts. She talked about presentation and introductions. At the time, I thought we were describing different useful parts of the same business.

My starter culture lived in glass jars. I had tended it through years of commercial bakery shifts, feeding it, watching its rise, learning its moods well enough that I sometimes trusted it more than the clock. Beatrice called the jars unattractive. I kept them out of her way and told myself that not everybody needed to find grayish fermented flour beautiful. I did not require her affection for the starter, only enough shelf space to keep it alive.

When we discussed the registration, she pushed her luncheon plate aside and said the business could not go in her name. Her boutique in St. Paul had failed, leaving liabilities and tax liens. She explained that money coming into an account under her name could be taken before we bought another sack of flour. I appreciated her telling us; it sounded practical and honest, and I wanted to be practical too.

“What about Julian?” I asked. He sat back while his mother answered for him. He had an ex-wife and a daughter in Rochester, and his child support was tied to his reported income. Beatrice spoke resentfully about any extra money reaching that household, which made me uncomfortable, but I looked at Julian instead of challenging her. He began describing permits, landlords, and vendor meetings, moving the conversation along before I settled on what to say.

“Put the sole proprietorship in your name,” Beatrice said. “Give Julian power of attorney so he can handle the paperwork.” He reached across and squeezed my hand. I would bake, he said, and he would handle the footwork; we would each do what we did best. I had stood through enough inspections and supply delays to understand the appeal of someone else taking those jobs, and I wanted our marriage to feel like a partnership.

I read every line at the notary’s office. Julian fetched water, drank it, and fetched more while I worked my way down the pages. Eventually the notary asked whether I was reading or memorizing the legal code. “I work with formulas,” I explained. “If the weight is wrong, the whole batch can be ruined.” She told me that careful reading was a good habit, and I bent over the document again, reassured by her patience.

What I checked was whether I understood the authority I was giving him. What I failed to ask was why I was so comfortable giving away work I had never learned to supervise. I trusted my husband. There is no cleverer explanation, and I wish there were, because I have spent enough nights remembering that office to want one. I signed, Julian gathered the papers, and we went back to arranging the opening.

The shop had once been a dry-cleaning depot. Its brick walls and empty front windows did not look especially promising when we first walked through, but there was room for the oven and room behind the counter to turn without bumping somebody. I stood where the workbench would go and imagined reaching for flour. Julian stood nearer the front, talking about the sign. We both sounded happy, and I remember that happiness without pretending it was false just because I know what followed.

Our landlord, Arthur Higgins, was a retired county civil engineer who liked things that lasted. He approved of the heavy oven and asked sensible questions about the space. When he tasted my rye, he spoke about his grandmother’s bread in northern Minnesota. That pleased me more than I could explain without going on too long, so I offered him another slice and let the loaf speak for me.

As opening day approached, I worked the hours the dough required. An oven could be installed on somebody else’s schedule, but fermentation was less impressed by a grand-opening announcement. I checked temperatures, weighed ingredients, and kept returning to the racks to see whether the loaves were ready. I wanted the bread right even if the ribbon came down crooked. Beatrice was handling the public arrangements, and I was relieved to have one less thing to watch.

On opening morning, I had been working since five. Flour caught in the creases of my arms and along my eyebrows, where wiping it with a damp hand only made a paste. I knew I should clean myself up before the guests arrived. Then another tray needed attention, and after that there was something else, and I kept believing I would have a spare minute once the bread was settled.

Dad arrived with autumn chrysanthemums. Seeing him in the doorway made me suddenly shy about the place, as though I had brought home a report card I desperately wanted him to admire. Mom stood close beside him, looking from the counter to the racks with that absorbed expression she wore when trying not to cry in public. I wanted to show them everything. I also wanted somebody to tell me whether the bread knife had been put back where it belonged.

Mr. Higgins brought enormous ceremonial scissors that would not cut the ribbon. He worked the handles twice while the red fabric frayed between the blades. I fetched my serrated bread knife, stepped forward, and sliced through it. Everybody clapped, and I laughed with relief. After the weeks of preparation, opening a bakery with a bread knife felt sensible enough that I briefly forgot anyone might have expected something more dignified.

Then I noticed the carved plaque above the display case. “Artisan breads crafted from the Drake family heritage recipe,” it said. I read it once while people were still moving through the doorway, then again more slowly. Nobody had mentioned ordering it. The wood was handsome, the lettering carefully cut, and there it hung over the loaves I had spent the night making, announcing a history I had never heard.

A reporter from the County Weekly came toward us with a microphone. She asked who had developed the sourdough formula, and I drew breath, already thinking how to explain the starter without boring her. Beatrice stepped in front of me before I could answer. “An old heirloom recipe passed down through generations from my grandmother,” she said brightly. “The Drakes have always had a blessed touch with bread.”

I looked at Julian. “What grandmother?” I whispered, taking hold of his sleeve. “Your grandmother was an elementary-school librarian.” He kept smiling toward the camera while he leaned close enough to answer. “Katie, does it really matter? You’re covered in flour and wearing a work apron. You don’t look photogenic for the paper anyway. Just smile.”

His sleeve slipped out of my fingers as he moved beside his mother. Across the shop, Dad looked from the plaque to me, his flowers still wrapped in paper. I stood with flour on my arms and my name on every business document, waiting for my husband to correct a lie he had just asked me to help tell. The reporter raised her camera, and I could not remember what to do with my mouth.

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Chapter 2/6

Mr. Higgins held my hand after the photograph. “Don’t you ever let anybody take that recipe from you,” he said. I thanked him without looking toward the plaque. Dad bought a loaf and left with Mom, and I went back to the ovens, where nobody asked me to smile. The sign stayed up. Eventually I stopped looking at it when I came through the front door.

Benjamin arrived later, and my days became a mixture of overnight baking, feeding him, and trying to sleep between responsibilities. The extra weight stayed. Beatrice began commenting on it at family gatherings, and Julian laughed before offering a lazy objection that did nothing to stop her. When I told him privately that it hurt, he said she was joking. I grew practiced at swallowing an answer before it became an argument.

Dad built Ben a wooden lighthouse nightlight, soldering the little circuit himself. Its beacon pulsed beside the bed while Ben slept. Beatrice called it garage junk, but Ben loved it. Whenever Dad explained that a lighthouse showed lost ships where their people were waiting, my son listened as seriously as if somebody had handed him a chart of the entire world.

One bakery became three. Beatrice handled the public side, Julian controlled the accounts, and I kept the bread coming. When Dad asked to visit, I invented a bathroom renovation that lasted so long he offered to wire our imaginary swimming pool. I said everything was fine. Once, after flour went missing, I did ask him to install a battery-backed security camera above the mixing line. Julian dismissed it as unnecessary; Dad fitted it anyway.

That November, our trial deliveries sold well enough for Marcus Sterling to discuss exclusive distribution through his thirty grocery stores. Beatrice invited him and his wife, Eleanor, to dinner. Preparing for important guests meant discarding anything she considered shabby, including Ben’s lighthouse. I pulled it from potato peelings with its cord torn loose and promised my crying son that Grandpa would repair it.

Saturday morning, Dad collected Ben. I handed over the lighthouse wrapped in a towel, then refused another request to come upstairs. He looked at my slippers on the icy pavement and said nothing. Later he told me what Ben asked during the drive: what was a heifer, and why did Grandma call Mommy that while Daddy laughed? Dad pulled over before answering. I had believed I was keeping the ugliness away from my son.

I had baked all Friday night for the dinner. That afternoon Julian found me chopping vegetables and told me to serve the meal, then stay in the kitchen. His mother understood important people, he said. I should also change my dress because it made me look wider. I asked why I shouldn’t sit at the table in my own home, and he walked away as though I had made a simple arrangement unnecessarily difficult.

By seven, I was carrying potatoes and bread past seated guests while Beatrice called for mustard. Marcus tasted the rye and asked who had developed the starter. I was setting down the pork platter when I answered. “It’s my starter culture, Mr. Sterling. I’ve kept it alive for six years.” Beatrice laughed over me, telling him I liked taking credit for things I overheard.

This time I kept standing. “It is my recipe, Mr. Sterling, and they are my bakeries.” Julian appeared beside me, his mother on my other side. They took my elbows, murmuring about something burning in the kitchen, but steered me past it. The balcony door opened, cold air caught my apron, and they pushed me outside. Beatrice insulted my body again. Julian shut the door and slid the brass bolt home.

I struck the glass while he straightened his collar and turned up the music. The guests couldn’t see the door from the table. My bare arms were already hurting when I found my phone among the bag clips in my apron pocket. Dad answered on the first ring. “Fifth floor,” I told him. “Balcony on the left. Bring Travis and Logan. And don’t forget the soldering iron.”

Chapter 3/6

“Twenty minutes,” Dad said. “Wrap yourself in whatever you can find.” His voice gave me something solid to follow. I found a folded utility tarp beside two burlap sacks, pulled it around my shoulders, and sat down. Beneath the small kitchen window, open a crack for ventilation, I could hear Julian telling his mother she had gone too far.

She dismissed that, then began giving instructions. Monday at eleven, Julian would use his power of attorney to sell the ovens and equipment to his cousin Victor’s company for thirty thousand dollars. The leases would follow. At two, Marcus would sign with the new company, leaving my sole proprietorship with the bills. Afterward, Julian would file for divorce. They discussed it within feet of me while I sat outside trying to keep warm.

I stopped pressing my hands together and listened. Three commercial ovens, worth far more than their proposed price, would go to a man who knew nothing about baking. The debts would remain mine. I had thought Julian was ashamed to seat me beside his important guests; now I understood that he and his mother were arranging a future in which I would be useful only for what they could leave behind.

An orange reflection moved across the brick below. Dad’s restored bucket truck, the Giraffe, turned into the alley with its diesel engine rumbling. When the boom rose, I could see him in the basket with Logan Higgins and Travis, his former apprentice. Travis had brought the soldering iron. Its cord dangled loose over his glove, absurdly familiar against the dark courtyard.

The basket settled beside the railing. Logan opened the gate and helped lift me across while Dad reached for me, then wrapped his heavy coat around my shoulders. I could smell the cold canvas and the workday still in it. Through the glass, people were getting up from the table. The door opened behind us, and Beatrice came out threatening to call the police.

Julian followed, saying it had been a joke. Dad looked at him for a long moment. “Down at the power company, Julian, a man who plays jokes with live wires never gets near a utility pole again.” He turned to the controls. I held his coat closed while the balcony rose away from us, and I did not ask him to wait for my husband to explain.

Neighbors opened windows as we descended. Someone was filming. I looked at Travis’s hand and began crying and laughing at once. “It isn’t even plugged in,” I said. He glanced at the hanging cord. “Psychological leverage.” Nobody asked me to stop crying, which made it harder to stop. By the time my feet reached the ground, I was leaning against Dad without worrying how heavy I felt.

Mom met us with tea, wool socks, and a chair I didn’t have to earn by finishing the dishes. Ben was asleep in my old bedroom. Later, with Travis working on the lighthouse at the kitchen table and Logan holding a coffee mug between his enormous hands, I told Dad what I had overheard. I also told him I had lied whenever he asked whether I was all right.

“You didn’t slide that bolt,” he said. I stared at the grain of Mom’s table until I could answer. Then we discussed the authority I had signed away, the accounts I had never watched, and what needed to happen before Julian could sell anything. Having something practical to do helped, but it did not spare me the grief of saying my husband’s name in those sentences.

Near two, Julian sent a tender voice message claiming Ben missed me, although our son was asleep upstairs. Beatrice followed it with a threat that I would never see him again. I started typing an apology from habit, then stopped. Logan quietly wondered whether I might go back. “That’s her choice,” Dad answered. I put the phone down. “I’m not changing my mind,” I told them. “Save those messages,” Travis said, without lifting his eyes from the little circuit board.

Chapter 4/6

The next morning, Ben found me in the kitchen and threw himself against my side. I held him while he complained that Grandpa had gone out in the Giraffe without him. Dad listened as though that were the most pressing unfinished business in the house. For a few minutes, watching them together, I could remember that my son’s life contained more than what I was afraid of losing.

With Dad beside me, I met Evelyn Cross, the notary who processed the revocation. My signature wavered. Afterward I removed Julian’s banking access and changed the passwords. A forty-two-thousand-dollar supplier payment frightened me until Dad insisted I telephone the mill before assuming the worst. It was our ordinary flour prepayment. I had spent years knowing every loaf and not knowing what we paid to make it.

The withdrawals farther down were different: cash, every Friday, fifteen hundred or two thousand dollars at a time. The pattern went back through the accounts, adding up to more than seventy-five thousand. I took that knowledge to Arthur Higgins, who admitted Julian had already asked to transfer the lease. Initially he wanted no part of a marital dispute. Julian, he said, was the one who met him face-to-face.

I brought him a warm loaf. He ate, then found the newspaper from opening day, stained with lingonberry jam. There I stood behind Beatrice, flour in my eyebrows. “Five years,” he said, looking at the photograph and remembering the plaque. He put the paper down and promised that no lease would move without my signature. I left relieved, and angry that bread had been required to make him recognize the person on his own agreement.

When we returned for my belongings, Beatrice called the police. She had already described my rescue as an armed intrusion. Officer Nathan Brooks arrived, inspected Travis’s cold soldering iron, and asked for identification. I showed him the address on my license. He had seen the neighborhood rescue video and took my complaint about the balcony while Beatrice threatened to pursue custody of Ben.

My wardrobe was empty. I opened the other side, then checked the drawers, still expecting a sensible explanation for the missing clothes. Nothing remained where I had put it. Dad followed me onto the balcony, where I untied the sacks I had sat on in the cold. Inside were my clothes, journals, photographs, and toiletries, crushed together beneath winter things. My own down coat had been under me while I shivered. In Beatrice’s bedroom, we found a new child’s bunk bed still wrapped in shipping plastic, with a bin of toys beside it.

They had packed me before their guests arrived. I stood holding a sleeve I recognized, unable to fold it or put it down. Dad removed the brass balcony bolt while Officer Brooks photographed the mounting holes. He placed the hardware in my palm. I carried it into the living room and thanked Beatrice for packing; Logan took the sacks, and Travis carried my sewing machine out to the elevator.

That evening, Officer Brooks needed the original rescue video. The online copy had disappeared after Lydia Vance, Beatrice’s friend, warned the young filmer’s mother about legal trouble. Dad spoke to the boy, Dylan, about cameras and the truck’s lights until he came into the hallway of his own accord. With his mother’s agreement, the original file went to Brooks. I watched it transfer, grateful somebody had recorded what I had been unable to make anyone hear.

When Julian discovered his card no longer worked, I sent him the revocation. He called, shouting that the bakeries would stop without him. I said only his access had stopped. Afterward the house grew quiet enough for me to hear Mom moving upstairs, and I tried to believe I might sleep. At a quarter to one, Brenda Kowalski, my night baker, called. The ovens were dead, the electrical panel had been torn apart, and our starter tubs were missing.

Chapter 5/6

Dad drove us straight to the bakery. Travis and Logan brought tools and replacement cable, and Brenda met me by the ruined panel. I left the men inspecting the damage and searched the storeroom, then the loading bay. The tubs were outside in the cold. I lifted a lid with such dread that for a moment I couldn’t judge what I was seeing; then I found bubbles below the chilled surface. The culture was alive.

Brenda helped carry it in, and we began an emergency batch. Behind us, Logan hauled cable while Travis worked under a lamp, wearing the only spare hairnet we had, bright pink over his unruly hair. Logan made one remark too many about it and was assigned another length of conduit. I weighed and mixed, listening for the sound of the ovens. Every passing minute belonged to customers waiting for bread we hadn’t yet baked.

By three-thirty, the men had the ovens running under manual control. Brenda broke the first test loaf by hand and passed pieces around. I ate standing beside the bench, too tired to notice hunger until warm bread reached my mouth. Nobody told me to leave the room or let them handle the important work. When Dad brought up the battery-backed camera footage, I moved closer to see.

Julian had used his key. On the recording, he held a light while Mike Collins cut the wiring, then carried my starter tubs outside himself. I watched my husband move through the kitchen where I had spent so much of our marriage. Travis recognized Collins and telephoned him. Before dawn, he appeared with the removed parts in a grocery bag, claiming Julian had told him he owned the business and only needed it disabled temporarily.

“He paid me three hundred,” Collins said. I asked him to sit down and write exactly what he had been hired to do. He signed the account and agreed to reimburse the repair materials; I agreed not to pursue a complaint against him if he did. Brenda put coffee and bread beside his elbow while he wrote. I kept looking past him to the racks, checking that we were still making our delivery time.

At six-thirty, the vans left for all thirty stores. My name was on the manifests. Later that morning, Mom called from Ben’s daycare: Beatrice had arrived demanding to take him to an appointment, falsely claiming my permission. Clara Henderson, the administrator, checked the authorized pickup list and refused. Mom confirmed there was no appointment that day. Clara recorded the incident, and Ben stayed with his teacher until the confusion was over.

I wanted to go to him immediately. Mom said he was safe, then waited while I asked again. After we hung up, I stood in the office doorway until I could concentrate. At eleven, Julian arrived with Victor, ready for their equipment transfer. The ovens were running behind them. I showed Victor the revocation, then played the recording of Julian lighting the panel for Collins. Victor left so fast he had to come back for his hat.

Brenda took Julian’s personal mug off the shelf and carried it to the washing sink. He watched her, then looked toward me as though somebody had broken a rule he expected me to enforce. I had nothing left to explain. Dad stayed in his chair while Julian left, and I finally sat down, my knees aching from the night’s work. There was still a meeting at two. Brenda brought me coffee, and I drank it slowly while the next trays went past the office door toward the ovens.

Marcus had called after seeing the morning manifests and asked me to attend. At his office, the receptionist directed Dad toward the service elevator. He accepted it pleasantly and pointed out a failing light above her desk. Then Eleanor came out, recognized him from the basket, and brought us inside. I followed my father past the reception counter with flour still caught in one seam of my coat.

Final chapter 6/6

Beatrice and Julian arrived asking for time to sort out a family emergency. Marcus laid the delivery manifests on the table and asked who Catherine Drake was. “I am,” I said, before Beatrice could finish calling my name a technical formality. I explained the starter, the bakeries, and the overnight repairs. Dad supplied the recording and Collins’s signed account. Marcus watched them without interruption.

Beatrice protested that I had stolen her company. Marcus asked why the tax filings and supplier records were mine. There was no useful answer. The exclusive distribution agreement was signed with my business, with future changes to be negotiated directly with me. Eleanor reminded her husband that she had believed me at dinner. “I was wrong,” he told her. I appreciated hearing it, although it did not undo Saturday night.

Outside, Julian reached toward my arm and asked to speak as husband and wife. I stepped back and told him what I would seek through our attorneys: the business and leases remaining mine, Ben living primarily with me, scheduled visits, and repayment of the money he had taken. If he honored the settlement, I would withhold the sabotage evidence from the sheriff. The balcony complaint would continue separately. He agreed; our lawyers would put it in writing.

Beatrice said I would regret it. I took the brass bolt from my pocket and placed it in her hand. “It belongs to you,” I said. “Go screw it back onto your door.” Dad stood a few steps away while she closed her fingers around it. I had imagined needing a much longer speech. Instead, I wanted to leave, collect my son, and know where we would sleep that night.

That evening, I removed the carved plaque myself. Mr. Higgins suggested replacing it with the opening-day newspaper photograph, jam stain and all. We framed it above the counter, and a young clerk called goodnight to me as Catherine. Three days later, Julian brought carnations and a toy excavator to my parents’ house, promising we could live apart from his mother. I let Ben enjoy the toy, then reminded Julian that he had slid the bolt himself. Our marriage was over.

By Christmas, Brenda was running operations and the bakery worked three shifts. Dad and Travis made a lighted star for the storefront; Logan complained affectionately about the installation while Ben supplied directions. At bedtime, my son had his repaired lighthouse again. I stood in the doorway watching its steady pulse and listening to him settle, without waiting for somebody elsewhere in the apartment to object to the light.

The divorce was finalized quietly. Julian sold his sports car to make the agreed repayments and began arriving promptly for Saturday visits. He took delivery work with Victor’s logistics firm and proved more reliable as a father than he had been as a husband. I admitted to Mom that this nearly annoyed me. She handed me my iced tea and said some men needed to lose things before they learned to show up.

The balcony complaint ended in a misdemeanor fine for Beatrice. Collins repaid Dad and, with tutoring from Travis, passed his licensing examination honestly. Dylan’s footage found an audience, and he worked weekends packing bread for us that summer. These things happened over months while I learned the accounts, answered my own calls, and opened a fourth shop. I still asked questions I should have known how to answer years earlier. Nobody died of hearing them.

Late in June, Lydia came in and quietly ordered the rye everybody was discussing. I served her myself and slipped an extra baguette into the bag. “Give that to Beatrice with my compliments,” I said. “They say good bread does wonders for an appetite.” Lydia took it, and I turned toward the glass-walled kitchen. Behind it, my bakers were shaping the next batch, their floury hands moving over the dough. I washed mine and went in to help.

THE END.
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