Chapter 6 - The Door He Thought Was Still His
We should have closed early Thursday. I said so afterward, and Elias said there was no sense pretending we could predict every bad thing. We had made a plan: Maria would leave with Simon after the last tray, and I'd lock the front while Elias waited near the back. A neighbor knew we were there. Our phones were charged. We were not inviting a confrontation.
At 6:42 p.m., the loading door opened anyway.
Warren stepped inside carrying a steel flashlight and a contractor's key. He wore the navy jacket he'd worn to my wedding rehearsal. The sight of that ordinary coat made me cold. I'd watched him compliment my dress in it, eleven days after he'd left bruises beneath the fabric.
“Get out,” I said.
“This is my wife's business.”
“She's told you not to come here.”
He spotted the flour tin on the worktable, the one holding Simon's copied receipts while we prepared them for Patrice. He reached for it.
Elias moved to the far end of the table, not toward Warren. “Leave the papers alone.”
Warren laughed. “You think a wedding ring makes you the boss?”
“No,” I said. “Mom owning this building makes her the boss. And she's revoked your authority.”
Warren's face changed. Not theatrically; the smile simply stopped doing its job. He looked at me as though the person he'd trained to stay quiet had begun speaking in a language he didn't understand.
“You don't know what you've done.”
“Then explain it without touching me.”
He shoved the tin into his jacket. I stepped into the aisle between the prep table and the oven, leaving several feet between us. “Put it down. Those are copies. Taking them doesn't erase the bank records.”
He came toward me anyway.
Elias held up one hand. “Stop.”
Warren swung the flashlight at him. Elias turned his shoulder and caught Warren's forearm with both hands, redirecting the blow away from me. The flashlight struck the prep table with a loud metallic crack. Warren tried to wrench free and raised his other fist. Elias delivered one short punch to his jaw, then stepped back with his palms open.
“Stay down,” he said, breathing hard. “Nobody else gets hurt.”
Warren sat against the lower cabinets, dazed and furious, but conscious. Elias did not strike him again. Maria, who had returned for her purse, stood frozen in the doorway with her phone. She had recorded the confrontation from the moment Warren entered.
“I called 911,” she said.
I realized I was trembling. Elias looked toward me, but didn't come closer until I nodded. He stood beside me, not in front of me.
Warren spat a curse. “I'll say he attacked me.”
“You can say what you like,” I answered. “The police can hear what happened.”
The officers arrived within minutes. They separated us, checked whether anyone needed medical attention, and took statements. Maria showed them the recording and preserved the original file. Warren was taken into custody after the officers reviewed the reported assault and his refusal to leave; they did not tell us every charge or promise the property dispute was over.
I watched his car leave from the bakery window. My first feeling wasn't victory. It was the terrible urge to ask whether he was angry with me. The feeling embarrassed me, and then it made me angry all over again.
“I want to go home,” I told Elias.
“Let's go.”
But Mom was waiting outside with Becca. She'd insisted on coming when Maria called. Her walker was planted on the sidewalk, and she looked as furious as I'd ever seen her.
“Where is he?”
“Gone for now,” I said.
Mom peered past me at the flour tin on the counter. “Did he take the papers?”
“Copies. We have backups.”
She gripped her walker. “He thought if he took those, I'd forget what I signed.”
“What else did you sign, Mom?”
She looked up at the second-floor windows. “A loan renewal. Two years ago. He said it was for a new oven.”
“We didn't buy an oven two years ago.”
“I know that now.”
I wanted to shout. Instead I took her inside and made tea while she explained. Warren had asked her to sign a one-page renewal after a long rehabilitation appointment. She remembered the lender's name but not the amount. He said it would pay for improvements and stabilize the bakery. She'd never seen the proceeds.
Patrice received our call and asked Mom to make a written note of what she remembered while the details were fresh. Then she told us to stop searching for ourselves in Warren's office. “Give me the lender's name,” she said. “We'll ask for the records properly.”
At home, I stood in front of the mirror and examined my face. It was the same face from the wedding photographs, only the smile was gone. Elias appeared behind me and stopped a few feet away.
“Can I hold you?”
I turned and went to him. He held me carefully, the way you carry a box labeled FRAGILE without assuming what's inside is broken forever.
“I thought I'd feel better,” I whispered.
“You might. Not tonight.”
My phone rang. Patrice's name glowed on the screen.
“The lender confirmed there's a loan,” she said. “But the property listed as collateral isn't just the bakery.”
“What else?”
She read the address.
May you like
Seventeen East Bell Street.
The first address in Becca's notebook. The old storefront that had belonged to our father's closest friend before he disappeared from our lives.
