9
At the bakery, Mark was distracted. He burned a batch of brioche. He dropped an open bag of flour on the floor, leaving a powdery ring that became a pasty mess which took twenty minutes to mop up. He didn’t hear his father ask what was wrong. When he brought a basket of pistachio macarons to the display counter, Rosie grabbed his arm.
“What happened?” she asked.
Mark shook his head. He didn’t want to think about it, much less talk about it. He wanted to pretend it never happened. He didn’t want to give any brain space to the angry stranger he encountered that day. His mother shook his arm again until he looked at her.
“Mark? What happened?”
He told her everything. From Andrew’s foul mood in the morning to his barely restrained fury in the afternoon. There was only one customer in th
