“I wasn’t wrecked. I was half asleep from staying up all night, and then just when things started to get interesting, your brother—excuse me—your stepbrother showed up with the whole flower mart in his arms.”
“But you were all depressed and grouchy for days after that—”
He shakes his head slowly. “God, I could never tell what you were thinking. I was depressed and grouchy because I was getting so involved with you, and you obviously had other fish to fry, and I just figured it would be better if I got out of town for a while.” He eyes me accusingly. “You didn’t have to wait all summer to get in touch with me.”
“I just heard the tape yest—a few days ago.”
“Why did you wait so long?”
“Why the hell do you think?” I say crossly. “I couldn’t listen to it because I missed you.”
I love the amber flecks in his eyes that you can only see in a certain light. The way his lashes are dark at the roots but pale as moonlight at the tips. There’s a newly sunburned place across the bridge of his nose.
“I missed you,” he says, and the feeling I’ve been holding under house arrest all summer suddenly escapes, flaring up in my chest.
“Kenny said you were going up to pollute Alaska.”
“That’s the plan.” While I’m looking out the window again, he makes the three feet between us disappear. His hand is on my arm. “Why don’t you come with me?”
“McLeod, you make me cry and you’re roadkill.”
He laughs right before he kisses me. His mouth is warm, and the tip of his nose is cold against my cheek. His tongue barely brushes my mouth, like when you knock on a door, then step back politely and wait to be invited in. He smells of freshly cut pine and wood smoke and meadow grass.
I put a hand up to touch the beard.
“Too scratchy?” he says.
I try rubbing it in different directions. “I can see how it might work.”
“Come to Alaska with me. It would be so—”
“Can’t.” This is where I nearly lose it.
“Why not?”
I press my lips together. “You’re looking at the proud half owner of the Queen Street Bakery.”
“So the divorce is …?”
“Practically a fait accompli.”
He smiles. “Is that anything like a done deal?”
The second kiss is longer, more interesting. It takes me places—like flying down the sidewalk on my first ride without training wheels. Like diving into a wave off Zuma Beach. Like spotting France from 35,000 feet and knowing that somewhere down there in a maze of pink brick, the Boulangerie du Pont was waiting for me. It sets me down gently but firmly on this speck of land off the coast of Washington where mud is drying on my shoe and Mac is holding me against him in a way that leaves very little doubt as to his intentions.
When we break for air, he says, “On the other hand, fall’s probably not the best time to go to Alaska.”
“Maybe you should play it by ear,” I suggest helpfully. “At least until spring.”
There’s a pause, no more than a space between heartbeats. I feel him draw a deep breath, as if he’s about to make some monumental pronouncement, but he just winds a strand of my hair around his finger and says,
“At least.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
One of the best things about having a book published is getting to mention in print all the people who deserve more, but will have to settle for my undying gratitude. To my parents, Ruth and Doug Huggins, for their unwavering love and wild applause, beginning with those lost-dog and buried-treasure stories.
To my husband, Geoff, for literally supporting me while I labored. For rubbing my back arid holding my hand and cheerfully consuming countless pizzas and take-out Thai noodles. To Marilyn Carter for thirty-five years of bestfriendship.
Thanks to all my writing teachers—and they have been legion—but especially to Andrew Tonkovich, in whose fiction class the seed of Bread Alone first germinated. To my wise and generous teacher and dear friend, Jo-Ann Mapson, whose books are both inspiration and aspiration for me, and who did me the honor of recommending me to her wonderful agent. To Deborah Schneider, who is now also my wonderful agent, and with whom all things are possible. To my editor, Claire Wachtel, for her warm heart and cool eye, and for helping me tell my story to the best of my ability.
To all my writing-group friends and my book-club friends, who slogged through numerous drafts and revisions with me, particularly my writing partner Amy Wallen, for knowing how to be both brutally honest and encouraging in the same breath. To Janet Fitch for dialogue lessons. To Rebecca Hill and Judith Guest for showing me that less is more.
To Kathryn Brown for sharing her clear-eyed perspective on California divorce law. To David Bresard, who welcomed me into his bakery and shared his experiences as a Compagnon Boulanger du Devoir.
To all those singers and songwriters whose music still plays in my house and my car and my heart—Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, Jackie Wilson, The Big O, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Richard and Linda Thompson, The Flamingos, and more.
To my bread heroes, Edward Espe Brown, Elizabeth David, Daniel Leader, Nancy Silverton, Brother Peter Rinehart. To Gunilla Norris for so eloquently articulating the connections between bread and love.
And last, but far from least, to Nancy Mattheiss and Jessica Reissman, and the women of the old McGraw Street Bakery for making my time there a feast of food and friendship.
About the Author
JUDITH RYAN HENDRICKS is also the author of Isabel’s Daughter and The Baker’s Apprentice. She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
www.judihendricks.com
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ALSO BY JUDITH RYAN HENDRICKS
Isabel’s Daughter
The Baker’s Apprentice
Copyright
HARPER
Excerpt from The Tassajara Bread Book by Edward Espe Brown © 1970 by Chief Priest, Zen Center, San Francisco. Reprinted by special arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc., Boston, www.shambhala.com.
Excerpt from Becoming Bread by Gunilla Norris © 1993 by Gunilla Brodde Norris. Reprinted by permission of Bell Tower, a division of Random House, Inc.
A hardcover edition of this book was published in 2001 by William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
BREAD ALONE. Copyright © 2001 by Judith Ryan Hendricks.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition © AUGUST 2011 ISBN: 978-0-062-10468-7
First Perennial edition published 2002.
Reprinted as Harper paperback 2006.
The Library of Congress has catalogued the hardcover edition as follows: Hendricks, Judith Ryan.
Bread alone: a novel / Judith Ryan Hendricks.—1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-06-018895-2
1. Divorced women—Fiction. 2. Bakers and bakeries—Fiction. 3. Baking—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3608.E53 B7 2001
813’.6—dc21
00-069560
ISBN-10: 0-06-008440-5 (pbk.)
ISBN-13: 978-0-06-08440-0 (pbk.)
09 10 /RRD 20
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Bread Alone: A Novel Page 37