Hand over the keys, sweetheart — this bakery was MOM’S, and you’re nothing but

What Bridget didn’t know was that ‘the back’ wasn’t a storeroom — it was Mom’s old office, where a framed document hung above the desk like a quiet promise. I returned with a slim manila folder and set it gently on the counter between us. ‘Before you sign anything with him,’ I said, nodding at the attorney, ‘you might want to read page two.’

Bridget rolled her eyes and flipped it open. The color drained from her face faster than milk down a sink. Mom hadn’t left the bakery to ‘her daughters.’ She’d left it to me — solely — three years before she passed, after Bridget had laughed at her chemo wig at Thanksgiving and called the shop ‘a sad little hobby.’ The deed, the business license, the LLC — all in my name. The only thing Bridget had inherited was a savings bond Mom set aside out of guilt, which Bridget had already cashed for the Mercedes idling outside.

Then I slid over the second document: a cease-and-desist, drafted last month, the moment my cousin warned me Bridget had been calling suppliers pretending to be the new owner. ‘You contacted my vendors. You impersonated me to my landlord. That’s fraud, Bridget. My lawyer says we can settle quietly… or loudly.’

The attorney stood up so fast his chair squealed. ‘Ms. Halvorsen, I was retained under false pretenses. I’m out.’ He left without looking back.

Bridget’s voice cracked into something small. ‘Marlowe — please — Mom would’ve wanted us to share.’

I looked at her for a long moment. Then I walked to the front, flipped the sign to OPEN, and held the door wide. Morning light poured in over the warm bread.

‘Mom wanted a lot of things,’ I said softly. ‘You weren’t kind to any of them.’

She walked out past a line of regulars already forming on the sidewalk. One of them — Mrs. Acevedo, who’d known Mom for twenty years — squeezed my elbow as she passed.

‘Smells like your mother in here today,’ she whispered.

It did. It finally did.