I walked out without a word. Tyler posted a TikTok that afternoon — ‘Out with the old, in with the bold’ — filming himself rearranging my display case. By Monday, three things happened. First, the regulars noticed. Mr. Patterson, who’d brought his late wife a cinnamon braid every Saturday for nineteen years, asked where Margaret was. Then the wedding clients started calling. I’d hand-piped every wedding cake in that town since 1994. None of those orders were in the system. They were in my notebook. At home. Second, the Halloran family called me. See, Mr. Halloran passed eight years ago, but his daughter Elena still owned forty-nine percent of the bakery. The other fifty-one had been sold to a corporate group — Tyler’s group. Elena had been quietly buying shares back for two years. She was three percent short. She asked if I’d like to invest my pension. I said yes before she finished the sentence. Third, and this is my favorite, the corporate office got the Yelp reviews. Three hundred in four days. ‘Where is Margaret?’ ‘Fired the heart of the place.’ ‘Won’t be back.’ Revenue dropped sixty percent in a week. Tyler tried to call me. I let it ring. Two weeks later, I walked back into Sunrise Bakery — not as an employee, but as a co-owner alongside Elena. Tyler was in the back, frantically YouTubing how to laminate dough. I tied on my apron. The bell above the door rang, and Mr. Patterson walked in, his face breaking into the first smile I’d seen on him in months. I looked at Tyler, calm as Sunday morning. ‘Pack up your laptop, sweetheart,’ I said. ‘Turns out the demographic wanted their grandmother back.’ He left in the same sneakers he came in. The cinnamon braids sold out by noon.
