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She reads the page. Then the oven page, and the empty line for when the mixer dies.

“Eighteen now,” she says. “Twelve in the second year. A hundred and forty still stands. I’m giving you time, not a discount.” She holds out the pen. “Write it down. And the oven: if we don’t sign, it’s still yours.”

“We’re going to sign.”

“Write it anyway.”

I write. My hand isn’t as steady as I’d like.

On Saturday morning I set two cups on the counter before the doors open, out of habit. One for Rosa. One for him, with a single sugar stirred in.

The first customer is a woman with a stroller who wants a challah and three cinnamon rolls. When she’s gone, the second cup is still sitting by the register, gone cold.

I pour it down the sink in the kitchen and rinse the cup and put it away. I’m staying in his apartment, sleeping in his bed, using his shower gel and shampoo, so that I smell like him even when I’m here, and I don’t know if it would ache more or less if I came back home.

On Monday morning, I take the cake box from the refrigerator before Grisha arrives to drive me to Pilsen.

Alvarado’s Panadería is on a corner under a railroad bridge, with a hand-lettered sign in the window that says GRACIAS POR 31 AÑOS and, under it, smaller, CLOSING END OF THE MONTH. The shelves are half empty. The display case has been unplugged and propped open to air.

Inés Alvarado is seventy years old and shorter than me, in a cardigan that might once have been pink. She looks at Grisha, who stays by the door with his hands in his jacket pockets.

“Your husband?”

“My driver,” I say, and she laughs at what she thinks is a joke, then leads me back to the kitchen.

Three decks, stone hearths, steel scrubbed until it shines. Six years old. I check the seals and the stones for cracks. Inés watches me open the bottom deck again.

“Nine thousand five hundred,” she says. “Cash, before I give back the keys. I’m not coming back to Chicago to chase anybody.”

“I understand.”

“A man came last week. He offered eight.” She shrugs. “I said no. He wants to put it in a pizza place.”

“I brought thirty-five hundred,” I say. “Can I tell you how I’d pay the rest?”

She folds her arms. Behind her, a radio on the shelf is playing something with accordions, very quietly.

“Three thousand when the riggers load it. I hire them and pay them. They come on Monday before you hand back the keys.” I take the check from my notebook. “The last three thousand in sixty days.”

“Sixty days, I’m in Arizona.”

“Then I’ll send it to Arizona.”

She looks at me. Then past me at Grisha, who is studying a calendar on the wall from a flour company.

“Forty-five days,” she says.

I look down at the check. I can cover forty-five days. It means leaving less in reserve than I wanted.

“Forty-five days from moving day,” I say. “I’ll put it in writing. You’ll have my number and Rosa’s.”

“Rosa,” Inés says. “With the poppy seed roll?”

“That’s her.”

“We used to split a flour order twenty years ago. She still owes me a cheesecake.” She unfolds her arms. “All right. Forty-five. Write it down.”

She writes the terms on her order pad and reads them aloud before we sign. I take the yellow copy. She holds my cashier’s check up to the light, then slips it into her cardigan pocket.