Chapter 9 - The Ghost on the Sidewalk
At eight-thirty that evening, the bakery was quiet.
The last customer had taken their box twenty minutes earlier, the ovens had cooled to a low, metallic ticking, and Marcus was sweeping the kitchen floor in the back, humming an old jazz tune along with the radio.
Sophie was upstairs in our apartment above the shop, practicing her cello, the deep, rich notes floating down through the floorboards like honey.
I stood in the front display area, wearing a simple, tailored emerald-green silk blouse and dark trousers, checking my reflection in the dark bay window as I waited for David’s car to arrive.
Outside, the streetlamps of Lincoln Avenue were turning on, casting long, golden pools of light across the damp asphalt.
A figure was standing on the opposite side of the street, beneath the shadow of a closed bookstore’s awning.
I stopped buttoning my cuff.
The man was thin, his shoulders hunched inside a faded, ill-fitting nylon windbreaker. He had his hands shoved deep into his pockets, staring across the two lanes of traffic directly at our front window.
Andrew.
He looked ten years older than the man who had stood beside Vanessa on the Magnificent Mile seven months earlier. His face was hollow, shadowed by graying stubble, his posture shrunken, defeated, and small.
He didn't cross the street. He didn't approach the glass.
He simply stood in the shadows, watching the warm lights of the bakery, watching the gold lettering on the awning, watching the blue ceramic cake stand gleaming in the window under the soft spotlight.
For a long moment, our eyes met across the quiet avenue.
There was no anger left in my chest. There was no hatred, no desire for vengeance, no bitter urge to step out onto the sidewalk and gloat over his ruin.
There was only the quiet, profound indifference of a woman who had finally stepped out of someone else’s shadow and realized that the sunlight had been waiting for her the entire time.
A sleek silver sedan pulled up to the curb in front of the bakery.
David stepped out, dressed in a sharp charcoal blazer, holding an umbrella against the light evening mist. He smiled as he saw me through the glass, walking up the two stone steps to open the door.
May you like
Across the street, Andrew lowered his head, turned his back to the light, and walked away into the Chicago twilight, his footsteps swallowed by the rumble of the evening train.
I picked up my purse, stepped out onto Lincoln Avenue, and let David take my hand as we walked into the warm summer night.
