The gift bag held a hairbrush. His. Juliet had taken it from the bathroom during her last weekend at his house, three weeks earlier, because she had heard him on the phone saying the bakery would be closed by summer.
What she pulled out second was a tablet. She had installed the camera over the front counter herself in September, after somebody left a one-star review describing a dish we do not make. She had been quietly saving the footage ever since. She turned the screen toward the room and played eleven seconds: her father unfolding a napkin, and his own hand pressing something into the icing while his girlfriend’s purse blocked the plate.
Nobody clapped. That is not how it went. A room of twenty-five people just went very quiet, the way people do when they realize they nearly participated in something. An older man by the window said, loudly, that he would take another cinnamon roll. Then most of them did.
