Read Chapter 5: The Flour Necessities

The morning light through the bakery window was unkind, exposing every gray cobweb, every smear of ancient grease, every crack in the terracotta floor. Clara had swept for an hour, and the dust she'd raised now sparkled in the sunbeams like malicious glitter.

The oven was her next opponent.

It was a massive thing of black iron and chrome, crouching in the corner like a sleeping beast. Clara had researched commercial ovens last night between sips of the passable rosé Jacqueline had pressed into her hands. She knew the theory. Heat distribution. Steam injection. Stone decks.

She turned the dials with the confidence of someone who had never baked anything more complicated than a supermarket birthday cake. The pilot light clicked. Gas hissed. Then, with a satisfying roar, blue flames appeared beneath the stone floor of the oven.

"I've got this," she told the empty room.

She did not, in fact, have this.

The recipe she'd found in a dog-eared binder on the counter was written in Élise's looping French handwriting. *Pain traditionnel*. Simple enough, she'd thought. Flour. Water. Salt. Yeast. Four ingredients. How hard could it be?

The first attempt produced a dense, pale brick that clunked against the wooden worktable like a stone.

The second attempt was worse. The dough had been too wet, sloshing across the counter like a beached jellyfish, and she'd added so much flour to salvage it that the resulting loaf could have served as a doorstop.

The third attempt rose beautifully. Clara had felt a surge of triumph watching the dough double in size. This was it. This was the one. She'd slashed the top with a knife in the professional-looking diagonal pattern she'd seen in photos, brushed it with water, and slid it into the oven with trembling hands.

Twenty-five minutes later, she pulled out a loaf that looked... almost right. Golden brown. Crusty. She let it cool for precisely the instructed amount of time, then sliced into it with a ceremonial breath.

The inside was a wet, gluey mass of undercooked dough.

"No," she whispered. "No, no, no."

The door creaked.

Clara spun around, shoving the ruined loaf behind her back. A tiny woman with white hair and eyes like a curious sparrow stood in the doorway, wiping her hands on a flowered apron.

"Bonjour," the woman said, peering around Clara's shoulder. "I am Sylvie. From the patisserie across the square. I saw the smoke from your chimney and thought I should introduce myself."

"There's no smoke," Clara said quickly. "No fire. Everything is perfect. I'm—I'm baking."

"Ah." Sylvie's eyes glittered. "What are you baking?"

Clara's mind raced. She had no flour on her clothes—wait, yes she did. She was absolutely coated in a fine white layer, like a powdered doughnut. Her hair had escaped its ponytail and stuck to her forehead in sticky strands. The kitchen behind her looked like a flour bomb had detonated.

"A baguette," Clara said, her voice pitched higher than normal. "My signature. I'm actually—I'm quite well known for them."

Sylvie's eyebrows lifted. "Really? In London?"

"Yes. Absolutely. I mean, I'm not a professional baker in London—I'm a consultant, I was just explaining to someone—but I've won awards. For my baguettes." Clara could hear herself and wanted to die. "I'm actually considered something of a bread artist. Flour artist. Whatever."

Sylvie stepped closer, and Clara backed up, feeling the ruined loaf squash against her spine.

"You must show me," Sylvie said, her smile revealing small, perfect teeth. "I have been baking in this village for forty-two years. I would love to see an award-winning technique."

"That's very kind, but I'm—I'm not dressed for visitors." Clara gestured at her flour-caked apron. "Perhaps another time."

Sylvie's gaze drifted to the oven, where a faint wisp of smoke still curled from the vent. Then to the spilled flour mounded on the counter. Then to the sink, where Clara had shoved her two previous failures under a dish towel.

"You know," Sylvie said conversationally, "Élise used to say her bread needed to feel the baker's heart. She said the dough could tell if you were lying."

"That's lovely," Clara said through gritted teeth. "Very mystical. My dough and I have a very honest relationship. I won the London Bread Excellence Award twice. Three times. With distinction."

Sylvie nodded slowly, her expression unreadable. "How wonderful. The whole village will be so pleased to hear we have such a distinguished baker among us." She turned toward the door, then paused. "The fête is Thursday. Perhaps you can teach a class?"

"Maybe! Possibly! I'll check my schedule!"

Sylvie smiled again and slipped out the door, leaving Clara standing in the wreckage of her kitchen, heart pounding.

She exhaled. "That was fine. That was good. I handled that."

Half an hour later, Clara had scrubbed the kitchen into something resembling order and was attempting to salvage the dough situation when she heard voices outside the open window—voices that carried clearly in the morning air.

"—yes, from London, I heard she was quite successful," said a man's voice.

"—won international prizes," Sylvie's voice answered, higher and more animated than it had been in Clara's presence. "She said she's an award-winning artist of the baguette!"

"Really? Élise was never much for prizes. She said bread was about soul, not medals."

"Perhaps this one is different. Perhaps she will show us at the fête."

"Award-winning, she says? In London?"

"That's what I heard. She told me herself."

Clara stood frozen at the sink, a bowl of dough slipping slowly from her hands. She caught it just before it crashed, but the damage was done. The lie had wings.

She was an award-winning baguette artist. In Sainte-Cécile. Where everyone apparently knew everything about everyone by noon.

"Fantastic," Clara muttered, shoving the dough into the sink. "Just fantastic."

The rest of the morning was a parade of villagers stopping by the bakery. An old man with a beret told her he couldn't wait to taste her famous bread. A teenage girl on a bicycle asked if she gave lessons. The butcher's wife brought her a gift of salted butter, pressing it into Clara's hands with the reverence one might show a visiting celebrity.

Clara smiled until her cheeks ached, thanking each visitor, promising nothing, digging herself deeper into a pit of her own making.

By early afternoon, she'd received an official invitation to demonstrate a baguette at the village fête, delivered by the mayor's assistant on a heavy cream-colored card.

Clara stared at the invitation. She'd spent the morning lying to the entire village, and now she was going to fail publicly at the one thing she'd claimed to excel at. Her phone buzzed in her pocket—her assistant, Rachel, presumably wondering where she was. She'd told Rachel she was taking a personal day. Rachel had not sounded convinced.

Clara opened her phone and before she could second-guess herself, she'd typed a message to the only person who might help her out of this catastrophe. Then she deleted it. Then she retyped it.

*I need help. I'm at Le Pain de Lune. Please.*

She stared at the number she'd programmed after the dinner. Julien Moreau. Her enemy. The man who'd insulted her aunt and tried to buy her bakery out from under her. The last person she wanted to owe anything.

She pressed send.