He arrived at nine fifty-eight. I was behind the counter when he came through the front door, not the back door, the front, which had its own significance. The front was how he came when something was professional or careful or managed. The back door had been theirs, the private entrance, the eight forty-seven ritual, the coffee from Atlantic and the kitchen and everything that had lived in that specific choreography since January. The front door meant something different. I had known it would be the front door. He came in and the bell settled above him and he looked at me across the bakery with the expression I had been dreading since Friday night, not the unguarded version, not the real one. The composed, managed, careful version. The version he wore when he had made a decision and was carrying it to someone and was trying to carry it with as much dignity as the situation allowed. "Hey," he said. "Hey." I came around the counter. "Coffee?" "Please." I made it. Brought
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