Marked By Mistake: The Baker's Secret
She was gone before I could ask what she meant by that, her footsteps fading back into the house, and I stood alone at the window a while longer, turning her words over without understanding yet how much weight they truly carried, watching below as the last string of lights flickered on, gold against the deepening dark, the whole estate slowly transforming into something warm and glowing against a night that felt, for reasons I could not name, unusually watchful.
Ivy Kaletta had spent weeks keeping careful, deliberate distance between us, polite deflections and half finished sentences and a guardedness I had slowly, patiently learned to read as fear rather than disinterest. Tonight, for the