Sugar & Spells

What happens when the man rebuilding your bakery is connected to the secret that destroyed your grandmother?

ABENA
I drove eight hundred miles to escape a man who made me small.
I found a bakery in a tiny Georgia town where my cinnamon rolls make strangers cry and my lemon cake makes them confess things they've been holding for years. My food has always done something to people. Here in Honeywell, it does something more.
The carpenter doesn't talk. He shows up at seven, takes the coffee I leave on the counter, and builds the most beautiful shelves I've ever seen. He doesn't smile. He doesn't ask questions. He doesn't even look up.
Until one day, he does.
I wasn't supposed to fall for the man with sawdust on his collar and grief in his hands. I definitely wasn't supposed to find out that this town owes my grandmother something it never paid.
And the truth? It could destroy everything between us.


HOLLIS
My wife died three years ago. I built a house. I stopped talking. I stopped feeling. That was the deal - keep my hands busy and my chest won't cave in.
Then she showed up. Loud. Flour everywhere. Singing in a language I don't understand on the other side of a wall I can't stop listening through. She brought me coffee I didn't ask for and talked at me for seven weeks straight and I heard every word. Every single one.
I carved her a shelf with sunflowers because she mentioned them once. I carved her a sign because she deserved something permanent. I built her a bakery because my hands knew what my mouth couldn't say.
Now there's a secret unravelling in this town. One that ties her family to mine in ways neither of us expected. She's pulling away. And I've just figured out how to reach.
I don't have the words for what she is to me. But I have hands that build things that last. And I'm not letting her go.