Chapter 2 of 7Doing You a Favor

The tax bill for The Gilded Truffle sat on the counter where Thea Quinn had left it, weighted down by a jar of huckleberry preserves. Cascade Ridge, Washington, wanted its money. If the shop could not pay, the county would take the building on Main Street and everything inside it, the ledger in the back office included.

She came down from the apartment before dawn on Wednesday and worked the cold rooms with a spiral notebook. The front case wore a cracked pane and trays filmed gray with dust. The tempering machine warmed its bowl, hummed, and quit. In the walk-in, bars of dark chocolate had bloomed white along the edges, and a tub of cream from a dairy up the valley had turned before anyone could use it. At the Safeway the night before, she had stood in the dairy aisle with an empty basket, comparing butter prices she had no reason to compare.

She took inventory as she had been taught, by hand, by nose, by the taste that sits on the back of the tongue. Cocoa butter gone old smells like a crayon left in a hot car. Ganache kept too long tastes of nothing but cold. She filled a page of the notebook with what the shop owned and what it owed, and the two columns refused to make friends.

Her phone rang while she was under the register with a rag.

"Simon. Good morning."

"Thea. I take it you've seen the place by daylight."

"I've seen it. There's a tax bill on the counter with the county seal on it, and I need to know whether the estate pays it or I do."

"Well, that's one way of looking at it. The estate pays what it can, which is very little, and you inherit the rest."

She turned a page of the notebook over and back, and the paper smelled of dust and the huckleberry sweetness that had soaked into the counter years ago.

"The will says nothing moves until I've walked through the building. I've walked through it."

A drawer opened and closed on his end.

"Then the clause is satisfied. I'd still hold off on shifting anything for now."

"Because the county could take the building."

"Because I want to read the file again first. There's more in Annelise's instructions than I've told you."

"Then tell me."

Rain tapped the back window in a slow rhythm she could have set a tempering curve to.

"When I understand it better than I do now, I will. I've asked the county for a statement of what's owed, and you'll have it in writing."

"When will it come?"

"Sooner than you'd like. I'll call you Monday."

She set the phone on the marble slab and stood a moment with the rag going damp in her fist, listening to the rain move along the front window and to the walk-in humming its one note at nobody. The ledger lay on the corner of the desk, closed, its brown-ink flower pressed against the cover.

A knock came at the back door, quick and light.

The young woman on the step had pink hair, rings up one ear, and a canvas apron with a smear of something pale across the cheek.

"Oh! Wow. You're really here."

"I'm really here. Come in out of the rain."

"I'm Fina. Seraphina Moss, but nobody's called me that since third grade and I'd like to keep it that way."

"Fina. You worked for Annelise."

"Two years. I did the ganache, the packing, the market table on Saturdays, the orders, the invoices. I know the far fridge rattles in the afternoon and the second drawer sticks, and I know that isn't what you asked me."

She said it all in one breath and stood with her hands in her apron pockets.

"It wasn't. It was useful anyway."

"Okay. Good. So. Do I still have a job?"

"I don't know yet."

"Oh."

"That's the honest answer. The shop owes money it doesn't have, and I can't promise anyone a paycheck this week."

Fina looked at the cracked case, at the dust, at the notebook with its two unfriendly columns.

"I can work without pay for a while. I don't mean forever. I've got what I saved from the market season, and my parents don't charge me rent."

"That's not a plan. That's a gamble."

"Everybody in town says you were a big deal. That you made chocolate for people who fly in for dinner."

"Fina. What do you want?"

"I want to learn the real thing, not the pretty thing. Annelise never let me past the ganache. She said I wasn't ready, and then she got quiet, and after that she didn't say much of anything at all."

Thea looked at the girl's hands. Steady, and clean.

"Seven tomorrow morning. Bring an apron that isn't pink. The cocoa shows."

"Oh! Wow. Yes. Seven."

The door shut behind her, and the shop went back to being a cold room full of debt.

By late afternoon the rain had settled into the steady gray the foothills wear all winter, and the front door opened without a knock.

"Thea Quinn. My friend, you've inherited a museum."

"The door was locked."

"It was, and you didn't hear me knock, so I let myself in. Forgive me. Javier Rios."

"Rios Modern Chocolate."

"Two streets over. We're doing very well, thank you. I brought you something. A box of ours. Professional courtesy."

He set a black box tied with a white ribbon on the counter. Thea opened it and took one, a dome of dark chocolate, glossy and too even. The shell cracked wrong under her teeth, and the filling had sugar where it wanted salt.

"Well?"

"Your shell's too thick, and the finish is sugar."

Javier laughed, a laugh with a shape to it, like a company logo.

"You're direct. I like that. Which brings me to why I'm here, and I won't waste your afternoon."

"Then don't."

"I'll buy this building. The lease, the case, the equipment, the name too, if you'd rather not see it on somebody else's sign. I'll pay cash."

"It's not for sale."

"My friend, look around. Cracked case, an oven from another century, a county bill on the counter I could read from the doorway. You're standing in a hole holding a shovel."

He said it pleasantly, with his hands open, as though the paperwork were already drafted.

"That bill is mine to deal with."

"And you will deal with it. This town decides slowly whether it likes you, and it has already decided about you. Everyone knows about the trouble you left behind. I heard the whole story this morning over a latte, from a woman who has never met you."

"Then you know I was blamed for something I didn't do."

"I know what got printed. Here, that's the same thing."

"What's your number?"

Thea dried her hands.

"I'll put it in writing. It's reasonable, it's cash, and you'll never have to lie awake wondering where the tax money comes from."

"Reasonable to whom?"

"To both of us, my friend. I'm doing you a favor. Somebody in this town ought to."

He took an envelope from his coat, thick as a seed catalog, set it on the marble slab in the middle of all that empty space, and squared its corner with one knuckle.

"The offer stands. I'll stop by Friday for an answer."

"It's not for sale."

"Think about it, my friend."

The front door swung shut, and he crossed Main Street to a car the color of wet slate. Thea picked the envelope up, found it heavier than paper, and slid it under the jar of huckleberry preserves, on top of the county's bill, where she would have to look at it every time she stepped behind the counter. Then she went back to the desk and opened the ledger to the page with the flower, because if she was going to lose the shop she intended to know exactly what she was losing.