Heart of Grace Read online

  HEART OF GRACE

  Lisa Pattinson

  CONTENTS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter One

  Somewhere in the offices of Sunnyside Bakery, located in the sleepy city of Grace, is a slip of paper with instructions to deliver pastries and breads to the Wellsley Middle School no later than 6:30 in the morning for the next month for a fundraiser to help the girls’ soccer team in its upcoming season.

  That slip of paper, through no real mistake of anybody, is wedged between pages of paperwork in the front office of the bakery and not on top of the morning delivery outbox where Dianne, the head baker, and Sarah, the deliverer, can see it.

  Until, of course, amidst the frantic moving around the bakery to finish making all the orders, that same slip of paper falls out and trips Sarah like a banana peel causing her to lose her footing on her way back from clearing the van.

  At 5:24 AM, just after Sarah hands over the slip of paper, Dianne makes the decision of shifting the order of deliveries that changes how the rest of the day turns out.

  ***

  Amber is compelled to shoot her clock for blaring the alarm before 6 AM. Except it’s not her alarm clock making that raucous noise so early in the morning, but her phone. She bolts upright in mild panic when she sees her boss’s name appear on the screen.

  “Hello, Una? What’s wrong? Is the coffee shop on fire?” she rasps, a hundred variations of the coffee shop being on fire running through her mind.

  There’s a beat of silence from the other end of the line until, “What? No. It’s not on fire.”

  “Oh.”

  “I need you to get dressed and head towards the bakery to pick up the pastries for this morning. They had a mix-up about the deliveries they have to do this morning and they won’t get to us on time.”

  “What? Why me?”

  “Because why not. Besides, I trust you to do the job right. And know exactly what we need. Also, you’re the closest out of all of us to that bakery. So get there as soon as you can and then head straight to the shop.”

  Una’s good nature humoring her so early in the morning has run out because Amber doesn’t get the chance to ask any more questions when she hears the click ending the call.

  She glances at the time on her phone and groans when she finds that she had twenty extra precious minutes to sleep and stay underneath her blankets to stave off the cold January morning. The fact that she works at a coffee shop consoles her (but just barely) because that means she gets to offset such an early morning with a free hot cup of coffee.

  ***

  Of all the mornings to lose sight of important possessions, like her car keys and her wallet, it seems fitting that it happens on a morning like today. After a frustrating three minutes going back and forth through rooms in her apartment, she finds her keys tucked in her wallet and her wallet underneath her coat by the door.

  Amber inspects the back of her jeep one last time after dumping all the belongings she’d stockpiled in her car for the last three months into her apartment to be sorted later before heading towards the bakery.

  The smell of fresh made bread and pastries wakes her senses the way grumbling about a hectic start to her day couldn’t. She stands just inside the door in sweet satisfaction being engulfed by the warmth and the scent.

  She rings the bell on the front counter and waits just as she adjusts her gloves. She expects Dianne to show up from the back room. Who does come out to greet her is, however, not the baker.

  “Uh, is Dianne around?”

  The stranger donning the Sunnyside Bakery uniform shakes her head before leaning on the counter. “She’s out on delivery with Sarah. It’s just me right now. Can I help you?”

  “Who are you?” she blurts out instead.

  “Uh, Heather. But I don’t have a nametag yet.” Heather pats the space just above the company logo on her uniform indicating her lack of nametag.

  “Do you work here?”

  “I do now.”

  It’s highly suspect, this random woman standing in place of where Dianne is supposed to be. But she knows Dianne, has for years, and Amber knows that Dianne wouldn’t associate with bad people. Especially if this Heather person is a burglar because this is nowhere near how you’re supposed to burgle.

  “So can I help you or are you just gonna stand there and look pretty?”

  Amber quirks a brow at the forward comment. Heather doesn’t seem all too perturbed by her reaction and just wipes down an already spotless counter. She glances up at the clock on the wall behind Heather informing her that it’s now seven minutes past six and she doesn’t have time to dilly dally around.

  “I’m here for the Brown Bean delivery? My boss already talked to Dianne. I’m supposed to pick up our order.”

  A light of recognition flickers on for Heather and she snaps her fingers. “Yeah, yeah. Your stuff’s out back.” Heather beckons for her to follow past the counter until she stops and turns around. “Wait, I gotta know your name.”

  Amber stops in her tracks but doesn’t say a word wondering if this is where the scam comes in. Heather shakes her head, as if reading her thoughts, but there’s a grin on her face. “I gotta know the name matches with the one on the pick-up list. It’s my first day, dude, I’m not trying to get in trouble.”

  She eyes her for a second but relents, figures if she’s just doing her job then it makes sense that Heather’s only doing hers. “Amber Wallis.”

  “Cool. Ok, Amber, come on,” Heather says before disappearing to the back room.

  After hustling back and forth three times with Heather until her jeep’s hatchback is filled with baked goods, she signs off on the pick-up list beside her name. She offers up her thanks to Heather with a gloved handshake who doesn’t hesitate to take it.

  “No problem. It’s my job.” Heather seems more than amused with herself when she taps on the logo on her uniform.

  “Right. Anyway, I’ll see you around,” she says just before she opens her door and slides in the driver’s seat. In the still silence just after she’d shut her door, Amber swears she heard Heather say ‘I hope so’.

  She glances up at her rearview mirror and finds Heather offering her a small wave and returns the gesture. She brings her hands to her mouth to breathe out warm air even as her eyes remain fixated on her rearview watching Heather run back into the bakery and shut the back door.

  She checks the time on her dashboard. She swears aloud, the visible puff of breath in her car dissipating in the air.

  She cranks the heat up to the highest level and the volume for Beyonce’s song Countdown to eleven and guns it towards downtown where Brown Bean is located. She’s just hoping that if Gregory, Una’s cop husband, ends up pulling her over that none of it is her fault.

  ***

  No police cars blast their sirens as she goes twenty miles over the city-wide speed limit and makes it to the Brown Bean in record time and turns in the spot next to Una’s Lexus parked out back and just missing by no more than two inches. Amber breathes out a giant sigh of relief thanking God in Heaven that she hasn’t given Una another reason to be even more upset and they haven’t even opened yet.

  It’s 6:47 AM and Una’s dashing out to meet her before she’s even fully out of the car.

  “Thank fuck you’re here. This is not how I wanted to start my morning,” Una comments with a slight shake of her head. “Open up the back and help me get these pastries in.”

  Dutiful as ever, Amber follows suit and starts hauling the baked goods into the store knowing that this setback is going to delay their proper start to the morning. She’s just praying to the heavens above that this is it for at least the
next few hours.

  They’re only a few rows away from stocking up the front glass counter with the pastries and getting the coffee halfway from brewing when the locals start pouring in. Ana, one of their recent hires from the local community college, shows up an hour early than her usual shift and rushes to help them. The three of them wrangle the morning frenzy as best they can with Ana and Amber up front and Una in the back getting everything settled for the rest of the morning.

  “Good morning, Dr. Olsen. The usual?” Amber asks even though she knows the answer to her own question. Dr. Petra Olsen, the best optometrist in the city with her office just across the street from the Brown Bean, has been coming to this place for as long as Amber can remember. Una says that Dr. Olsen was there when it opened and just never left. Just like she’d never changed her order from a venti plain dark roast and multigrain bagel.

  Dr. Olsen offers a small smile and nods before taking a seat by one of the giant windows and waiting patiently. Amber is just glad that despite the surprise to her morning, it’s good to see that some things just don’t change.

  Una joins the two of them out front when business picks up by 8 AM and a small line forms in front of the register. They don’t slow down until it’s a little before 10 AM by which point some of the local community college kids have shown up and part of the shop becomes a makeshift study hall.

  About half an hour later another local named Janine, the receptionist at Dr. Olsen’s office and one of Amber’s good friends, shows up and orders her usual.

  “Large mocha latte and chocolate chip muffin?” she asks even as she’s pulling the muffin tray from the display and Ana’s starting on her drink.

  “You know me so well.”

  Amber snorts. “It’s a talent since you’re such an enigma.”

  Janine, in all of her maturity, scrunches her face and sticks her tongue out even as she leans on the counter and takes out her debit card for Amber to take in exchange for the chocolate chip muffin. They both turn their heads when they hear the creaking sound of Una’s office door and Una comes out talking on the phone before heading to the kitchen in the back.

  Janine whistles in appreciation and Amber rolls her eyes for it. “It’s like you forget that Una’s married and that her husband is a cop every time you come in here...which is literally every day.”

  Janine doesn’t seem deterred in the slightest. “What’s life without a little excitement, without a little danger?”

  “I’m pretty sure she sees you as like a little child,” Amber says, an amused grin on her face. Janine glares at her and snatches her card back.

  “It’s not even noon yet and you’re already crapping on my party. You just can’t let a girl lust after a married woman in peace, can you?”

  Amber laughs and passes off the finished drink from Ana to Janine who stalks off to one of the tables by the window.

  After a few minutes of calm, she swipes a slice of banana bread from the display and picks bits and pieces from it as a small victory snack for staying on her feet this long. She’s proud of getting through the last couple of hours but the adrenaline pumping through her this morning has long abandoned her system. She’s now looking forward to the end of her shift in a few hours where she’ll want to sit on her couch and let reality television lull her to an afternoon nap.

  She turns her head when she hears Una emerge out of the kitchen holding onto some papers with her glasses perched atop her head. “Ana can you handle the front for a little bit? I want to talk to Amber.”

  Ana smiles and nods happily like she always seems to be even this early in the morning, and proceeds to refill their dwindling stock of pastries. The same mild panic from this morning surges in Amber’s belly and she tries to recall if she’d done anything wrong. She’s hoping Gregory didn’t actually see her speeding and waited to call Una about it because it really was an emergency.

  Una closes the door when she gets in the office that smells even stronger of coffee than the rest of the shop. She thinks it has everything to do with the copious amounts of Americanos Una consumes herself.

  “Have a seat. I wanted to talk to you about this morning.” She keeps her mouth shut but she feels sweat forming on her back. “I can’t thank you enough for just going and doing what you had to.”

  “No problem, it’s my job,” she says feeling a little more relieved that she's not in trouble. Amber gets a funny feeling when she hears herself say the words and remembers the woman from the bakery this morning say the same thing to her.

  Una purses her lips and pulls her glasses back down from her head. “It’s not, actually. You’re only listed as a regular barista on the payroll.”

  “Oh.”

  “But that’s why I wanted to talk to you.” Una leans back in her chair, tapping her chin with the tip of her glasses. Amber does her best not to be intimidated so she doesn’t dare move a muscle. “How do you feel about being promoted to opening manager? You’d get a raise and a few more responsibilities, but it’s still basically the same.”

  Amber leans forward. She hadn’t expected this sort of talk. “Opening manager? You mean be in charge of opening the Bean every morning?”

  “Pretty much. You’d get the keys to open. I know you’ve been wanting a bigger role around here but I’m not retiring for a while so you can forget about owning this place and settle for the next best thing.”

  She laughs along but she knows Una’s telling the truth. She has been wanting to do more than just be a barista. It’s a great job and she loves it, but she’s still young and she wants to do more. She’s even considered taking some night classes for business management at the Grace Tech Community College but hadn’t been able to make up her mind fully to do anything tangible with it.

  “I thought I’d offer because you did a great job today, like you do every day, and frankly, I was ready to stab Gregory this morning when I found out about the mix-up. And let me tell you, I don’t think it’d look good on my record for stabbing a police officer.”

  “No, I guess not.”

  “It may seem short notice,” Una starts, “but you’ve been working here for a while now and you know just about everything in this place like I do. And with you coming in and helping out this morning, it just seems like the perfect time.”

  Amber stays pretty quiet but is flattered that her hard work is paying off and Una’s noticed it. And now that she’s being offered a promotion, it feels like a big step in the right direction.

  “Thanks. That means a lot, actually.”

  “No need to thank me. You can start as opening manager as soon as today and I’ll get the paperwork set up by next week.” Una places a set of keys on her desk and slides it forward, a tangible representation of what’s awaiting her.

  “So I just open from now on?”

  “Yeah, but since the bakery is helping the school for the next few weeks, I’d need you to pick up the pastries until they go back to normal deliveries.”

  “Oh.”

  Una pulls her glasses from her face. “Is that gonna be a problem?”

  Amber does the math in her head and realizes that she’d be waking up a lot earlier than she does now to get the baked goods ready by the time the Bean opens.

  Una seems to be able to read the worry from her mind when she clears her throat and interrupts Amber’s thought process.

  “Your hours just moves up and starts from when you get the orders from the bakery. You’d get out an hour and a half early than you normally do because you start an hour and a half early. The other stuff, I can tell you about later. It’s just that this month I need you to focus on getting to the bakery on time and getting our daily orders.”

  “Ok,” Amber nods mulling over everything even though she knows that there’s really not much to mull over. “I think I can handle that.”

  “Look, if you need more time to think about the position, then that’s fine. Just try to get back to me as soon as possible. Preferably this week. You know I don’t have
time to waste.”

  She shakes her head and takes the keys from the desk. “No, I accept.”

  “Great. Congratulations.” Amber shakes Una’s offered hand, elated about her promotion. “Now get out of my office,” Una says with a slight smirk.

  “Yes, Boss,” she says with a small salute before heading out front with Ana to share the good news.

  By the time she clocks out a little after the lunch rush, Charlene, one of her other co-workers at the Bean, has announced to the rest of the patrons in there about the promotion by rolling one of the menus into a paper bullhorn. Feeling equal parts grateful and embarrassed, she laughs off the small applause everyone, including Una, gives her like she’d somehow just won a prestigious award and not just a small promotion.

  Even so, she’s reminded that regardless of how she starts her days, there’s no other place she’d rather be.

  ***

  Very early mornings aren’t really Heather’s thing. Well, unless it’s like watching the sunrise or taking on some late night adventure that bleeds into the mornings or whatever. But this part time job Dianne, one of the best friends she’s had since childhood she still keeps up with, offered her when she caught wind that Heather was trekking all over the continental U.S. and making her way through the northwest seemed like a pretty solid deal. Plus she didn’t have much planned after her short stint in Seattle.

  Heather hesitated at first because she knows how Dianne transforms into Mother Mode as she likes to call it and worries about her more than her own family does. But Dianne sweet talked her way into making it so that Dianne needed a favor. A helping hand at the storefront since she’s so busy baking. Her friend even offered the empty studio apartment above their garage that she can stay in until she’s figured out what she wants to do. And Heather may not be a lot of things, but she’s fiercely loyal (especially to someone like Dianne). Besides, a semi rent-free place to crash? That’s just too good to pass up.

  So she agreed.

  And now Heather finds herself in a small city an hour outside of Portland wearing a red Sunnyside Bakery uniform sans nametag.