The Baker's Wife Read Online Free PDF

said, “I still think we could have taken over a failing bakery in some town where the Mansfields don’t live.”
    Audrey’s head swiveled away from the street and toward her son-of-the-stubborn-perspective. She was going to say We don’t run from problems or We made this decision as a family or something similar to remind him that several good people had chosen to stand by him in the universe of his particular heartache, at no small cost to themselves, but she ran out of time.
    In the space of a second her car plunged back into fog like a bullet passing through flesh. Her foot found the brake in half a second more, but she entered the intersection of Main and Sunflower blind. The tires squealed, but her good reflexes were not enough to overcome the laws of physics. The sedan bulldozed something solid and heavy where nothing solid and heavy should have been.
    Audrey gasped and threw her arm across Ed. He reached out for the dash, body folding over his elevated leg, but his seatbelt held him back. The object they struck stayed in front of the car, metals cracking and screeching. Ed shouted and Audrey felt the front end of the car rise and then fall again as it was lifted by whatever part of the obstacle had slid under the wheels. The thing came apart and clattered, separated, scattered beneath the blanket of fog. The street stilled.
    Mother and son glanced at each other in shadows, stunned. Ed’s steady but heavy breathing was the only human sound to reach Audrey’s ears, and that’s what frightened her the most.
    She began to fumble with her seat belt, praying aloud— “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus”—and mixing this with jumbled instructions: “Where’s your phone? Call 9-1-1. Did we hit someone? Stay in the car. Please, Jesus. Sweet Jesus.” It took longer than it should have to find the seat belt button and release the latch. She clawed at the handle and pushed the door open. Ed had his phone to his ear.
    The fog hid what she needed to see, what she hoped not to see. She swung her feet out of the car and gripped the top of the doorframe with her right hand, then hauled herself up—an old habit that, this time, probably saved her from breaking her neck. Her legs went out from under her before she was upright, her shoes sliding across the paved road as if it were covered in ice. She lost her grip on the door as she went down and felt the strain in her shoulder as the jolt tipped her sideways. She landed on the heel of her left hand, tiny shards of deteriorating asphalt puncturing the skin at her wrist, then cracked her elbow on the threshold of the car’s frame.
    â€œMom!” Ed was not about to stay put in the passenger seat, and Audrey heard him talking to an emergency operator while he climbed out of the car on his side and ran around the back.
    Shooting pain from her wrist doubled up at her elbow and immobilized her entire arm for a few seconds. Something damp seeped in through the denim of her jeans as she sat there on the ground, and when she could move her fingers again she noticed they were covered in a dense, sticky goo.
    Ed’s tall form bent over her. “She’s conscious,” he said into the phone. And then to her: “Did you hit your head?”
    â€œNo. Watch where you step.”
    He took first note of the spill.
    â€œIt must have busted an oil line or a gas line or something,” she said, wondering at the same time if that was even possible. She knew nothing of auto mechanics. Audrey rolled cautiously to her knees, holding her injured wrist to her stomach. There at eye level, she saw where some of the fluid had splashed onto the body of the champagne-colored car. It dripped slowly down the sides, dropping truth into Audrey’s mind with a revolting splash.
    â€œThat’s a lot of oil,” Ed said. He moved toward the front of the car, eyes on the slippery hazard, phone still to one ear.
    â€œEd, no. Go get your