can’t just start selling croissants and coffee out of a church.”
“That’s why we’re remodeling it, kiddo,” Gabriel replied, smiling and squinting through the sun at the traffic going by. “See all those cars? This place is perfectly situated. There’s an entire business development park just a mile down the road. And the school’s right around the corner. You really have no idea how much Havenwood has grown in the last few years. And I don’t have to take this from a fifteen year old,” he chided.
“Young or old, discount sound advice at your own peril,” she said solemnly.
“Thank you, Fortune Cookie.”
Camille sighed and brushed her long, curly gold hair out of her face. The sun glinted off the large iron bracer that encircled most of her left forearm. This place was sweltering, even though it was already November. Weather in the southern United States was not kind. The humidity level nearly rendered the air a solid. She’d left her favorite hoodie in the car. Yes, they had a car, suddenly. He’d been her guardian for six years, and they’d never had a car. Just like she’d never been outside Tokyo, or gone to a real school. To her knowledge, Gabriel had never started a cafe either, despite claiming to know all about it. He was changing everything all at once. Tokyo to Alabama? Really?
“Why are we here?” she despairingly asked, for what felt like the millionth time today.
“To check for vandalism,” he said.
“You know what I mean.”
“Ask me later,” he said.
She folded her arms. “Is it later yet?”
“Nope,” he responded, good mood unfaltering. “Come on, let’s see how far the construction crew got on the inside.”
“You’re in a good mood,” she commented, sullenly.
“I love this city,” he said, crossing the lot to the building’s front door.
The ‘city,’ in Camille’s opinion, could barely be called such.
Gabriel had claimed Havenwood was fairly large but after their plane had landed they’d driven away from the comforting loom of overpasses and onto a winding two-lane road. The roads coming off the highway curved and snaked through patches of crops, freshly built subdivisions, and patches of crops being turned into subdivisions. There were trees everywhere. Though she saw some small mountains on the horizon, the stretch of highway the church/bakery was situated on was very flat, much more than Camille was accustomed to. She had never been around so many trees in such a concentrated area. And so tall and well-established, and creeping in all around...overhanging the road...she felt a little claustrophobic. The trees in Japan, back home in Tokyo, had been beautiful and spindly and strategically placed in gardens and parks, due to how precious a commodity space was. Trees were centerpieces – works of art. Here, it felt like the trees were the rightful owners of the land – an army that swarmed back in as soon as you cut it back.
Though the leaves were already starting to fall, yellows and reds still splotched the canopy like a canvas. Camille likened them to bruises. The colors reminded her of the trees’ losing battle against the coming winter – sad, but also brave, and therefore beautiful. Though with heat like this in November, she had a hard time imagining much of a true winter.
Camille missed the civilized feeling of buildings on all sides, the order and careful design of architecture. The comforting bustle of a tight-packed metropolis, that she felt an utter lack of now. Just one more factor to add to the list of things that made her feel alien.
The odd part was, for the first time in her life she didn’t look alien. Her parents had been Scottish; she had curly golden hair and green eyes - not exactly common in Japan, where she’d been born. She’d been an object of curiosity there, even though culturally she was about as Japanese as they came. Gabriel, on the other hand...
No one who met them ever asked if Gabriel was her father. It was too obvious that he wasn’t. He was barely thirty, for one thing, and looked even younger. Despite his unaccented English, he was clearly Japanese, if a little tall, with inquisitive slanting eyes and straight black hair that was just an inch too short for a ponytail. Though he looked the part, Gabriel made no secret of his dislike of Japan during the six years he’d been her guardian. He balked at the distance from the mainland, he was annoyed by the language (his Japanese was as problematic as her English), and he hated the food. “Everything in Japan tastes like a tidepool,” he often said. She never had gotten him to tell her where he had come from, but between his attitude and his language she was almost certain he was American. He certainly talked about this city enough.
Gabriel opened the front doors to the building and Camille followed him inside. They propped the doors open to offer some small amount of ventilation - the central air conditioning hadn’t been repaired yet. Ongoing construction was everywhere. The front of the building still looked mostly like a small church sanctuary with pillars and stained glass, but the pews and things had been removed. Sawhorses and stacks of drywall were in their place for now, but eventually there would be tables and chairs, and rugs to cover the stone floor. It felt open and airy, having an extra story of ceiling for the light from the colored glass to play around in. The back of the building, on the first floor, would house the counter and actual bakery. On the second floor were their rooms. They had originally been built to accommodate the pastor, so they didn’t need much updating. Other than a total rehaul of the plumbing. And patched roofing. And the carpets torn up. Apparently there had actually been wood floors underneath two layers of hideous green carpet - but those had to be refinished. And there had been piles of old junk in the closets that had to be cleaned out. Yeah. Not much updating.
But downstairs in the sanctuary - uh, dining room - the construction of the counter seemed to be coming along pretty well. She guessed.
Gabriel was enthusiastic.
“Over here is the coffee and tea bar,” he was pointing out. “It’ll look better when the countertops come in. The display counter goes in here. That’ll have to wait until we’re ready to install the glass. It’ll be chock full of things you won’t eat.”
Camille made a face. “Everything you want to make is either covered in chocolate, covered in caramel, or made of pure sugar to begin with.”
“It’s a bakery, kiddo.”
“You can bake things without sugar, you know.”
“Like what?”
“Like curry pies?” It was a curry-based meat filling in a flaky crust. “Or chuka-man?”
“Chinese pork buns? This is the deep south, Camille. No one will eat that here.”
“How do you know that?” she challenged. “And ‘
“That’s where we are. It’s a region that covers several states in the southeastern United States. It means two things. Well, it means a lot of things, but here are the two I care about: one, this is where the best food in the world is made. This is the home of good, honest folk who understand that butter is good, bacon is better, and there is no point to tea if it’s not ninety-percent sugar. Two, nobody here knows what a curry pie is, and even if you convinced them to try it they’d only smile politely - because of good southern manners - tell you it’s good, and then never order it again.”
“I don’t know about that,” said a jovial woman’s voice from the front of the church. “Seems a little presumptuous to say we’re all so narrow-minded as that.”
Gabriel turned, and a smile lit his face. “Charlotte!”
‘Charlotte’ was a thirty-ish woman of middle height, middle attractiveness, and obscenely long red hair, tied back in a frizzy braid that swung past her waist. Her enthusiasm matched Gabriel’s.
She greeted him with a friendly hug. “I was wondering when you’d find your way back here!” she exclaimed. “I couldn’t believe anyone would take over the old Episcopal church, but now I’m not so surprised.”
“I’m going to assume that’s a compliment,” he said.
“Mr. Katsura,” said another woman, crossing the threshold, “I would welcome you to Havenwood, but I am told that this is not your first residence here.” She didn’t sound very welcoming, in truth; she stepped through the construction gingerly, as if waiting for the building to collapse. She was a stark contrast to Charlotte - short, Japanese, and overdressed in a skirtsuit. Her straight, black hair was cut in a harsh line across her cheek, and her expression was pinched.
