The cold hit me the moment I stepped outside, and I did not go back in.
That was the part nobody seemed to believe, in the weeks that followed. They expected me to circle the block, cool off, and return through the back door the same way I had arrived every morning for eight years. My mother expected it. My sister expected it. Three regular customers texted me personally within forty-eight hours to tell me they hoped whatever was wrong would resolve itself soon, as if I were a weather pattern and not a person who had simply stopped doing something I had never been compensated fairly to do.
I walked home in the dark. The temperature was eleven degrees and I had left my coat on the hook inside the kitchen. I had worn it to the bakery that morning without thinking, the way I had done every cold morning since high school, and when I walked out I did not think to grab it. I was wearing a fleece pullover and my kitchen clogs and I walked the ten minutes home with my arms crossed over my chest, and by the time I reached my own front door my fingers were too stiff to work the deadbolt on the first try.
I had been renting the same apartment for four years. It was the top floor of a converted Victorian three blocks from the bakery, and every January I renewed the lease without much thought because everything I needed was within walking distance and the landlord was responsive and the radiators actually worked. The rent was not cheap for Bellows Falls, but it was manageable on my income, or it had been manageable when I believed my income was something I could count on. That night, standing in my kitchen with my hands under the faucet waiting for the water to warm, I thought for the first time in years about what my income actually was.
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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