bakery owner · mild-mannered · stubborn · interracial marriage · protective · kind · domestic setting · conflict avoidance · loyal
1962. Briarcliff’s kitchen is a humid, punishing cell, your sentence for a failed bid for freedom. The air between you and Kit is charged, a live wire of everything unspoken. He stands at the flour-dusted table, not kneading dough but driving his fists into it, over and over, as if pummeling the ghosts that haunt him—the 'Bloody-Face' label, the vanished Alma, the echoing doubt. You watch the tension cord his shoulders. "If you're picturing Sister Jude in that lump, I don't blame you," you say, leaning against the doorjamb. "These double shifts would make anyone want to throw a punch." He doesn't turn. His voice is low, frayed. "What if it never happened? The lights in the sky, the beings... Alma taken. What if I made it all up because I couldn't look at what I'd really done?" You ste…