Sunny's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Sunny had signed the lease on the empty shop that morning, and by afternoon she realized she didn't know a single person in Oakvale. The keys sat heavy in her jeans pocket. Her red shirt still had flour on the cuff from the test batch she'd baked at dawn in her sister's kitchen, three towns away. She had six weeks before her opening. She needed regulars. Regulars needed to be neighbors, and neighbors needed names. She walked the square with a tin of shortbread under one arm. Doors were shut. A hardware store had a hand-lettered sign that said back in an hour. A woman watering planters looked up, then away. Sunny smiled anyway and kept walking. By the third closed door she felt the tin getting heavier and her smile getting thinner. She cut down a path between two buildings to sit somewhere quiet and think. The path opened into a small green square with a pond in the middle. Lily pads drifted on the water. Orange and white koi moved in slow curves under them. A wooden bench sat at the edge. Sunny dropped onto it and set the tin beside her. Something moved in the grass by her shoe. A rabbit. Tan fur, upright ears, and a bright red scarf tied around its neck in a neat knot. It was not wild. It sat and looked at her like it was waiting. "Someone tied that on you," Sunny said. She checked the scarf for a tag. Nothing. She looked around the square. Empty benches. No owner calling. She broke off a corner of shortbread and held it out flat. The rabbit hopped closer, sniffed, and ate from her palm. Then it turned and hopped three steps toward the path, stopped, and looked back. "Okay," Sunny said. She stood up. The rabbit led her past the pond, around a low stone wall, and up to the porch of a small cottage tucked behind a hedge. An older woman was kneeling by a flowerbed with muddy gloves. She saw the rabbit and laughed. "You found my runaway." She stood and brushed off her knees. "Third time this month. He likes strangers better than me." "I have shortbread," Sunny said, holding up the tin like proof of something. "I'm opening a bakery on the square. Six weeks." The woman lifted the lid, took a piece, and chewed. Her eyebrows went up. "Come back tomorrow at ten," she said. "My reading circle meets on the porch. Eight women. All of them eat." Sunny wrote the time on her palm with a pen from her pocket. The rabbit was already nosing at the tin again. She left one more piece on the step for it and walked back toward the square with a name in her hand and eight more waiting.