The Playback
The thing about committing fraud on live television is that they let you watch it back.
I'm sitting cross-legged on the floor of my dead aunt's bakery at 4:47 in the morning, replaying my Good Morning New York segment for the eleventh time on a phone screen that's smeared with butter and self-loathing, and I have to say — TV Ella is magnificent. Hair freshly blown out. Smile like she's been practicing in the mirror for weeks. Confidence radiating from every pore.
The segment starts with the establishing shot — the bakery's warm cream walls, the curved glass cases, the chalkboard menu in Colette's handwriting — and Linda Huang's voice over the footage, smooth as caramel: "Tucked away on Amsterdam Avenue, Colette's Bakery has been an Upper West Side institution for over two decades. Now, with the passing of its legendary founder, a new generation is stepping up to the plate — literally."
Cut to me. Sitting across from Linda in two armchairs they'd wedged between the display cases, bathed in the kind of soft, flattering light that makes everyone look like they've slept eight hours and drink enough water. Linda is wearing a coral blazer and an expression of professional warmth. I am wearing Colette's apron over a blouse I borrowed from Jaya and an expression of barely concealed terror that I have somehow alchemized into earnestness.
"So, Ella," Linda says, leaning forward with her hands clasped. "Your aunt Colette was legendary in this neighbourhood. Twenty-six years. How does it feel to be carrying on her legacy?"
“Honestly, Linda?" TV Ella tilts her head — a move I practiced in the bathroom mirror until Jaya caught me and asked if I was having a stroke. "It feels like coming home. Colette taught me everything," TV Ella says to Linda Huang, leaning forward with the kind of sincere warmth that makes strangers want to hug you. "Her recipes are in my hands now, and I promise New York — every bite is made with love."
Every bite is made by a corporation in Monrovia, California, and costs $4.99 for a box of eight.
I can’t watch myself digging a bigger and bigger hole of lie anymore. I lock my phone and press it against my forehead like it might absorb the shame directly into my skull. The bakery is dark around me except for the glow of the emergency exit sign, which casts everything in a faintly apocalyptic red, which feels appropriate. The industrial mixer looms in the corner like a threat. I tried to use it once, three days after Aunt Colette's funeral, and it made a sound like a helicopter trying to land on a trampoline. I haven't touched it since.
The bakery — Colette's Bakery, 247 Amsterdam Avenue, Upper West Side — still smells like her, even six weeks after she died. Butter and vanilla and that faint, floury sweetness that hung in the air like a benevolent ghost. The walls are the same warm cream she painted them in 1997. The display cases are the same curved glass she picked out from a restaurant supply store in Queens, driving there herself in a borrowed van because she didn't trust anyone else to choose the right ones. The chalkboard menu above the register is still in her handwriting — looping, confident, twisting and curving the “y” like a native parisian, even though she lived in Brooklyn all her life.
She left me everything. The bakery, the apartment above it, the recipe cards in a flour-dusted box, and the absolute certainty — on the part of the entire neighbourhood — that I would carry on her legacy with grace and competence and really exceptional pastry.
The problem is, I can't bake.
I don't mean I'm modest about my baking. I don't mean I make a decent banana bread but struggle with the fancy stuff. I mean I cannot bake. At all. My scones could be classified as weapons. My madeleines come out looking like soggy dust bunnies. Last week I tried to make a simple butter cake and somehow — through a process I still don't understand and frankly don't want to examine too closely — it caught fire. The batter caught fire, before it went in the oven. I didn't even know that was physically possible, and I have a degree in supply chain management from Columbia University, which is not relevant here but does prove I'm not a complete idiot, despite all available evidence.
So I did what any reasonable person in my situation would do.
I went to Trader Joe's.
The scheme started three weeks ago, born out of desperation and a surprisingly good almond croissant that came frozen in a box of eight. I'd been staring at Colette's empty display cases — empty, in a bakery that hadn't had an empty case in twenty-six years — and the reality of the situation had settled over me like a cold, wet blanket. I couldn't bake. I couldn't hire someone without admitting I couldn't bake. And I couldn't admit I couldn't bake because admitting I couldn't bake meant admitting that my aunt had left her life's work to the one member of the family who was categorically, spectacularly unqualified to continue it.
Grief does strange things to people. Some people cry. Some people journal. I apparently commit light consumer fraud.
The system is elegant, if I do say so myself. Every night after closing, I drive to three different Trader Joe's locations — rotating to avoid suspicion, because I have clearly watched too many heist movies — and I buy their pastries in bulk. Almond croissants. Chocolate chip cookies. Mini palmiers. The occasional fruit tart. I bring them back to the bakery, remove them from their packaging with the care of a surgeon, arrange them on Colette's vintage ceramic trays, dust them with powdered sugar or a sprinkle of flaky sea salt, and display them behind curved glass as if they emerged from my own two hands and a burning passion for artisanal baking.
Nobody has noticed.
Or — nobody *noticed*. Past tense. Because then I went on Good Morning New York and told Linda Huang and approximately four hundred thousand viewers that I hand-laminate my croissants.
My phone buzzes. Jaya.
**Jaya (5:02 AM):** Babe. I have questions. Starting with: WHAT.
I stare at the text for a moment, then type back: **Everything is fine. Going to bed. Don't worry.**
**Jaya (5:02 AM):** It is 5 AM. You are clearly not going to bed. I am a pediatric resident, I know what lying looks like. Small children do it better than you.
**Ella:** Love you. Talk tomorrow.
**Jaya:** We are ABSOLUTELY talking tomorrow.
I pocket my phone and haul myself off the floor. The Trader Joe's bags are waiting in the walk-in — tonight's haul, six bags, brought in through the alley entrance under cover of darkness like the carb-smuggling criminal I apparently am. I need to get them unloaded and the cases stocked before the morning. The TV segment goes live — went live — three hours ago. If even half of the people watching decide to visit, I'll need the cases full by seven.
I load the bags onto the rolling cart, the one Colette used for flour deliveries, the one with the squeaky left wheel she always meant to fix and never did because she was too busy making actual pastry like an actual baker, unlike her disaster of a niece. I wheel it to the back door.
The alley behind the bakery is narrow and not remotely glamorous — dumpsters, recycling bins, the service entrance to the Bellmere Hotel next door. At this hour, it should be empty. It should be silent. The only witnesses to my grocery store shame should be the rats and possibly a raccoon I've been calling Gavin who I'm pretty sure lives behind the dumpster.
I push open the door, cart rattling, bags rustling, and I am mid-step into the alley when I see him.
He's standing at the service entrance of the Bellmere, maybe fifteen feet away. Chef's whites. Dark hair. Sleeves rolled up to reveal forearms that have absolutely no business being that and distracting at five o'clock in the morning. He's holding a cigarette — no, not a cigarette. A pen. He's writing something on a clipboard, leaning against the doorframe with the casual confidence of a man who belongs exactly where he is.
He looks up.
He looks at me.
He looks at the bags.
The Trader Joe's bags. The unmistakable Trader Joe's bags, with their jaunty red-and-cream branding and the cheerful illustration of a man in a Hawaiian shirt, which have never felt more incriminating than in this exact moment.
I am standing in a dark alley at five in the morning holding six bags of grocery store pastries that I'm about to fraudulently present as artisanal baked goods in the bakery I inherited from my beloved dead aunt, and a man with devastating forearms is watching me do it.
He doesn't say anything.
I don't say anything.
Time does that horrible thing where it stretches like taffy, and every second contains approximately one thousand years of mortification.
He looks at the bags again. Then back at me. One eyebrow lifts — just slightly, just a fraction — in an expression I would describe as "intrigued by the unfolding catastrophe."
I yank the cart back inside and fumble the door shut. My hands are shaking. My face is so hot I could brown butter on my cheeks, if I knew how to brown butter properly, which I don't, which is the whole problem.
Through the closed door, in the quiet of the alley, I hear it.
A single, quiet laugh.
