By Bread Alone by Sarah-Kate Lynch

Author:Sarah-Kate Lynch [LYNCH, SARAH-KATE]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780446534192
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

“You know, the levain has never left the boulangerie before,” Louis said as he kissed her good-bye at dawn, handing over a willow basket, a bag of flour and a stone jar of his family’s precious starter. “I hope it brings you luck.”

“It already has,” Esme said, leaning in to him again, his lips soft and supple against her own.

“To think,” he murmured, “there will be some of you and me in the bread you bake, Esme.”

“Like a child,” she said without thinking, then blushed at her foolishness. Couples in the first flush of true love did not talk about babies, even she knew that. But Louis seemed unfazed. He brushed a curl away from her neck and smiled at her so kindly she wanted to cry.

“Yes,” he said, “I suppose. Like a child. Made with love.” She could not for a moment imagine Gordon from Charlie’s work being able to say something like that. Louis’s French romantic streak made it possible to hear things from him that would have her wetting her pants with laughter should they be delivered in an English accent. He kissed her again and went back inside.

Esme floated through the rest of the day, her faith in her lover fully restored. And she baked. For the first time, she baked. One beautiful, brown, slightly lopsided boule of sourdough bread just the way Louis had taught her. Next to the joy of sex, it was the most satisfying discovery she had ever made. She loved the feeling of flour and water under her fingers and the way the texture changed as she mixed it and mixed it until if she closed her eyes she could almost believe it was Louis she was kneading. She slept deeply and untroubled on both three-hour occasions she left her mixture to rise. And despite the unreliable and in fact unknown nature of the apartment’s little oven, she watched through the glass door as her boule turned perfectly from dough into bread.

What possessed her to deliver her first offering in person to Louis’s house that afternoon, she would never know. She must have realized as she looked up his uncle’s address in the phone book that in the circumstances it was a foolish thing to do. She must have known as she took her first ever boule out of the tricky little oven that delivering it to Louis was not necessary. She could have taken it to him at the bakery at midnight. There was no reason to go to his house. To surprise him. To catch him.

Or had she known all along he was too good to be true? Had Charlie’s constant scratching away at her certainty triggered more doubt inside her than she had realized? Esme was to ask herself these and similar questions over and over again in years to come, but in the stifling heat of that summer afternoon as she walked up the dusty road toward Lalinde carrying her wonkily shaped slightly flat but sweet-smelling loaf of home baked bread in a linen dish towel, she asked herself nothing.

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