The Demon in the Pastry Shop

9: Those Who Look Back

 Jude flipped through an old photo album. Kit watched from the doorway, waiting for bread to rise in the kitchen. Part of his shoulder obscured the grey toned pictures, but she could see enough of the elaborate glass structure to know they were memories from the Musery. Laurel was there in one of them. The sight of him made Kit shrink back.

"Being as silent as you are, it's incredible how bad you are at sneaking up on someone," Jude remarked from his armchair, changing the scenes of the book.

Kit blushed as she revealed herself. Her kitchen towel was lined with winged apples with cowboy hats (Luca loved the design) and she gripped it in her hand as she rested her hands on her hips.

"Is everything alright?" Jude folded his hands over his knee.

She gestured at the open photo album.

"Am I not allowed to remember?" he chuckled.

Kit rolled her eyes and let her hands fall. She stepped up to him and took his hands in her arm. She knelt down in front of him. The towel draped over Jude's knee and wrapped around Kit's hand, like Luca was tying them together even now.

Her eyes roamed the page and she tilted her head to see better upside down. The one in the corner showed Jude grinning as he tried to hold an exploding champagne bottle -a picture taken at the one second that explained everything. Laurel was there too. His muse friends were there. He was happy there. He barely knew Kit when he came to stay with her. Why?

Kit pointed at the picture and looked up at him with eyebrows tipping up, guilt tipping out.

"A big collaboration in the Ephemeral World," Jude told her, "my best musician met this one's best storyteller. There was powerful art back then."

She let her palm fall open with her question. Jude said before he didn't want to go back, but how could he not when he was so happy then?

If Kit could go back to happy again, back to her voice and her chime, she would.

"I know you look at this picture of me and you look at me now and you see the same muse," Jude brought his hand to her cheek, "but this Jude..." he pointed at his image, "is the one that never saw Luca in the years before he died when he should have. I like not being him anymore."

She nodded slowly, though she didn't quite understand yet. She patted his hand and got up to attend to her bread.

"Kit?" Jude called her back for a moment.

She waited by the doorway.

"It was you. You changed me from that muse to this one. I'm grateful."

Kit smiled lightly and her gaze trained down. Responses to statements like that were meant only for the best speakers and Kit wasn't a speaker at all. She pointed to the kitchen and returned to her bread baking.