The man in number 14 moved in on a cold morning in March, and by April, everyone on Elm Street had a theory about him.
He was tall and silent, with gray hair and heavy boots, and he never waved or stopped to talk. His curtains stayed closed, and mysterious smells drifted from his kitchen window before sunrise. Mrs. Patel decided he was hiding from the police, the teenager next door announced that he was probably a spy, and little kids crossed the street to walk on the other side.
Nina, who lived in number 12, did not have a theory — she had a problem. The delivery company had left her package, a birthday present for her mother, at the wrong door. His door.
She knocked, and after a long silence the door opened a crack. Up close, the man's face was not frightening at all — it was simply exhausted.
'I think you have my package,' Nina said. 'Sorry to bother you.'
He returned with her box, and behind him, for a moment, she saw the kitchen: metal trays everywhere, and on every tray, rows and rows of golden bread.
'You're a baker!' The words jumped out of her.
He looked embarrassed. 'For forty years,' he said. 'My wife and I owned a bakery across town, where she did the cakes and I did the bread. She passed away last winter, so I closed the shop and moved here. But at four in the morning, my hands still want to work. Old habits.'
'What do you do with all of it?'
'I deliver it to the shelter on Green Street, because someone should eat it while it is still warm.'
Nina came back the next morning with two cups of coffee. She learned that his name was Walter, that his sourdough had once won a prize at the state fair, and that he talked to the bread while it baked, because his wife always had.
By June, the whole street knew the smell of five a.m. bread, and on the Fourth of July, for the first time, Walter appeared at the celebration. He brought rolls.