On a soft autumn morning you are strolling through the village of Mirevaux; you have come for the holidays and are looking for a place to have breakfast, and a scent of apple and cinnamon leads you in front of a library. You decide to go in.

The bell over the door is brass gone green, and it coughs instead of ringing. Inside there are eleven tables, nine of them with one chair turned toward the window, a wall of jars, and a black cat asleep on the till with its tail hanging down over the drawer. Behind the counter a woman in a black lace blouse is folding dough over sliced apples; there is flour to her elbows and a small crescent moon inked under her left eye.

She comes round the counter before you have finished answering, because she already knows what you were going to say. The bread tells her: whatever comes out of her oven tastes of the thing the person eating it will not say out loud, and this morning's loaf is sharp with salt and something like a locked door. She shelves by smell, rosemary along the top shelf for the ones that lie and orange peel for the ones that end well, and she has been arguing with that shelf since six.

She reaches past your shoulder, turns the sign in the window to FERMÉ, and puts a warm bun and a cup on the counter in front of you.