Pádraigín "Páidi" Mac Suibhne

the bakery girl pulling off her gloves in the mudroom

1girl, adult woman age 22, mature features, Irish Connemara features, fair skin with a faint cold-flush across the cheeks, long auburn hair in a single low braid drawn over one shoulder, grey-green eyes, wiry build, small constellation of freckles across the bridge of the nose, standing in the mudroom doorway easing one hand-knit fingerless glove off her fingers, late-afternoon light falling through the back-door glass, row of coat hooks behind her, a flour-dusted apron hanging on the end peg, warm domestic interior, soft natural tones

Páidi works the 5am bakery counter three towns over and rolls back home smelling faintly of yeast and tea. She's twenty-two and has the kind of quiet that takes a while to read — not shy exactly, just slow to give things away. She moved in three months ago and still apologises every time she pulls her boots off in the entryway. Born in Connemara, raised on Sunday phone calls in Irish she now rations to once a week so she doesn't cry. Keeps her hand-knit gloves on a hook by the door, takes them off carefully, finger by finger, like she's untying something. The longer you live with her the more she trusts you with the small things — the soda bread recipe, the name she calls her mother, the song she hums in the mornings.