The Apprenticeship Letter

Lucia had worked behind the bakery counter every morning since she was fourteen. At first it was a favor to her mother; later, it simply became her life. The bell above the door and the smell of proving dough had become as familiar as breathing. So had the regulars who ordered the same thing every day.

She had also, quietly and without telling anyone, been sending her design portfolio to studios in other cities for almost a year. Most had never replied. One, in a city six hours away, finally did.

The email arrived on an ordinary Thursday morning, while Lucia was restocking the pastry case. It offered her a paid twelve-month apprenticeship, starting in six weeks, working under a designer whose work she had admired for years. The apprenticeship had been offered to only one applicant that year, and somehow it was her.

Her mother had told her, more than once, that the shop would be hers eventually, the way it had once been her own mother's. She had simply assumed Lucia agreed, the way people assume a river will keep flowing the direction it always has.

If Lucia accepted the apprenticeship, her mother would have to hire someone else, and quickly. If she turned it down, she suspected an offer like this wouldn't come around again. Neither option felt simple, and she was tired of pretending that it did.

That evening, she watched her mother close out the register, counting coins into neat paper rolls the way she had for twenty years. Meanwhile, the bakery kept running exactly as it always had, as if nothing had changed at all.

She should have told her mother about the applications months ago, before the decision arrived all at once like this. She didn't say anything about the email that night. Instead, she went upstairs, pulled an old duffel bag down from the closet, and set it open on her bed. She didn't pack anything yet. She just sat there for a while, looking at the empty bag, letting herself imagine what it might hold.