Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep - On the Street Where You Live - Intro & Chapter 1

Episode Date: July 15, 2026

Enjoy this sneak peak into Kathryn’s new cozy audiobook, On the Street Where You Live, out on July 28th. Preorder now here. Copyright © 2026 by Kathryn Nicolai. Audio excerpt courtesy of Simon & Schuster Audio read by Kathryn Nicolai, Javier Munoz, Mara Wilson, Alma Cuervo, Holter Graham, Danny Burstein, Natalie Naudus, Kobna Holdbrook-Smith, Patti Murin, from the audiobook On the Street Where You Live by Kathryn Nicolai, published by Simon & Schuster Audio, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.  Used with permission from Simon & Schuster, LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Get more, nothing much happens with bonus episodes, extra long stories, and ad-free listening, all while supporting the show you love. Subscribe now. Before we begin today's episode, I want you to know that I'm sharing something different with you tonight. And this isn't a sleep story, so it may not be the best choice if you are just settling in for bed. If you're ready to drift off, I'd recommend choosing another episode. There are over 400, and saving this one for a walk or a drive or a quiet afternoon, because what you're about to hear is a chapter from my new audiobook, on the street where you live,

which comes out on July 28th. It's set in the village of nothing much, and you'll hear from some familiar friends, including the innkeeper and chef, the original baker and the bookstore keeper. and even alphabet, the dog. It's a story about a neighborhood and the people who call it home, where ordinary moments reveal the ways we're connected to one another. If you've ever found yourself slowing down to notice a porch light coming on at dusk, a neighbor tending to a garden, or the comfort of a familiar street, I think you'll feel right at home here. I'm especially excited because this story is brought to life by an incredible cast of voices, which I am just one among them.

I can't wait for you to hear the whole neighborhood tell their stories. I hope you enjoy this excerpt from On the Street, where you live. Introduction. Welcome to the village of nothing much. The mist is still thick on the lake beside the inn, as a screen door creaks open, and an early riser carries a cup of coffee down to a bench by the water. Lights glow through windows on the second floor, and the tables on the back porch are being laid with mugs and mismatched silverware for breakfast.

Down the gravel drive and out onto the county road, cars wait as the school bus turns onto a side street, a test drive for the first day of school, just a few days off. Closer to town, the farmer's market stalls are being loaded, with the last tomatoes in the first apples of the season. Pots of chrysanthemums, their blooms still closed up, and their colors a mystery, are handed down from a truck bed and lined up along the booths. A whistle blows as a train rolls along the tracks on the edge of downtown. The oak tree on the corner is dropping acorns, and a squirrel runs through the branches

and leaps onto the roof of the bicycle shop. Across the street, the florist's window is full of vases of peonies and pale pink roses and fresh greenstocks of eucalyptus. At the next corner, the open sign is still swinging in the window of the bookshop, and a couple carts of paperbacks sit on the sidewalk, two for five dollars while supplies last. Inside the register rings when its drawer, checked and restocked with change, is pushed into place. The morning air is fresh and cool, and at the record, shop, the door is propped open to let it in, and the sound of a lilting voice and guitar coming from the turntable spills out. The blue construction paper waves and yellow sunbeams that have decorated

the front window of the stationary store are coming down, landing in a pile at the foot of a ladder open on the old wood floor. Beside them, freshly cut, and ready for their turn, is a stack of oversized red maple leaves and orange pumpkins with curly green stems. The next block is the busiest in the village with the cafe on one corner and the bakery on the opposite. The cafe does a brisk business, and the outdoor tables are mostly taken up with folks tucking into breakfast and sipping from cups of coffee and tea. Steam rises from stacks of pancakes and plates of hash browns. The air smells savory and sweet. Friends talk and laugh as they eat, and at a table for one, a newspaper is shaken out and turned to the crossword puzzle. The bell over the door at the bakery rings again

and again as customers pile in, hungry and eager, and step out a minute later with white paper sacks in hand and relieved smiles from ear to ear. Here the yeasty warm scent of bread and rolls and the sweet aroma of donuts and pastries are as thick as that mist on the lake. The window is smudged a bit on the outside where villagers, of all ages, have pressed their fingers against the glass, leaning in to spy the pies

and frosted cakes set out in the display. Farther down the street, at the entrance to the park, the news kiosk is opening up. The man who runs it pushes the counter window up and fiddles with the hook till it slips into the eye bolt and the eaves. He fans out stacks of magazines and newspapers, wading them down with a few old cobblestones that came out of the road when it was repaved.

Inside the park, joggers' feet crunch on the gravel and a few ducks doze beside the pond. A boy tries to tie his shoe lace while his dog strains toward the ducks, her tail thumping against his shoulder. Finally, he gets her to sit, and finished with the knot, he tugs her off down another path. They race together through an open stretch of grass, which is starting to lose its deep green color as the summer comes to an end. On the sidewalk, at the far end of the park, a mail carrier stops to sort through her bag.

In one arm she stacks bills and mailers in the order of the houses on the next block. A hand-addressed envelope catches her eye, and she wonders what news it holds. Just behind her sits the library, already open and busy. The small meeting room has a reserve sign stuck on its door, as it does every Friday morning for the Murder Mystery Book Club's weekly discussion.

A librarian finds a favorite book from childhood in a stack to reshelf and remembers the feel of her bedroom rug underneath her while she reads it. At the next intersection, a woman pulls a piece of tape from a roll and attaches a flyer for the block party to a telephone pole. She gets distracted by the sheer number of nails and rusted staples

that are already stuck into the wood. How many garage sales and found cats and guitar lessons have been announced on this little corner, she wonders. This small grid of streets, this neighborhood, is the center of our story. It's just a handful of roads crossing a little road, crossing over each other as they go east toward the river and stop where the railroad tracks mark the outskirts of town. There are big houses and small ones, some very old and some newer.

On the sidewalk, old tree roots have pushed up and buckled patches of concrete. In fact, the story begins right at this corner, just north of the park and beside the library, in the Victorian house with a stained glass. It's been painted and repainted a dozen different ways over the century and a half since it was built, and it is probably due for another fresh coat. For now, it's a faded pink, with reddish tiles on the roof and pale blue shutters and moldings. It sits turned in its seat, taking advantage of the corner lot,

its front door lined up exactly with the junction of the streets. The yard is bounded by a low wrought iron fence that comes to, together at the corner in a latched gate. It's an excellent place to linger, that gate, and many do. They admire the neatly trimmed boxwoods and hydrangeer shrubs, thick with pink and white blossoms. But it's not the flowers that stop so many in their tracks here. It's the scent. If the windows are open, and they are today, a delicious smell waffs through from the kitchen, tucked all the way in the back of the house. The smell is carried out by some miracle of architecture

or northwesterly breezes and reminds passers-by that this is the house of the baker. Part 1. Friday. Chapter 1. Cardamom and Sesame The baker. The man who lives in the house is still called the baker. For years it was his face you saw. sometimes dusted by a bit of flour, behind the counter of the bakery in downtown.

He was the one who taught folks here to love dark rise and pumper-knuckles with a small-town fervor that made him famous. His dinner rolls were on every Thanksgiving table, his hummingbird cakes featured at each birthday dinner. Everyone came in for his peach pies in late summer and stocked up on cinnamon rolls to get through New Year's Day. He was retired now, having sold the shop to a woman who'd been working for him and learning his secrets for years.

She'd kept all the stand-bys, but bit by bit had been slipping in new flavors and new textures. Beside the classic pies and loaves were milfui dotted with bright, tart, passion fruit seeds, strawberry marangs and churros dipped in chocolate and rolled and crushed pistachios. Still, he was their baker. It was an honorific he'd earned, like doctor or professor, and after all, he was still baking. This morning he'd gotten up early, never having quite left behind the habit of those baker's hours.

He stood at the window in his bedroom. and drew back the thick curtain. The sky was just turning the lightest shade of pink on the horizon. Its light filled in the gaps among the trunks and branches, and while he watched, he could see it shifting, rising, so that after just a few minutes, he could make out the familiar grove of trees that separated his yard from the park.

He liked to take this time after years of rushing off to the bakery in the dark, to just stand, and with no haste whatsoever, watch the day begin. And once it had, well then, time for coffee. Even though it was late summer, his old house, shaded by all those tall trees, stayed cool most days.

He felt the chill of the floorboards and stepped into his slippers, added a threadbare sweater to his pajamas, and headed down the broad staircase. It creaked in all the familiar ways that it had for decades, and he smiled at the sounds. When houses get old enough, they begin to have conversations with their occupants,

bumps in the attic, flickering lights, and squeaking hinges. It depends on the house. but this one always seemed friendly. Even when a door slammed on a breezy day, it felt like a gentle chiding from an auntie, a reminder to be careful with the house, and the house would be careful with him.

So he was careful. He paid attention when he hung a painting over the fireplace in the big front room that his nail was centered and the frame not too heavy. He paid attention when he wrapped Christmas lights around the spindles on the front porch in early December, so that they didn't pull too tight against the thin rods or scratch their paint. And he paid attention in the mornings, like this one, when he slid the chain from the front door. Its old knob, original to the

house, could stick, usually just in cold weather, but sometimes simply because it wanted to. So he turned it slowly until he felt the mechanism twisting smoothly and drew it open to the morning light. The paper was waiting, twisted in its bound spiral, where it had landed halfway up the walk after being lobbed over the gate by the sleepy-eyed paper girl sometime around dawn. The baker stooped to pick it up. As he rose and slipped it under one arm, he was struck by the smell of the late summer air. It was still thick with the scent of gardens, vegetables, and flowers. It smelled of damp soil and green things and sun-warmed wood, but all through the filter of a coming autumn chill. In another week or so, the balance would shift, and the sense of spice and cool air

and autumn would be filling his nose. Walking back up the front steps, he thought of the flavors that shifted in line with the sense as the seasons changed. In the spring, he'd made rhubarb crumble and strawberry jam donuts. In the full flush of summer, he'd made chewy faccatias with olive oil and flakes of sea salt, crackers flavored with thyme and rosemary from the garden.

Then there were fruit pies, blueberry, peach, and cherry. With carrots from the farmer's market, he'd made a carrot cake for a weekend barbecue, and lately he'd been making simple loaves of white and wheat bread for tomato sandwiches. He carried his paper through the long hall, past the front room, the dining room, and library with its shelves mostly full of cookbooks,

and all the way to the back of the house to his favorite place, his kitchen. When he was still working, he would wait until he got into the bakery to have his coffee. He'd brew a pot and sip cup after cup and the quiet hours before the open sign was flipped over in the window. One day, after he sold the bakery, he'd been poking through cupboards at home

when he'd found an old stovetop percolator that probably hadn't been used since the 70s. He'd nearly tossed it out, but something about being newly retired had made him think about second chances. He polished up its stainless steel surface and even used a bit of mineral oil on the walnut handle, and he realized it was actually quite beautiful.

Someone somewhere had spent time designing this object, and it was handsome and functional and made fantastic coffee. It soon became an integral part of his morning. He set his paper on the table and stepped up to the sink to begin preparing his coffee. He filled the pot's reservoir with cold water from the tap, settled its basket into place and spooned in fresh grounds. Lowering the lid, he set the percolator on the smallest burner on the stove and turned the gas flame to medium.

This kind of coffee-making had to be watched over. You didn't set it and go. You waited until the water just started to bubble in the globe on the lid. And when it did, you didn't. turned the flame to low and let it brew for as many as ten minutes, never allowing the pot to boil, otherwise the coffee would be bitter. He understood about things taking time. Of course he did. He was a baker. He'd waited and watched as thousands of loaves rose the right shade of golden brown. So, he stood sentry at the stove and listened.

to the coffee perk. He looked out through the bank of windows and saw that a slight breeze was moving through the yard. He watched the begonias sway in their pots, pedals rippling like slow-moving water, leaves shifting, not enough to flip and show their silver undersides.

That usually meant rain was coming, but this was just enough to stir things up. When the coffee was ready, He pulled his favorite mug down from the shelf and filled it to the brim. He lifted the cup to his nose and took a long inhalation of one of the very best sense in the world. The baker stood, with his eyes closed, the steam rising against his face. He remembered being a child with his nose stuck in the coffee cam. His mother had sent him into the pantry for a fresh can one morning.

and when he hooked his finger into the tab and peeled the lid back, he couldn't believe how good it smelled. He stood taking in breath after breath until his mother came looking for him. She laughed as she confiscated the grounds for the drip pot she had ready. All these years later, whenever he smelled fresh coffee, he went back to that moment,

to the wonder he felt at smell. smelling something so good for the first time. He carried his coffee around to the table and opened the newspaper, flattening it at the crease, but he didn't read. He was still thinking about the best sense in the world, about the breeze in the yard, and about his summer bakes with bright fruits and green herbs.

He thought about what went with coffee, what smelled almost as good as fresh ground beans and the flavors he liked best in the fall. He took a slow drink from the cup, and it all came together in his head like puzzle pieces locking into place. Cardam buns. He often saved cardamom for cold weather,

since it went so well with all spice and nutmeg that it found its way into lots of treats for the winter holidays. Now, not having tasted it in so many months, he had a sudden craving for it. He set down his mug and went straight to the spice cupboard to pull out the small glass jar filled with cardamom pods. He tipped a handful into his palm

and poked around to inspect them. They were bright green, and they reminded him of pumpkin seeds reimagined as badly inflated parade balloons. He carried them over to the table and took another drink of his coffee. He remembered his mother scattering the pods between clean dish towels and running her hands over the cloth with the same movement he used to roll his Play-Dow out into thin ropes.

The papery skins of the pods would crack open under her hands and the tiny gray black seeds would tumble out. out. When he was very young and couldn't sleep, she would steep the cardamom seeds in milk with honey and cinnamon, and they would carry their cups to the window seat on the upstairs landing. He'd climb into her lap and lie back against her, and they'd look out the window and sip their drinks quietly together. When his cup was empty, she'd take it from his sleepy hand and set it on the sill and let him fall asleep against her chest.

Later he'd wake up, tucked into his own bed, dreams of sailing on sweet, milky seas fading from his mind. So many memories of food, of drink, of cooking and baking, of how things smelled or tasted or grew in the garden,

and they were all woven into the sweetness of his mother and her hands kneading dough, stirring a simmering pot, or pulling carrots from the vegetable patch. He looked at his own hands, the dozen pods in their papery skin, and he went to get a couple of clean dish towels from the drawer to begin.

The kitchen was flooded with daylight now, and even the sleepiest birds were up and singing. The baker opened the windows and let the fresh air in. He poured another cup of coffee from the pot and began to assemble ingredients and tools. He liked this part, laying out the measuring cups and his scale,

pulling down the mixing bowls and setting his giant canister of flour on the bench. He liked the part where he got his hands into the dough too. But there was something about the preparation, the neat order of the kitchen, thinking through the steps, when he'd need to heat the oven, how long the buns would prove, and when to grind the spices, that had always made his mind feel orderly and the undertaking satisfying.

He woke the yeast and watched it foam in its warm bath. He'd always wondered about the first baker to figure out yeast. Who found it? What was it like to discover how to use it, and to produce a light, airy bread for the very first time. He thought that for all our modern genius, there was likely ten times as much lost wisdom from our enterprising ancestors.

Wouldn't it be incredible if he could spend a year as a time-traveling apprentice to learn the secrets of the bread bakers in Pompeii, the sweet-steamed bun makers in northern China, the Ethiopian fermenters making Teff into Ingera, and on and on his daydreaming mind went. Tortillas, frybread, popkas and punchkeys end,

he thought, as he came back from all that dreaming, Swedish cardamam buns. This was why his library shelves were crammed with so many books, why he still baked most days. There were still so much to learn. He began to work the dough, mixing together the dry parts with the wet along with the living yeast,

and laid it all out to rise. He made a sort of paste with the ground cardamom and sugar and set it aside. His stomach was growling now, and he had a bit of time to wait before he could proceed with the next step, so he opened his breadbox to see what

he might find. There were bagels made the day before that were a bit hard now, a half-loaf of wheat bread topped with sesame seeds, and a couple of pita breads he'd made to go with last night's dinner. He reached in for them and happily found that they were still soft. From the fridge he took a plate of lemony hummus, and in the bowl on the counter he found a ripe tomato and a cucumber. He carried the kitchen scissors through the back hall, where jackets hung on hooks and muddy garden boots poked out from under a bench, and out the back door to the tiny herb garden beside the shed. He crouched down to cut a generous handful of curly parsley and a stalk or two of dill. The sunlight on his back warmed him through.

The day was getting hotter. Inside, he diced the vegetable. and herbs and added them to a bowl with green fruity olive oil, a squeeze of lemon juice, a pinch of salt, and a good grinding of fresh pepper. He brushed the bread with a bit of oil and warmed it in a cast-iron skillet on the range. Then he carried it to the table,

along with the hummus and a cool glass of water he dropped a couple slices of cucumber into. The bread broke easily, and there was a small pocket inside that he stuffed with hummus and salad, and each bite had a bit of tartness, fresh green flavor, and warm, wholesome bread. Now he did read the paper, turning the pages slowly, and after he'd pushed his plate away,

he spent a few minutes working the crossword puzzle. He heard a low jingling and smiled over his shoulder at his lazy black cat, who was strutting along the floorboards toward his slippered feet. Watching her wind her way, delicate ankles crossing one over the other, soft round body and tail switching with each step, he knew why they called the platform that models strode back and forth on a catwalk. We should all carry ourselves with that much confidence and swagger, he thought.

She stopped at his side and let him reach down to scratch her forehead. Then she stepped through his grip, rounding her back into his palm and twisting around to do it all over again. Eventually she looked up at him and he leaned back in his chair and she jumped to land in his lap.

He propped his feet up on the trestle beneath the table so that she could lay stretched out on his legs and look out the window. This was their morning routine. He got up early. She slept late. They met for coffee. He'd found her years ago.

Or she'd found him. It depends on how you look at it. He remembers the warm spring day. He'd been working on a new recipe at the shop, a savory pastry rolled in black sesame seeds, and he'd just slid a tray of them into the oven when he looked out the window to where his car was parked in the alley. He'd had to fish his glasses out of his pocket,

smudging them with his flowery fingers, to make out what was covering the hood of his car. A black smear against the white panel. The glasses didn't much help, so he pushed through the back door and made his way to the car. The spring sun was shining, and there on the warm hood was a big dozing kitty. Her fur was shiny and black,

and she opened one green eye to look at him as he stood, hands on hips, laughing down at her. After a moment, she closed the open eye and went straight back to sleep. He knew right then. He named her silently in his head before he'd even turned back to the shop. He told his apprentice baker that she was probably a neighborhood cat, who would be gone in another hour and they'd never see her again, but inside he knew.

He didn't look when he came out of the back door at closing time. He kept his eyes on the lock as he turned the key, saying to himself that if she wasn't there, it just meant she was home with her people and that was a good thing. But when he turned toward his car, and found her, sitting upright and awake on the hood, serenely bathing her face with one graceful paw. He smiled with relief.

He reached out and stroked her head, and she barely looked up, still busy cleaning away. Then he opened the door of the car, and as soon as he sat down in it, she jumped nimbly onto his lap and waited for him to close the door and take her home. It doesn't happen a lot, but every once in a while,

you meet someone, and instead of meeting, it feels like finding. You skip over the part where you get to know each other because somehow you already know. You were born with the knowing of them planted deep inside you,

and you'd just been waiting for them to show up. For the baker, that had happened twice, or maybe three times in his life. Once it had been a friend, once it was the love of his life, and then it was Sesame the cat. He called her that as they drove home, thinking of the shiny black seed

still rattling around in his apron pocket, and she nuzzled the top of her head against his chin, as if he'd called her name in class, and she was responding, present. From that day, she'd slept on his bed, eaten crumbs from his plate, and sat on the top of the piano when he played.

His customers at the bakery took home boxes of sesame twists to have with their curry dinners, and his neighbors waved through the windows at her when she sat, tail twitching beside the philodendron. She loved to circle through the house each day, chasing sunbeams and birds. She clicked her teeth, threateningly at them, and the baker would pet her and assure her she was still a great

huntress, even though she never left the house. The baker set down his pencil. He could come back to the crossword puzzle later. That dough was calling him. He didn't set timers anymore, didn't seem to need to. At some point, a little bell would go off in his mind, and he'd know it was time for the next step. He shifted sesame from his lap and set her down by her bowls on the far end of the kitchen. He'd read somewhere that cats like to look at their own reflections, so in her little corner where he'd laid a mat for her food and water dishes,

he'd hung a tiny mirror at just her height. After she ate, he'd often catch her bathing her face with her paw, stopping to gaze at her own bright green eyes. He stepped back up to his counter and was pleased to see that his dough had risen. He scattered flour on the butcher block and tipped the soft dough out of the bowl. He lightly flowered his rolling pin and began to flatten and stretch the dough into a rectangle. His movements were sure, confident, made without having to think. There was a word for this, he thought.

What did they call it? Ah, flow. Years ago when he was still at the bakery, he'd heard an expert on the radio describing an experience of energized focus, of being so completely absorbed in an activity that one lost all track of time. The man said that ice skaters and baristas and chess players

knew this state well, that they slipped into it when the challenge they faced was in balance with their skills. It wasn't mindless work. It was often complicated, but the individuals could navigate it expertly after years of practice. He'd been shaping sourdough as he listened

and laughed out loud, watching his hands tacked the edge of the raw loaf to the board and pull it to create tension, twisting the lump of starter and flour into what would blossom in the oven into a beautiful, crisp, golden-brown work of art.

He'd do this a hundred times in a row, and each twist and fold and quick slash with the knife was smooth and exact. The repetition didn't bother him. In fact, he enjoyed it. Doing the actual work of mixing, kneading, and shaping

was what made him a baker. He'd had a few apprentices over the years who clearly didn't love to do that work. He'd kindly send them on their way, telling them that it wasn't meant to be. Now as he spread the cardamom mixture over the sheet of pastry and began to fold it, to roll it again, to slice it into long ribbons,

he felt himself slip into that smooth state of enjoyable moment-to-moment engagement. The shaping was quite tricky with those ribbons being twisted and wrapped around themselves in a very particular way, but his hands knew how, and he let them work. Soon the tray was full, each bun glazed and shining

with a dusting of sugar mixed with more ground cardamom. He let them sit to rise a bit more as he heated the oven and carried his bowls and spoons to the sink. He filled it with warm, soapy water and began to wash up. The scent of the cardamom was in the air. He could smell it on his hands and clothes. And again he thought of his mother.

Mondays were her baking days. She'd always meant to keep house in an orderly way and each week planned to bake on Monday, to wash on Tuesday, to clean on Wednesday, to weed on Thursday, and so on. but any number of happenings or newly discovered projects might distract her. She might suddenly take up birdwatching, and they'd spend afternoons in the park with their binoculars pressed to their eyes,

whispering to each other about Vesper sparrows, scarlet tanagers and black-throated green warblers. Then the next week she might have found a box of old photographs in a dresser drawer, and they'd become genealogists, tracing faces from one snapshot to another and drawing out family trees on giant sheets of paper. But no matter what, she always started the week with baking. She had her priorities, after all,

and when he would come home from school, on the counter would be loaves of bread, baked and tins for sandwiches, hand pies and cookies, cakes and scones, and cardam buns. She'd been the one to patiently show him how to twist the pastry, her own hands moving so deftly as she looped the ribbons and arranged them on a baking tray.

He turned back to his tray, his buns now risen again and ready for the oven. The air was hot on his face as he opened the door and slid them in. The timer in his mind ticked. on, and he began to root around in his cupboards to find a container to fit some of those buns into. He was a hearty eater, but even he could never keep up with the amount of baked goods he produced, and his neighbors were used to stepping out onto their front porches to find regular deliveries. The wise ones would bring back the empty containers to ensure the cycle continued.

He found a cookie tin pushed to the back of a high-house. shelf. Its lid showed a snowy scene of skaters on a frozen lake, a courier and knives print, and though the first snow was still months away, he figured his neighbors wouldn't mind how the treats got into their hands. He peaked into the oven, the buttery dough was turning a light golden brown, the buns looked deliciously sticky and smelled absolutely divine. Six minutes, maybe seven, he said to Sesame. She flicked her tail in agreement. He lined the Christmas tin with baking paper and took a clean dish towel from a drawer to dry the dishes. Every now and then he'd take a deep breath. Just as he was setting a mixing bowl onto a shelf,

he knew it was time. As the buns came out, he inspected them with his expert eye. They were a lovely color, and while the ribbons of dough had become crispy, their bases sat in caramelized pools of sweetness that would harden into a candy-like brittle. That variation in textures, the sweetness with the strong spicy flavor of the cardamom, that's what made these a step up from regular cinnamon buns or Danish pastries. They were sophisticated, maybe a little complicated,

He thought of that line about how every disguise is a self-portrait and chuckled to himself in the warm kitchen. When the buns were cool, he laid a dozen of them into the tin and sealed it up. He used to write notes with his deliveries. It felt odd to just leave boxes of baked goods without any explanation on his neighbor's steps. But after a while, the explanations just seemed extraneous. They knew who had made them, and they knew they wouldn't be getting a recipe,

so they didn't ask. He carried the tin out the front door and down the steps to the gate. The sun was high now, and he shaded his eyes with his hand as he looked up and down the block wondering which house to visit today. After all these years, he knew the tastes and preferences of most of these folks,

and he tried to spread the love around so no one felt left out. Across the street was the man with the garden full of dinner-plate dahlias, his cape cod covered in creeping ivy and clematis that bloomed a bright bluish purple each spring. Next door at the craftsman, with its low-pitched gable roof, was the woman who owned the bookstore. A few days before, she'd left him a copy of a new book by one of his favorite authors wrapped in brown paper in his mailbox. He turned toward her house, thinking it was

time to repay the favor. Her yard was a bit overgrown, with sea grasses swaying around the porch. She had a collection of birdhouses dangling from the branches of her catalpetry, and as he climbed her steps, he smiled at the worn doormat with a stack of books stenciled on it. He had his baking, his precise techniques, and synchronized internal clock. She had her books, her cluttered yard, her shop with maps and pictures and postcards tacked all over the walls. Different, but the same. He set down the tin, hoping that when she came home to it, it would make her smile,

and went back home to finish his cross. puzzle. Thanks for listening. If you'd like to spend more time with these neighbors, on the street where you live, is available wherever audiobooks are sold, beginning July 28th. I hope you'll join us for the rest of the story.