Our sugary romance started when I saw an article in a travel magazine telling of an amazing Italian-style bakery in Salem. Called The Little Cannoli, it was described as a tiny space below the Reed Opera House, stuffed with elegant desserts and quality baked goods.

The first time I went, I understood why someone had wanted to give a shout about it. It was perfect, just like the article described. I had pushed my way in and was lustily fondling cookie bags when I overheard the woman in front of me.

“Did you guys see yourself in Triple A?” she asked the two men behind the counter.

“Oh yeah!” one man said, “Look, we have it up!” He showed her an article tacked to the wall.

“I wrote it,” she said.

The two men were effusive in their gratitude. Her article had increased their business. The lady’s large order came to the counter.

“Hey,” the older man told the younger. “It’s free! Don’t charge her!”

There was a great deal of “Are you sure?” and “Absolutely!” and “Thank you!” before the lady left smiling, her arms laden with cookie bags and pastry boxes.

I want to be perfectly clear. I did not reach across the counter to grab the apron of the baker, shouting, “Hey! I’ll write about you! I’ll write about you real good! Give me breadsticks!” Not even after I had tasted the cannoli, and realized I needed them to be in my life, always. I wanted to. But I didn’t.

I waited until I’d talked with my editor, and the time was right, weeks later. I know it was unseemly to be bounding down the stairs, trying to figure out the least amount of dialogue I’d have to use to get to the sweets. But if you think I was merely greedy, you obviously haven’t tasted the cannoli.

“Hi!” I exploded at the lone man behind the counter. He looked up, tired, and nodded hello. He was shifting enormous trays full of bread.

I spoke fast, my voice full of joy and gluttony. “I write for the Salem Monthly and your bakery is so super we‘d like to interview you for the Eats section!” I raised my tiny notebook above my head and shook it for emphasis, also thinking, ‘I’d also like as many free treats as I can carry, if that can be arranged, sir.’

The man looked up from his flour board, unsmiling.

“No,” he said.

I didn‘t understand.

“No... see, it's...” I shook my notebook again. “Customers. I make customers.”

The man didn’t stop working as he talked.

“I have too many already.”

“Too many?”

Too many adoring eyes watching him dip macaroons in chocolate? Too many units of sugar-dusted joy? Too many dollars?

“The whole point of this job was that it was supposed to be a little more laid back.” he said over his shoulder, hurrying toward an oven timer.

I stood alone in the tiny parlor, my notebook limp at my side. I’d never been refused an interview. It was crushing.

“Okay,” I said. I turned to go - then thought better of it.

“Um. Two cannolis, then, please.”

Despite the sting of rejection, I established a relationship with the bakery that had only the slightest hints of dependency. Cannoli, napoleons, cookies, I bought them all and carried them away in tidy white boxes. Sometimes my husband would find the boxes, empty of everything but delicate sugar stains.

“Where’s mine?” he’d ask.

Gone. All gone, I’d say. And if you didn’t want me to spend a quarter of our food budget on eating pastries behind your back you should’ve hidden my car keys, like last time.

I felt displaced when I’d heard they had closed. It made no sense. They were beloved, always swimming in customers. They served classy people in scarves and rectangular glasses. They served plain people, like me, in our loudly patterned blouses and mom jeans. We were all equal in the Little Cannoli Bakery, forging brotherhood over Italian sodas. But now they were gone.

I thought about them all the time. Sometimes driving down Commercial my muscles would twitch, directing the car toward the phantom of sweet ricotta filling. But it was useless. "Oh my perfect Little Cannoli Bakery," I would think, choking on a listless supermarket éclair. “You were too beautiful, too perfect for this world. You flew too close to the sun!”

Two weeks ago I was wandering the surviving stores of downtown Salem. My heart dim with the reminder of what had been, I purchased a napoleon and a éclair from a different bakery. Eventually we came to the Opera House. My little daughter led me down below the main floor, innocent of all the sad sweet ghosts that lurked there.

There was the old bakery space, a new catering business already filling the emptiness.

I stood by the remains and paid my respects, thinking, ‘No one will ever love you, stuffed mushroom platter. People might come, and they might even take you home, but when they close their eyes, they’ll be thinking of éclairs.’

My daughter pulled at my hand, away from the windows of the catering shop.

“Chockit,” she said. She was leaning toward the shop windows on the opposing wall. Inside there stood a woman, dipping cookies into melted chocolate.

“Oh, look there.” I bent down next to my toddler. “There is a lady, dipping cookies, in chocolate. That’s yum-yum, isn’t it? And oo, look, there are more cookies. And some breads, and an... eclair... and a...”

If I had pressed my face against the glass a little lower, I could have claimed my three-year-old did it. If I’d done it slower, it wouldn’t have made that startling thump.

“Cannoli.”

I pulled my daughter into the new store, larger and more fully stocked than the last. The lone girl working behind the counter smiled.

“You’re back,” I said coolly.

“Yeah,” she said, dipping.

“I thought you were gone,” I pressed. “You left...” I had just enough composure to bite off the “me” before it came out.

“Yup. For a little while. We’re back, though.”

I suddenly felt ashamed of the pastry-filled bag in my hand.

“I...I already bought my napoleon. I...just didn’t know.”

“Okay,” she said.

I stepped closer and laid my damp hands on the display case. My eyes searched hers. “I’m just...so happy that you’re back. I thought I’d never see you again.”

She put down her cookie. “O...kay.”

My daughter’s newest emergency cry, “Pee! Pee intha POT!” broke my gratitude.

“Anyway. See you soon!” I gave her a bright and forgiving smile. I didn’t ask why they’d gone, or why they’d come back. It wasn’t important. The Little Cannoli Bakery had returned to me. I led my daughter out, then thought better of it and stepped back.

“Do you need to be a customer to use that restroom key?”

“Take it.”

I grabbed the blue card attached to the key.

“Thank you. And...I’m so glad you’re back.”