I’ve been a baker in a small town in Yorkshire for twenty-six years. I’ve made wedding cakes, birthday cakes, and funeral cakes for people who couldn’t afford anything fancy. But every Friday morning, an old man came into my shop and bought exactly two cinnamon rolls. He always paid in coins, asked for them to be wrapped separately, and left without saying much. For nearly eight years, he never missed a Friday. Then one morning, he came in carrying a little pink lunchbox. “Could you put these in here instead?” he asked. I smiled. “Of course. Granddaughter’s lunch?” He looked down at the lunchbox. “My daughter used to carry this to school.” I didn’t know what to say. He bought his two rolls and left. The following Friday, he didn’t come. Neither did he the week after. By the third week, I was worried enough to ask around. A woman who lived near the bakery told me he’d been taken to a care home after a fall. She gave me the address. That Sunday, I visited him with a paper bag containing two cinnamon rolls. He was sitting beside a window, staring at the garden. When he saw me, his face lit up. “You came,” he whispered. I placed the bag on his lap. “Of course. But I have to ask you something. Why have you bought two rolls every Friday for eight years?” He looked at me for a long time. Then he opened the little pink lunchbox. Inside was a faded photograph of a young girl wearing a school uniform. “My daughter, Eleanor,” he said. “She died when she was nine. Every Friday, I used to pack her two cinnamon rolls for school. One for her, one for her best friend.” He paused, rubbing his thumb over the photograph. “After the funeral, I couldn’t bring myself to stop making her lunch. So I started buying the rolls and leaving them on her grave.” My throat tightened. “That’s a beautiful way to remember her,” I said. He shook his head. “No, son. You don’t understand. I stopped leaving them at the grave eight years ago.” I frowned. “Then where have you been taking them?” He leaned closer. “To the little girl who started appearing outside my house every Friday morning, wearing my daughter’s old school uniform.” I felt a chill run through me. “Who was she?” He smiled sadly. “I never found out. She’d take one roll, leave the other, and disappear before I could speak to her.” He reached into his pocket and handed me a folded piece of paper. “She left this last Friday. I think it’s time somebody else read it.” I unfolded the note. The handwriting was childish. Thank you for feeding me, Mr. Collins. My mummy says I shouldn’t talk to strangers, but she says I can trust you. She also says you knew my grandmother. I looked up at him. “Your granddaughter?” He shook his head. “I never had another child.” Then he pointed to the photograph in the lunchbox. I looked again at Eleanor’s face. The little girl in the picture had a small crescent-shaped birthmark beneath her left eye. Exactly like the one on my own daughter’s face. My daughter, who had been missing for six months. And suddenly, I understood why the old man had been buying three cinnamon rolls every Friday for the past month.