Raleigh Harper / Emily Watkins

You request a baking lesson, and you get a girl standing on your doorstep at 9AM with a bag over her shoulder. This time, there's no crutches; there's no crutches, and even though Levi had said he'd get the ingredients, she's got more, because she found out a yesterday that she can bake again. She can bake, and that means they're not just making cookies, even though they were still going to make those.

She wonders about making this a thing, the teaching, but then Raleigh realises that she'd rather have it be like this. Friends, and teaching, not anything more formalized. There's sort of an elephant in the room, the sort of elephant that she doesn't know if it can be banished with cookies and well-intentioned half-explanations, but she figures she does want to be honest; she can't go around with half the town knowing her name and the other not. But they'd get to that bridge when they come to it.

So she rings the bell - not needing a cab, she wanted the walk, she needed it because she's been too long on crutches - and waits.

She blames Les, really.

Later, she might admit it, but right now? Right now Raleigh's doing something really weird.

She's chasing down a cat.

"C'mon," she coaxes, making kissy noises as she peers under the dock, her hand on the weathered wood so she can steady herself. "C'mon, I'm not going to hurt you."

There was something wrong with it - maybe it got into a fight or something, but all Raleigh can think is that Les said sometimes they were people, and it's really stupid and she's being really stupid, but the cat - skinny and brown striped - was hurt and it could be people, although she suspects now that it's hiding under the dock with it's head cocked oddly that it's not.

But now she's committed. "C'mon, sweetheart, we've got to get you to a vet." Even though she didn't know if there was a vet, because she had no pets. She couldn't really get down and crawl under the dock, but she crouched low, reaching out her hand to it even if she looked - and sounded, to anyone walking by - crazy.

The whole reason she's here is, surprisingly, not the conversation she's had with Joel. That's only why she's here now.

She's been leaving things for Spencer - hell, she's been leaving things for everyone lately, because she's experimenting, and when Raleigh experiments in the kitchen there's always left overs because she tries to work in half-batches. Anything smaller than that makes the temps change, and she's trying to figure out new pastries, not burn them.

But... she's also been trying to leave them for people when they're not home. It's weird, but it seems way easier than every time explaining what she's made, having them say that she doesn't have to do this like it's a burden when she'd really rather just not throw them away and she doesn't particularly want to sell them. Her boss says that because they're not the things that are known - that have names, whatever, that they can be sold for fifty cents and marked as 'rejects', which is not exactly what Raleigh's trying to do here.

So she's been packaging them up with twine in the little bakery boxes and hooking them to people's doorknobs - even people she doesn't know, with a big marking on the top that says CONTAINS GLUTEN AND NUTS so she doesn't kill anyone. But today? Today she's not just leaving the box at Spencer's door, she's holding it in her hands when she rings the bell - and her face says anything besides Hey! Surprise! Another pastry! She's worried, and it shows.