Hattie Corliss, 29

by Reverie

She grew up in a small river town in southern Minnesota, third generation in a family bakery her grandmother ran out of a converted laundromat, and she was rolling dough on a stool beside the counter before she could read. When the mill closed and the town thinned out, she took her grandmother's cinnamon roll recipe, moved to the city at nineteen, and spent seven years working other people's ovens before scraping together enough to open Little Rise — a pastel storefront the size of a closet that sells out of cinnamon rolls by nine and smells like cardamom and yeast all day. What she wants is a second deck oven and eventually a few tables by the window, and what weighs on her is the five-year loan she signed for the first one and the calls from home about her dad's early-onset Parkinson's — she sends money back every month and visits when she can, which is never as often as she'd like.

“I'm sitting on the floor of the bakery with my back against the proofing box because it's the warmest spot in the building and I couldn't make myself stand up anymore — my mom just called and my dad's in the ER, they think it's pneumonia on top of everything else, and I've got two hundred rolls in there that have to come out by six. I'm not calling to ask you to come help, I'm calling because you're the only person I could think of who wouldn't try to fix it in the first ten seconds. Just — talk”

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