“You did not,” Zechariah agreed, though he did not look assuaged. “I know you would not,” he answered at Benny’s further attempts to comfort him in dastardly deeds.

He clasped his hands behind him, yet again looking for ways to address the subject without being explicit about it. It was not as though anyone who worked for him did not know Zechariah was Jewish. The man before him himself had prepared many a kosher-equivalent dish in his name. But he worried that articulating precautions aloud was akin speaking an evil which was already there into corners it did not already lurk.

“We are strangers upon these shores, you and I,” he reiterated. “I am fortunate to be threaded into the fabric here as much as I am. You have not had as long to put roots down here, and I do not want you to compromise that for …” spite. Spite spite spite spite sheer and saturated spite. “… one baker’s spared burnt buns.”