At work, Edith admires Manu’s dedication and says so to Madame Moreau. She asks where Manu lives, curious about his family, and Madame Moreau says he lives with her, in the apartment below Edith’s attic room. Edith is shocked, but Madame Moreau offers no more details. Edith also still wonders about the mysterious baker in the basement, whom she has never met or seen. When the bakery closes for lunch, Madame Moreau leaves to run errands, and Edith wanders into the employee kitchen. At the end is a locked door that leads into the basement. She finds a floor grate in the employee bathroom through which she can peek into the basement below. She can see the ovens and baking supplies but no baker. Manu suddenly comes in and catches her, but she quickly claims she lost an earring.

That night, she meets Nicole to talk about Hugo. Edith admits that she likes him, though they have only just met, but worries that something bad will happen. As her anxieties grow, Nicole calms her down. Later, they discuss Nicole’s troubles. Johnny doesn’t make much money as a musician and their rent is constantly overdue. She wishes he would find steadier employment, but he doesn’t want to give up his dreams. When Edith returns home, she finds a postcard from Hugo waiting for her and is charmed by the romantic gesture.

That night, Edith cannot sleep. She reads Proust for a while before getting up to make herself hot chocolate at four in the morning. While in the kitchen, she hears voices beneath her. She returns to the grate in the bathroom to peek into the basement and sees Manu and Madame Moreau speaking. Manu is kneading dough, and Edith is impressed that he has become an apprentice to the baker at such a young age. Manu is watching someone and mimicking their movements. Edith sees a shimmering, hazy outline of a person. She stares for a moment, then faints.

She wakes in her bed with no memory of how she got there. She realizes that Manu must have found her and gotten her back to her room. All day, she works quietly and efficiently. That night, she reads more Proust, pausing at a passage describing the belief that “the souls of those whom we have lost are held captive” until something sets them free (113). She wonders if a spirit is trapped in the bakery, but dismisses this thought, telling herself that ghosts are not real. Still, she wakes in the night with a strange feeling that makes her want to cry or run away.

In 1942, Pierre attempts to keep his bakery afloat during the German occupation. The townspeople of Compiègne rely on him and his bakery, but now the Germans ration every ingredient, and his special vanilla beans are gone. His supplier has fled the war, forcing him to preserve his last beans in liqueur to stretch it out as long as possible.

There have long been rumors about Pierre, who has never married. The local tobacco shop owner, Arnaud, maliciously suggests that Pierre prefers men to women. Arnaud is infamous for always knowing everyone else’s private business and spreading gossip—a dangerous tendency during the German occupation. Pierre does his best to not stir up trouble, both fearing and hating the Germans who inflict such inhuman suffering.

One day at the train station, a strange woman and her young daughter run toward him. The woman embraces him, calling him darling. German soldiers emerge from the train, looking around, and he intuits that the woman is hiding from them. He welcomes the woman and her daughter home as if they are family.

Edith receives another postcard from Hugo. She is smitten despite spending only a single evening with him and resigns herself to whatever will come of it, whether “A fling, a heartache, a lifelong relationship” (122). Nicole teases her but admits that it’s better than modern dating apps. She adds that her mother has been divorced for years and is trying to date again with little success.

Edith runs the bakery by herself that day and does well. That evening, she tries to search for Hugo on Facebook but finds many men with the same name. She comes across a webpage for Chadwick Holdings but ignores it and gives up. She decides she would rather not snoop this way after all, knowing there is little information about her on social media either. She goes for a walk and runs into Geoff, the tour guide. He invites her to come on one of his historical tours soon and she accepts.

The following Sunday, Edith joins a bus of tourists that drives through the areas around Compiègne stopping at various locations of historic importance. Geoff explains each place as they go. In Compiègne Forest outside the town, they visit the Alsace Lorraine Monument. Nearby, train tracks lead to a museum of a statue of Marshal Ferdinand Foch. The area commemorates the signing of the 1918 Armistice that ended World War I. Geoff adds that the 1940 Franco-German armistice, in which the French capitulated to German occupation during World War II, was signed here as well.

They walk around the location, Edith and Geoff speaking while the other tourists explore. Geoff suggests that Edith get a bicycle so she can explore the area on her own. Later, they stop at the location of “the last train from Compiègne to Buchenwald on August 17th, 1944, carrying 1,250 men to the death camp” (132). He explains that the Germans had an internment camp near Compiègne that imprisoned Jewish people, French resistance fighters, and others before they were sent to the death camps.

As the tour ends, Edith remarks on Geoff’s skill as an educator and performer. He admits that his tours have become so popular he has had to turn people away. Edith says she might know someone who would make an excellent assistant, thinking of Johnny, who studied history in college and needs steadier employment.

Edith visits Nicole and Johnny and announces that Geoff may be looking to hire an assistant and she believes Johnny would be perfect for the job. Johnny, irritated, asks who said anything about him needing a new job. Edith realizes she has spoken out of turn. She should have privately mentioned it to Nicole to bring up with Johnny, or better yet, stayed out of it entirely.

That evening, she closes the bakery and sees a Range Rover parked down the street. Hugo climbs out and invites her to dinner, taking her outside of town to an old vineyard where his friend has turned an old barn into a winery and restaurant.

As they chat, Edith doubles down on her lie about being a singer, claiming that she will soon be performing with Johnny’s band at Nostalgie. In turn, Hugo says vaguely that photography is his real passion, but he has a boring day job that pays the bills. Nervous, Edith rambles about Geoff’s tour and the possibility of buying a bicycle. Later, Hugo shows her his recent photographs and mentions his wish to turn them into an art book.

The next day, Johnny apologizes for his gruffness. Edith apologizes for sticking her nose into his business. He teasingly calls Edith a fixer but thanks her. He has been worried that looking for a normal job would mean giving up on his dreams of being a full-time musician but knows he must be sensible. Edith thinks he is brave to follow his dreams no matter what. She tells him she had wanted to be a singer but was too afraid to try. She now feels that in abandoning her dream, she has abandoned part of herself. Johnny tells her that if she wants to sing she should. She might not be great at the beginning, but the important thing is to start and just be herself.

Hugo drives to Compiègne and stops at the bakery to buy pastries on his way to visit his mother who lives nearby. Edith gives him two cups of hot chocolate as a treat, promising that drinking it will be “very Proustian” (155). Back in his car, Hugo drinks his hot chocolate and is transported to a morning watching cartoons with his brother. Normally, thinking of Stephane is painful, but this time he feels an “uncomplicated feeling of warmth” (155).

Hugo drives to Le Retrait, a facility where his mother, Seraphine, is a resident with early-onset dementia. Some days his mother recognizes him, but other days she doesn’t. When he arrives, Seraphine is in the gardens of the facility, painting. He inherited his creative talent from her. As they speak, he gives her the second cup of hot chocolate. She says the drink reminds her of the bakery on Rue de Paris. She insists that she needs to tell Hugo about her uncle Arnaud who did something bad during the war.

Edith still struggles with the mystery of the baker in the basement. She finds it difficult to think about ghosts or death as it brings her too close to her grief over her mother. Still, she decides she must face the truth. Once again, she sneaks down to the bathroom and spies through the grate into the basement. She watches the hazy figure of a man going through the motions of baking, though he cannot touch anything. Manu mimics his motions precisely as Madame Moreau comments and adds further instructions. She says with pride that he will soon bake like a true Moreau. Edith sneaks away again.

That night, she offers to join Manu on his delivery to the church so they can speak. At the church, she sees the unhoused refugees. Manu explains that Madame Moreau taught him to care for those who have been forgotten. Edith, still unsure of their connection, asks who Madame Moreau is to him, and he explains that she is his grandmother. He confirms what Edith saw in the basement and asks her not to say anything to Madame Moreau. Edith insists that she deserves an explanation.

The next day, Edith researches hauntings online. She finds something called The Stone Tape theory, which argues that “during intense moments in someone’s life, places can absorb some form of energy from them […] resulting in a display of the recorded activity” (170). She suspects that Pierre’s ghost is such a recorded image in the basement, replaying the memory of baking without interacting with his surroundings.

A delivery truck arrives with a bicycle for Edith that looks like the one she described to Hugo. A note confirms it is a gift from him. Edith calls him, having finally gotten his number on their last date, and insists she cannot keep such an extravagant gift. He believes if he is serious about someone, he should behave accordingly. Edith is stunned by his explicit statement of intent.