Superfine is the name of the bakery Ray and Linette own. Superfine is part of the revitalization of Beard Street in the early 1990s, the beginning of the change that will see the county schools integrated, bringing Noelle and Gee into each other’s worlds. To Ray, Superfine stands for hope and symbolizes a good future for Gee. A conversation between Ray and Robbie in the early chapters centers around a future for their children and includes Robbie’s choice to buy a house in the northern part of the county, where the schools are better. Ray dreams of buying Jade a nice house as he drives to Gee’s school the afternoon he dies, imagining the success of Superfine giving him the opportunity to give Jade and Gee the life he believes they deserve.

Ray’s death results in the end of Superfine, and it ends any hope for Gee and Jade to have a home in the northern part of the county. However, the revitalization of Beard Street continues, and Gee ends up going to Central High School with Noelle, Robbie’s daughter, just as Ray and Robbie briefly dreamed. Although Superfine—and the hope of a better life it symbolized—dies with Ray, Jade takes up the mantle of fighting to give Gee a good future in Ray’s stead.