You’re in Roz’s. Home. Safe as you’re going to be.
The afternoon drags. I’m restocking the garnish tray when my phone buzzes against the register. Blocked number.
The message is simple: my address.
My thumb hovers. Then I delete the text, set the phone face down, and keep working.
Roz comes out of the kitchen later. “You good?”
“Fine.”
She studies me. “This diner’s going to stand whether you hold it up or not, Sophie. You don’t have to earn the right to be in it.”
Her words land like a stone in still water. I keep restocking.
I drive home at six, glancing in my mirror the whole two-block route. I park in the lit spot under the streetlight and sit in the car. A couple walking a dog. Mrs. Porter’s lights on above the library. A truck I recognize is outside the feed store.
I wait until it feels safe enough, then go upstairs to my apartment, and check every lock twice before I take off my coat.
I don’t call Jesse. Or Mason. Or Eli.
And I definitely don’t call Logan King, sheriff or not.
Around midnight, I finally let myself admit what I’ve been avoiding since Sunday.
He found me.
The mountains were supposed to make me harder to find than this.
I don’t know what to do now.
two
. . .
Logan
Dale Miller’scoffee mug still sits in the cabinet.
I’ve replaced everything else. A desk lamp. A chair that doesn’t list to the left. My field manuals took the place on the shelf where Dale kept a row of golf trophies he never dusted. But the mug remains.
I pull it out, fill the cup with the coffee I made at five-thirty, and then my hand stops. The ceramic feels wrong. Too light and cold. Like the old chair did and the whole office still does.
Standing here, I can smell the mine shaft again: wet rock, rotted timber, and the airless cold of a space that hasn’t been opened in years. The silence down there presses on your eardrums. My flashlight beam swept across the support beam. The edge of a shoe, half buried in dirt. A young woman’s shoe, lace still tied.
Sarah Jenkins was only nineteen.
Dale sat in this office and let her stay in that mine for eleven years rather than face what he’d done.
I blink. The memory loosens its grip. The office is here. So is the coffee. March light streams through the window, catching onthe edges of the desk and reminding me that time keeps moving even when it feels like it shouldn’t.
Maybe that’s why I keep the mug. So I don’t forget what this chair can cost.
I sit.
Outside, Lush Hollow is waking up. The feed store’s lights flicker on at seven. Mrs. Porter’s library at seven-thirty. Roz’s has been humming since six, the kitchen exhaust putting out that perfect blend of bacon grease and coffee that says the valley is alive again.
Sophie starts at six.
