Noelle pats my shoulder. “Your usual’s at the counter. Go work through your emotional constipation somewhere quieter; I have oat milk to steam.”
Coffee in hand, I stumble through my errands in a daze. Next up: Mr. Okafor’s bungalow across town, where the lawns are always perfect and even the garden gnomes look judgmental. The man himself opens the door in a cardigan that probably took two years of loving effort and a dice roll on color coordination, and immediately insists on offering me tea like saying no might get me blacklisted from the neighborhood.
“I’m on the clock, but thanks,” I say.
He ignores that entirely, guiding me inside as if I’m a stray cat that needs a sandwich. His living room is the kind of organized clutter that suggests “collector” but not “hoarder”—porcelain frogs, book stacks, a mantel that looks like a museum of memories. He points me to a framed photo sitting between a frog and a pyramid of coasters.
“The spring play, four years back,” he says, tapping the photo, “Our Town. Ambitious set design, given the budget.”
The photo’s of a painted backdrop spread across the gym stage: trees, sky, a town rendered in colors that shouldn’t exist in a school, all the perspective and light so perfect it makes the rest of the classmates look blurry by comparison.
“Maddie donated three gallons,” he says. “Exterior grade. Claimed she had leftovers. Didn’t. Melvin checked. She spent a weekend painting those trees on the gym floor, teaching the kids along the way. Said she used to paint with her husband.” He pauses. It’s a weighty kind of pause, the kind that says please read between the lines. “Smiled the whole time.”
I stare at the photo for a beat, two, maybe three, and somewhere under my sternum the ground shifts from “awkward” to “emergency alert.”
“Work call,” I blurt, pawing at my silent phone. “Chimney. Gotta go. Sorry.”
Mr. Okafor just smiles with the infinite patience of someone who survived decades of high schoolers and their creative excuses. “Tea’s available anytime,” he says.
I’m halfway down the walk before the words even sink in, my heart rattling around as if it’s desperate to launch itself out of my chest and roll under the nearest bush.
Which brings me to my last stop of the day: The Stocking. Home, technically, but it barely counts as a destination when you’re still tottering under the weight of a paint can and a pile of feelings that probably require either a drink or a nap lasting until spring. The Victorian sits at the end of the block, porch boards creaking under my boots, and I’m barely up the steps before a teenager appears at the top like they’ve been staged there by central casting.
Rue. A newish addition to the house, sixteen, maybe. Charcoal on their wrists, sketchbook wedged under one arm, hair half-buzzed, half-flopped over their face, nervous energy rolling off them in waves.
“You’re Jordan,” they announce. Not a question.
I nod, because right now, my brain’s running on autopilot and the last hour’s left me with zero capacity for small talk.
They bounce on their toes. “You know Maddie. From the hardware store.”
Still not a question, so I nod again.
Rue shifts their sketchbook and launches into story mode. “Last October, during the storm? Power cut out. Everyone panicking because the furnace was dead. She unlocked the store, let me crash behind the counter for hours. Had a lamp running off the generator, made instant coffee that tasted like sadness—but never asked why I was alone, never pried.” Their shrug is pure teenage bravado. “She just said the store was warmer.”
I glance at the charcoal stains, the kind you get from drawing until your fingers forget how to do anything else. It’s the kind of mark that lingers because you want it to.
“Just… wanted you to know that. It mattered.” And, with that, Rue sails past me and down the steps.
I stand there, frozen. Three people, three unscripted stories, none of them coordinated, all of them orbiting the same sun. And suddenly, standing here on my own porch with soot on my hands and a heart threatening to burst, the mosaic snaps into focus. Everyone sees her. Just not the way I’ve been seeing her. Until now.
Back to the truck. Hands planted on the wheel. Engine off.
The road stretches out, patient and bare. My jaw is locked. Maybe it’s been locked since Noelle’s shelves, or Okafor’s mantel, or Rue’s voice; maybe since a porch last night and the sound of a “Goodnight” pitched to helium and panic.
I sit like that. Still, silent, staring out at the road as if the answer might show up in the next line of paint. The answer doesn’t come. But the feeling in my chest has rearranged itself into something new and steady and, terrifyingly, solid.
After hours, the hardware store is a lullaby of solvents and sawdust and that faint mystery stench from the back room thathas haunted the place since Drew’s time. The bell gives a crisp ring as I step inside. Silence spills out, soft and settled, safe as a quilt.
Melvin is cleaning a display behind the counter, polished movements, barely glancing up because he already knows it’s me. There’s a particular comfort in flopping onto the stool by his side, the kind where your body just knows the way of it, even if your thoughts are a million miles away and tap-dancing.
Neither of us rushes to talk. The store hums: fridge in the back, ticking clock, the slow creak of boards adjusting to their nighttime bones.
“Noelle’s shelves,” I start. “At Brew House. Maddie sanded, stained, the works. Wouldn’t take money.”
Melvin’s rag stutters, just a blip, then resumes its looping orbit along the old hand plane.
“Okafor’s play,” I add. “She gave them paint for the set. Spent a weekend painting trees on the floor. Told them she used to paint with Drew. Smiled.”
