Page 45 of Soft Serve

She's quiet for a moment.

"That's not nothing," she says.

"No," I agree. "It isn't."

Her thumb moves in a slow arc against my chest, the same absent, certain movement mine made across her knuckles on the dock, and I close my eyes and feel the morning settle around us. The town begins its day outside, the shop is waiting, and the world continues with the cheerful indifference of a world that doesn't pause for anyone's decisions.

I don't need it to pause. I just need this room, this woman, and this ordinary, extraordinary morning.

"We're going to be late opening," she says.

"Yes," I agree.

She doesn't move.

Neither do I.

"Rosie has a key," she says.

"Convenient," I say.

"Mm," she says.

The morning light moves across the ceiling.

Outside, Hearts Bend hums its steady note, unchanged and unchanging, the bell above the shop door ringing for the first customers of the day, the freezers running their quiet vigil, the whole place existing faithfully in the way of things that have been built to last.

I stay.

Chapter 14

Charles

The diner smells like coffee and bacon fat and something sweetly domestic that I don't have a name for, the combination of a place that has been feeding the same people the same food for long enough that the smell has become part of the walls.

I've been sitting at the counter for twenty minutes with a cup of coffee I've been neglecting, and my phone face down beside it, and the woman behind the counter has refilled my cup twice without being asked and hasn't said a word to me, which I'm beginning to understand is its own form of Hearts Bend hospitality.

Leave them alone until they're ready. Then don't leave them alone.

I hear the door behind me and feel the shift in the room that means someone significant has arrived, and I don't need to turn around.

Mrs. Calder settles onto the stool beside me with the authority of a woman who has claimed every seat she's ever sat in. She orders her coffee, and she wraps both hands around the cup when it arrives, like she does every cup of coffee.

She doesn't say anything for a full minute, and I've been in this town long enough to know that the silence isn't empty. It's preparatory. Mrs. Calder doesn't waste words, and she doesn't rush toward them either.

"You look like a man who did the right thing and is surprised it still hurts," she says finally.

I look at my coffee.

"Is it that obvious?" I say.

"Only to someone who's been watching," she says. "Which in this town is everyone, but I'll speak for myself."

I almost smile.

She sips her coffee, and I wait because I've learned that waiting is the correct response to Mrs. Calder.

"I've known Paloma Reyes since she was four years old," she says. "I watched her grow up in that shop. Watched her leave for college and come back for summers and leave again and then get the call about Grandma Faith and come back for good." She pauses. "Or what she thought might not be for good, at first."