Page 89 of The Sugar and Spice Kitchen
Anita was quiet for just a moment. Not long. The length of someone choosing their words.
“I think,” she said carefully, “that there were a number of people in and around your grandmother’s bakery that day who might have had their reasons.”
Her expression softened in that way that always made Emily feel twelve years old. “Keep looking, Emily. I think you’ll find your answer.”
She said it the way you said something when you already knew what the answer was.
Emily looked at her mother.
Anita looked back at her, warm and composed, and lips sealed.
Emily didn’t push it. Something in her understood, without being able to say exactly why, that pushing wasn’t what this moment needed. She stayed for another cup of tea and they talked about the Christmas dinner at the inn and Zoe’s baby blanket and whether the mayor’s choice of tree this year had been a stroke of genius or a case of mild megalomania, and it was easy and warm and exactly what Emily had needed without knowing she needed it.
She hugged her mother at the door.
Emily stopped at the corner of Oak Way and looked down the street. The Christmas lights were on, amber and gold and deep red, the town quiet and cold, glittering in the fresh fallen snow. The fire station light was visible at the far end, warm in the dark.
She thought about her nana’s letter. About a town that had fought over something small and let it grow into something much larger than it deserved. About her mother’s hands around a cup of tea and the careful way she’d said certain things and not said others.
Keep looking, Emily. I think you’ll find your answer.
THIRTY-TWO
COLE
Monday, December 21st
Cole had forgotten how loud an axe could be in the cold.
The blade struck with a crack that split the morning wide open, bounced off the back windows of the fire station, and carried across the fenced yard into the neighborhood beyond.
Cole wrenched the axe free and set another log on the chopping block.
Snow covered most of the yard, softening the old picnic table, the covered grill, and the metal chairs shoved against the weathered privacy fence. Along the perimeter, raised flower beds slept beneath a thick white blanket.
Zoe had told him to wait until spring.
Apparently, tulips and daffodils would push up around the fire station as part of her Green Up Maple Falls initiative.
Cole straightened, rolled one shoulder, and reached for another log.
For now, he had firewood.
He was trying to focus on the wood and not the conversation he’d had with his grandfather last night. He’d asked Cole if he’d thought about extending his contract.
Cole had said no. It was more as a reflex than anything else.
But when he thought about Emily, about what was growing between the two of them, the answer was more complicated. He didn’t have a neat sentence for what was happening between the two of them, or what it meant for his future. He was okay with that for now.
He set another log on the block and split it clean. Captain, who had been stationed three feet away with his nose buried in a drift for the past twenty minutes, didn’t react. He was completely still, which was its own spectacle—seventy pounds of Irish setter, motionless—every sense directed at whatever was happening beneath four inches of snow. Cole had no idea what he heard or smelled down there. A mouse, probably. A vole. Something small and fast and deeply exciting. Captain would stand like that for hours if required.
Tiny snowflakes drifted down around them, the light kind, like glitter, spinning lazily in the still air and catching the winter sun before settling on the woodpile, on Captain’s red coat, on Cole’s shoulders. The snow didn’t accumulate so much as decorate.
Emily should be here soon, Cole thought.
Last night, while Jackson had been sprawled on his couch watching the game and eating half a bag of chips, Cole had texted Mayor Bloomfield. He’d expected to get a response sometime today, possibly next week, given how busy he must be with the storm and holiday events.
Instead, the mayor had replied within ten minutes.
