Chapter 47
Forty-Seven
Wren
It’s before six in the morning, and Rise & Shine is already the loudest place in Ember Hollow.
This is the part that would flat kill the woman who drove into this town the better part of a year ago.
She came before dawn on purpose, that one.
Picked the earliest, quietest, most solitary shift there is, because being alone in a dark kitchen with the oven ticking was the closest thing to safe she knew.
One woman, one apron, no witnesses, no risk. That was the entire plan.
The plan is in shambles, and I have never been happier about anything in my life.
Because it isn’t quiet anymore. It’s chaos, and it’s mine.
Cal’s at the big mixer, sleeves shoved up, singing something terrible and getting flour in his hair.
Eli’s fixing the walk-in door that’s been sticking, because a thing being broken within a hundred yards of Eli is a personal affront to the man.
And Rhett’s meant to be counting the till float but is instead eating a croissant and narrating, at length, a dream he had, to an audience of nobody, which does not slow him down in the slightest.
I’m behind the counter, where I always am, except now I can’t get from the oven to the register without somebody kissing the back of my neck on the way past. Everything takes me twice as long.
I’ve stopped minding. Turns out the fast, efficient, solitary version of my life was just the lonely version wearing a nicer name.
This is the shape of it now, every single morning.
Cal makes the coffee too strong, and I drink it anyway.
Eli’s fixed every broken thing in a two-block radius and started inventing new ones to fix.
Rhett has never once, not a single time, correctly counted the till, and I’ve quit asking him to, because watching him fail at it cheerfully is worth a great deal more than the four dollars he’s always off by.
We’re a disaster. We’re a beautifully run disaster, and the shop has never in its life done better.
Marigold’s recipe cards are still in their box by the register, soft-cornered and flour-dusted, and I still pull hers first every morning, the cinnamon rolls, the lemon tart, the bread that made grown men close their eyes.
Her rolls sell out by nine most days. I like to think she’d give me grief about the ones I’ve changed and secret credit for the ones I’ve improved.
The shop’s fuller than it’s been since she ran it.
I kept the promise I never said out loud.
The whole place smells like us now. That’s the thing I can’t get over.
It used to smell like sugar and bread and my own nerves.
Now it’s all four of us layered in, cedar, coffee, burnt sugar, my vanilla underneath, blended so thick that new customers walk in and go soft in the face without knowing why.
It smells like home, is why. It is home.
I built it out of the three of them without meaning to, same as the nest, and this time I get to keep it on purpose.
I can feel all three of them without once looking up, the bond humming low and constant, three fixed little points of where-you-are I’ll never be without again.
Cal’s delight. Eli’s steady focus. Rhett’s running commentary.
I used to lie awake, terrified of wanting a single thing I could lose.
Now I’ve got three whole people wired into me for good, and where the terror lived there’s just this quiet, ridiculous, bottomless contentment I’m still learning the shape of.
My ex used to call me no trouble at all. He meant it kindly, I think, like you’d compliment a well-behaved dog. Undemanding. Easy. There and gone and no bother to a soul. I spent my whole life earning that, being the woman nobody had to worry about, and calling the emptiness of it peace.
Rhett calls me trouble. He means it as the highest thing he’s got.
And he’s right, because I have become, at long last, a considerable amount of trouble.
I want things out loud. I take up room. I ask for what I need.
I let myself be looked after. I fill a whole shop, a whole pack, and a whole nest with my inconvenient, demanding, thoroughly wanted self.
Best thing that ever happened to me, becoming trouble.
We sorted the two-buildings problem, mostly.
Cal’s family house has room enough for a pack, so that’s home now, the four of us, a ridiculous amount of laundry, and a nest that’s migrated into an actual bedroom and quit being a secret.
I still catch myself some mornings braced for the bill, waiting for the part where somebody adds up what I owe for being this happy.
It doesn’t come. That’s the thing I’m still learning, that there’s no ledger, that you’re allowed to just have the good thing and keep on having it, one ordinary day after another, no charge.
Della comes in around six, like she always does, for her first coffee and her daily inspection of my love life. She slides onto her stool. I pour her cup. And I notice she’s got a look. A specific look. The look of a woman turning something over that she’d rather not admit she’s turning over.
“Spit it out,” I say.
“Nothing.” She drinks her coffee. Then, far too casual, “The search-and-rescue crew’s running a training thing up on the ridge next week. They asked if I’d cater the base camp.” A pause. “The quiet one asked. The big one. Wade.” Another pause. “It’s just sandwiches.”
“Uh-huh,” I say. “Just sandwiches.”
“Don’t.” She levels a finger at me. “Don’t you dare do the face. I invented that face. I’ve been aiming that face at you for four months.”
“I have no idea what you mean,” I say, doing the face.
She throws a sugar packet at my head. But she’s gone pink, and she’s smiling down into her coffee, and I file it away exactly where I know Rhett already filed it.
Some things this town just handles on its own schedule.
It’s got at least one omega who came here to vanish and ended up the beating center of the whole place, so I’ve got a strong feeling Della’s turn is coming, whether she’s ready to be caught or not.
Della heads off to open the diner. The morning fills up around me, the bell over the door going and going, the town filing in for bread, gossip, and a look at the four of us being disgusting in public.
Mrs. Alder comes for her caramel apple, which is not a breakfast, which I sell her anyway.
The Pelhams. Dot, smug on general principle.
Cal steals a kiss and a muffin on his way to nowhere.
Eli fixes the last hinge and then, finally, quietly, sits down for his coffee like a man who’s allowed to.
Rhett winks at me over the till he is still, somehow, not counting.
And I stand behind my counter in the middle of all of it, flour on my boots, three bond-lines humming, a shop so full there’s barely room to turn around, and I think about the woman who drove into Ember Hollow the better part of a year ago wanting exactly one thing above all others.
That woman wanted small. Wanted safe. Wanted to slip into the edge of a town and never be noticed, never be missed, because a woman who’s never missed can’t be left.
I understand her. I was her for twenty-eight years, and she kept me alive through some lean ones.
But God, am I glad she lost. She wanted exactly one thing above all others.
A quiet life.
Thank God I didn’t get one.