Chapter 8 Jasmine
Chapter eight
Jasmine
I press my fingers to my forehead and sink onto the stool behind the counter.
It’s early; the diner has that soft, echoey quiet before the day remembers it’s hungry.
The neon hums. The coffeemaker sighs like an old man.
Across from me, Riley twirls a stir stick in her cup and lets me rant about imminent doom and the destruction of civilization by way of one very shiny oil rig.
“Well,” she says, squeezing my hand, “if the world ends, it’s not because you didn’t try to tape it back together.”
“I want to see the impact survey,” I mutter. “If there even is one. Someone must have filed something. I want numbers. Air particulates. Maps with red circles that say ‘bad idea.’”
“Do you think,” Riley ventures carefully, “you might be taking this just a tiny bit too hard?”
I stare. “Why would you ask that?”
“Because it’s all you think about.” She lifts a shoulder. “And sometimes the brain works better after a nap.”
“You don’t get it,” I say, rubbing my temple. “This is how it starts. First an oil rig. Then someone ‘not from around here’ buys a haunted house. Then we’re a dot on some mining company’s dartboard. Do you think a bakery survives if the dirt under it turns into cash?”
“I get it,” she says gently. “But it’s okay to admit there’s only so much you can do.”
The words sting more than they should—not because she’s wrong, but because if Riley, of all people, is telling me to ease up, I must look like a woman trying to fistfight a bulldozer.
I pivot. “What about the guy who bought the Madison Street place?”
“Harold Beckett?” Riley says, like she’s grading my quiz. “He picks up his niece at school sometimes. Expensive watch, terrible parking.”
“So: villain.”
“Or uncle with money and a curiosity problem.”
“He bought that house.”
“Maybe he likes a challenge?” she offers. “You used to collect broken toasters and fix them for fun.”
“That was art.” I make a face. “Also a phase.”
The bell over the door jingles and air shifts across my skin like a heads-up. I turn without meaning to.
Asher Vaughn steps in. Grey T-shirt, sweatpants, keys threaded through his fingers. He looks like sleep and worry and stubbornness with stubble. Our argument from the grocery aisle snaps into focus inside my head like a trap.
Riley clocks the sudden silence and glances over her shoulder. She snorts. “Oh look. Your friend.”
“Stop. Calling. Him. That,” I hiss.
He comes to the counter and his eyes land on me, then drop. For a half second I think, Is he here to apologize? Then I remember who I’m thinking about.
“Sheriff,” Riley says, bright and neutral. “How’s it going?”
“Couldn’t be better, Ms. Jenkins,” he answers, but the sarcasm is missing. His voice is low, tired. My heartbeat does something unhelpful.
“How’s Brick?” Riley asks.
Brick. The name fits. A kid sturdy enough to keep his house standing.
“He’s pushing through,” Asher says. “Sent me here on a mission. Says the scones at Scotty’s are ‘to die for.’” He gives the words a little irony, like even he knows it’s dramatic.
Heat rises up my neck. “People do say that,” I murmur and hate that my voice goes softer around the edges. He looks worse than I’ve ever seen him—eyes shadowed, hair chaos, the kind of face you get from sleepless nights sitting watch by someone’s bed. I reach into the case and grab a paper sleeve.
“The scones,” he prompts, gentle but urgent, and I realize I’m staring.
“Right.” I box up half a dozen, add two extra without thinking. “On the house,” I blurt. “For Brick.”
His jaw ticks. “No.”
“What?”
“I’m not taking a pity discount,” he says, and there’s heat under it that isn’t about me.
“It’s not pity. It’s—” I glance at Riley, who is giving me the stop sign with her eyes. “It’s neighborly.”
“I’ll pay,” he says, sharper now. “Please.”
The please knocks me back a step. “Okay,” I say quietly, sliding the bag to the register. I ring him up and he swipes his card. For a weird moment, the beeping of the terminal is the only sound in the world.
“Thank you,” he says, and it lands like an apology that didn’t find its words.
“For Brick,” I say, because saying you’re welcome feels wrong.
He takes the bag and turns toward the door. He almost makes it before I hear myself say, “Is he… okay?”
He stops. Looks back. “Broken leg, mild concussion,” he says. “Luckier than we deserved.”
“I’m glad,” I say, and mean it like a prayer.
He nods once and leaves.
The bell flicks off behind him. I realize I haven’t breathed properly in a minute.
“Can you believe that guy?” I say, because if I don’t aim somewhere, my feelings will spill. “Marches in, refuses a kindness—”
Riley sips her coffee. “I mean… you’ve yelled at him in two separate retail establishments.”
“That is a gross exaggeration.”
“Uh-huh.” She smirks. “And for the record, I’m not entitled, and you never give me free scones.”
“Are your bones knitting?” I shoot back. “Sit down. You know you eat here free ninety percent of the time.”
She grins and steals a bite off a cooling lemon bar. “So. Wife?”
I glare. “You can’t tell me that.”
“Correct.” She licks a crumb from her thumb. “Nice try.”
I make a face and start wiping the spotless counter because I need to move or I will spontaneously combust. The anger I want to feed fizzles, replaced by something softer and more complicated. Pride? Worry? The urge to pack snickerdoodles and knock on a door that I shouldn’t?
“Don’t,” Riley says, as if she can read my mind. “Whatever you’re thinking, it ends with you on a porch, holding a plate and a grudge.”
“I could just… drop them off.”
“You could,” she says. “Or you could consider that people in crisis sometimes don’t have room for strangers in their living rooms.”
“Who said I’d go in?” I mutter, then add, quieter, “I’m not trying to be a stranger.”
Riley’s expression warms. “I know.”
A couple drifts in; I slide off the stool to take their order. Diner mornings are like skipping stones—quick touches, ripples that fade. By the time I circle back to Riley, I’ve delivered three coffees, a BLT, and a travel mug of hot chocolate to a kid with braces who said please four times.
“So,” she says. “Your mom?”
I swallow. The picture clicks back into place: blue robe, yellow yarn, my name slipping through her fingers like water. “Hard day. She didn’t know me. Then she said ‘nosy’ when I told her Eloise and Heather say hi, and I considered calling the Vatican.”
Riley’s hand covers mine. “I’m sorry.”
“I’ll take them next time,” I say. “One at a time, short visit. Dr. King thinks familiar faces might give her rails to grab onto.”
“Good.” She squeezes. “You don’t have to carry it alone.”
I nod and look away before the burn behind my eyes misbehaves. Focus, Jaz. Pick a safer storm.
“You think if I show up with snickerdoodles for Brick he’ll be mad?” I ask, casual as a crowbar.
Riley blinks. Then points with her stir stick like a lawyer at trial. “The man arrested you on week one, and your response is baked goods?”
I lift a shoulder. “Maybe I’m trying to be… neighborly.”
“Maybe you’re trying to manufacture enemies-to-scones,” she mutters, and I snort.
The bell jingles again. A young guy in a collared shirt strides in, clutching a clipboard and nervousness. He approaches the counter like he’s about to propose.
“I’m looking for Jasmine Wallace.”
“That’s me,” I say, because I’ve made peace with fate.
He slides a form toward me. “Signature here, please.”
I sign. He hands me a small brown envelope, thanks me as if I’ve done something heroic, and beats a retreat.
Riley leans in, eyes bright. “Admirer?”
“Don’t.” I pick at the seal and pull out a single-page letter on heavy paper. The logo at the top is a tasteful H inside a circle. Neat serif font. Money ink.
My stomach drops three floors.
“What?” Riley asks.
“It’s an offer.” The word tastes like dust.
“From…?”
“Harold Beckett, who else?” I say, handing it to her. “He wants to buy the diner.”
Riley reads, eyebrows climbing. “Cash offer. Above market. ‘Preserve the building’s charm while optimizing operations.’” She makes a face. “I hate everything about this sentence.”
I fold my arms and stare at the pie case like it can arm-wrestle a billionaire. “Still think I’m taking all this a little too hard?”
Riley lifts her gaze. In it is both flint and a mirror. “Okay,” she says, steady. “War plan.”
I huff out a laugh that isn’t one. “Step one: don’t throw up.”
“Step one,” she agrees. “Step two: we don’t answer this today. Step three: we get information. If Beckett’s buying up properties, there’s a paper trail. County clerk filings, LLCs, shell names. I’ll ask Nora what’s public. You call Dwyer at the paper. He owes you for Thanksgiving.”
“Pie is leverage,” I say, because if I don’t joke I’ll scream.
“Step four: we talk to Hartley’s EIS consultant, if an environmental impact plan even exists. If it doesn’t—”
“—we make noise about that,” I finish. “Town hall. Petition. Sunshine.”
“Step five,” she says, tapping the letter, “you decide what you want. Not what you’re scared of. If the answer is ‘I will not sell,’ we build around that like a fort.”
The diner hums around us—coffee pours, forks clink, Hank curses a crossword clue. Eloise and Heather slide into their booth and give me matching thumbs-up like they can smell a fight brewing and they’re bringing pom-poms.
“I’m not selling,” I say, quiet but sure. Saying it out loud plants a flag I didn’t know I needed.
“Then we’re done,” Riley says, folding the letter and slipping it back into the envelope like it’s a bug we’re cataloging. “He wants you to panic. We don’t panic. We bake. We print. We organize. We get annoyingly legal.”
A laugh escapes me. “Annoyingly legal is your love language.”
“True.” Her mouth tilts. “Also, you’re absolutely going to bake snickerdoodles, aren’t you?”
“Shut up,” I say, smiling for real now. “They help bones knit.”
“Science,” she deadpans.
I tuck the envelope under the register and take a breath that goes all the way down.
Riley’s off to school as morning light brightens the street.
Inside, the bell chimes and the day picks up speed.
Somewhere in town, a sheriff is handing a kid a paper bag of scones.
Somewhere else, a woman with a fountain pen thinks she can buy my name off the front of this building.
Let her try.
I smooth my apron, grab my order pad, and step back into the dance of coffee and pie and people who know how to say please. If Beckett wants Scotty’s, he’ll get a fight. If Hartley wants the town, she’ll get a chorus.
And, apparently, if a certain sheriff wants scones, he’ll get them—with a side of snickerdoodles. Not because I’m giving in.
Because in this town, we feed each other. Then we fight.