Chapter 18
Maya
T he bell above the door chimes with the same familiar sound it has made every morning for the last five years, and for a moment I stand just inside the entrance of Calder Café and Market, letting the warmth of the space settle around me as if it needs a second to recognize me again, or maybe as if I need a second to recognize myself within it.
The scent of coffee and fresh bread hangs in the air, comforting and steady in a way that has always grounded me, and I take it in more consciously than I usually do, aware of how much has changed and how much has stayed exactly the same.
“Finally,” Tess calls from behind the counter, not looking up at first as she finishes writing something on a pad, her voice carrying that easy familiarity that has become one of the constants in my life here.
“I was about to assume you ran off and joined a ski patrol unit or something equally dramatic.”
“I’m not nearly that heroic,” I reply, stepping forward and setting my bag down in its usual spot, the motion automatic even as I feel slightly out of sync with it, as though I am slipping back into a rhythm that fits but no longer feels quite as normal as it once did.
She looks up then, and the moment her eyes meet mine, something shifts in her expression, subtle but unmistakable, the quick assessment of someone who knows me well enough to notice when something is different even if she cannot yet name what that difference is.
“You look… rested,” she says, drawing the word out slightly as if testing it against what she sees. “And not just ‘I finally slept after a long shift’ rested. More like you just came back from somewhere you didn’t expect to go.”
I let out a small breath that might have been a laugh in another moment, because she is not wrong, because the way she frames it is close enough to the truth that deflecting it completely would feel disingenuous, and yet I am not ready to lay it all out here, not in the middle of the café, not with the morning rush just beginning to build.
“It was a trip,” I say instead, keeping the tone light without fully dismissing the weight beneath it. “Not exactly planned.”
“That tracks,” she replies, leaning her elbows on the counter as she studies me more closely. “You don’t usually do spontaneous. You do calculated detours at best.”
“Maybe I’m evolving,” I offer, and there is a hint of truth in that, even if I am not sure yet what that evolution looks like beyond the last few days.
Her gaze lingers on me for a second longer before she nods slightly, accepting the surface answer while clearly filing away the rest for later.
“Well, whatever version of you this is, she’s going to have to jump back into reality pretty quickly, because we’ve got a full board today and you owe me at least two shifts after disappearing like that. ”
“Fair,” I say, moving behind the counter and tying on my apron, the familiar motion grounding in a way that feels both comforting and slightly surreal, as if I am stepping back into a version of myself that fits but no longer defines me completely.
The morning unfolds in a steady rhythm, orders coming in, conversations flowing, the usual mix of regulars and newcomers filling the space with a low hum of activity that I have always found easy to navigate.
I move through it without thinking too much about it, my body remembering what to do even as my mind drifts occasionally, pulled back to the cabin, to the quiet, to the way everything narrowed down to something simple and undeniable.
It is not that I am distracted exactly, but everything feels slightly shifted, as though I am seeing the same space through a different lens, one that sharpens certain details while softening others.
The conversations sound the same, the laughter carries the same warmth, but there is an undercurrent now, a sense that something has been added to my life that does not fit neatly into this setting and yet refuses to stay separate from it.
“You’re pouring coffee into an empty cup,” Tess says quietly at one point, stepping beside me and reaching out to steady the carafe before it tips too far.
I blink, refocusing on the task at hand, and realize she is right, that I have been moving through the motions without fully engaging with them for the last few seconds.
“Right,” I murmur, adjusting the cup and finishing the pour properly, offering a quick apology to the customer waiting patiently on the other side of the counter.
Tess doesn’t say anything else until the line thins out again, and then she leans against the counter beside me, her posture casual but her attention anything but.
“Okay,” she says, her voice lower now, more private despite the noise around us. “You can either tell me what’s going on, or I can keep guessing, and I promise my guesses are going to get increasingly dramatic.”
I smile slightly at that, because I have no doubt she is right, because Tess has never been one to let something go once she senses there is more beneath the surface.
“It’s not dramatic,” I say, though the words feel like an understatement even as I say them. “It’s just… complicated.”
“Complicated I can work with,” she replies, folding her arms loosely as she waits, not pushing, not demanding, just present in that steady way she has always had.
I hesitate for a moment, not because I do not trust her but because I am still trying to find the shape of what this is myself, still trying to understand how to explain something that feels both entirely clear and impossible to define in simple terms.
“I ran into someone,” I say finally, starting there because it feels like the most neutral entry point, even though there is nothing neutral about it.
Her brows lift slightly, interest sharpening. “Someone as in someone, or someone as in someone?”
“Someone as in someone,” I repeat, and the slight emphasis is enough for her to catch the distinction, enough for her expression to shift again, curiosity giving way to something more focused.
“Okay,” she says slowly. “That narrows it down significantly. Do I know him?”
“No,” I reply, then pause, because that is not entirely accurate. “Not really. He’s been around, but not… here.”
“Cryptic,” she notes, but there is no impatience in it, just a willingness to let me get there in my own way.
I exhale softly, glancing toward the window for a moment before returning my attention to her. “His name is Marco,” I say, and the act of saying it out loud in this space feels different than it did in the cabin, less contained, more real in a way that carries its own weight.
Tess watches me carefully, the name clearly not ringing any immediate bells, but the way I say it telling her enough to understand that it matters. She doesn’t remember the reason I actually came to Silver Pine.
“And?” she prompts gently.
“And we knew each other before,” I continue, choosing the words slowly, aware of how much I am leaving out and how much I am not ready to unpack all at once. “A long time ago. It didn’t end well.”
Her expression softens slightly, understanding threading through it. “And now you’ve run into him again, and it’s… better?”
I consider that, turning it over in my mind, because the answer is not simple, because “better” feels both accurate and insufficient.
“It’s different,” I say finally. “He’s different. I’m different.”
“And you’re not over him,” she adds, not as a question but as an observation, and I feel the truth of it settle into me without resistance, without the need to deny or deflect.
“No,” I admit quietly. “I’m not.”
Tess nods slowly, taking that in without judgment, without surprise, as if she has been expecting something like this even if she did not know the details.
“Does he know that?” she asks.
“Yes,” I say, and there is something in the word that feels steady, grounded in the conversations we had, in the honesty we reached, even if it was incomplete.
“And what does he want?” she continues, and this is where it becomes more complicated, where the clarity I felt in the cabin meets the uncertainty of the world outside it.
“He wants to try,” I say, the phrasing deliberate because it matters, because it reflects the reality of what we agreed to without overpromising something we have not yet defined.
“And you?” she presses gently.
I look down at my hands for a moment, then back up at her, because the answer deserves to be said out loud, even if it feels more vulnerable here than it did in the quiet of the mountains.
“I want to believe him,” I say, and the honesty of it settles into the space between us, not fragile but not fully secure either.
Tess studies me for a moment longer, then nods again, her expression thoughtful. “That sounds like hope,” she says.
“It feels like risk,” I counter, though the two are not entirely separate, though one often carries the other with it whether we want it to or not.
“Those usually go together,” she replies, a small smile touching her lips. “So what happens next?”
I think of the cabin, of the conversation before we left, of the way he said he would come back, not immediately, not impulsively, but intentionally, with time to let this exist outside the intensity of what we experienced there.
“He said he’d come back in a week,” I say, and the words feel solid even as they carry uncertainty, because a week is both a short time and a long one depending on how you measure it.
“And you believe him,” she says, not quite a question, not quite a statement.
I hold her gaze for a moment, feeling the weight of that, the choice embedded within it, the possibility of disappointment balanced against the possibility of something real.
“Yes,” I say finally, the word quiet but firm. “I do.”
She nods once more, and this time there is something like approval in the gesture, not because she knows the outcome but because she recognizes the decision for what it is.
“Then we’ll see what happens in a week,” she says, pushing off the counter and reaching for another order as the next customer steps forward. “In the meantime, you’ve got a café to run and a life to live.”
I smile slightly at that, because she is right, because whatever happens next, I am still here, still part of this place, still grounded in the life I built over the last five years.
The rest of the day passes in that steady rhythm, the familiar blending with the new in a way that feels less disjointed as time goes on, as I settle back into the patterns that have always supported me.
But beneath it, something remains, something that does not fade or get absorbed into routine, something that stays present no matter how much I focus on the immediate.
When I lock up at the end of the day and step outside into the cool evening air, the mountains visible in the distance, I find myself looking toward them without thinking, tracing the line of the ridge where the cabin sits somewhere beyond my sight.
A week.
It is not long, not in the scope of everything that has already passed, but it feels significant, like a measure of something more than time, something that will tell me whether this is real or just another moment that will fade once the distance sets in.
I wrap my jacket tighter around me and start walking home, the quiet of the town settling in as the day winds down, and I let the thought settle fully this time, not pushing it away, not tempering it with doubt.
This time, he won’t disappear.