Chapter 23 #3
He covered her lips with his. Not a long kiss, but a sweet one. Grateful. Somehow communicating strains of how much he cared
about her in mere seconds, rewiring the emotional architecture of a moment.
“Called it!” a voice shouted from behind them.
They broke apart to see Mr. Rutherforton hobbling into the lobby from the makeshift clothes closet, his cane clicking on the
tile.
“I pegged the two of you from the start. Two people can’t prank each other as much as y’all and not end in either romance
or jail. I bet on the former.”
“I voted for both at the festival.” Jodie from the general store approached, wiping her hands on a towel. “Either way, I won.
The two of them have increased my sales exponentially with all their flirting.”
“Flirting?” Daphne said, attempting to object to the notion.
Finn’s grin only broadened as he tucked an arm around her waist, keeping her close.
She nestled right in.
“I mean . . . you did call me infuriatingly attractive that one time.” He looked down at her, his brows raised. “In front of two small children and a minister.”
“I said infuriating and attractive,” she muttered.
“Semantics,” he said, and winked.
“Thou shalt not lie, Daphne Austen.” Nate strolled into the room, looking as soaked and harried as Finn, with Jack on his heels.
“We already knew how this would end, Nate.” Jack waved a dismissive hand toward them. “It’s way too predictable . . . and
gross.” His nose wrinkled with his frown, and he reminded Daphne of his ten-year-old self. “Anyway, that hot soup we heard
about in the doorway sounds loads better.”
“Follow me, fellas.” Jodie gestured with her chin. “We got plenty. But, Jack, I may make you a mug that reads: ‘Cupid, keep
walkin’. I’m just here for the pie.’”
“Honestly,” Rosemary said, appearing in the playroom doorway with a sleepy toddler on her hip, “if you two don’t keep collaborating
on menus, I’m starting a petition. The short ribs and lavender biscuits from the cook-off still haunt my dreams.”
“I want to be a taste tester!” Clem from the gym called as he ducked inside and away from the rain.
“Me too!” Cora from the Wisteria Book Club chimed in from the water bottle table. “I volunteer as tribute!”
Daphne looked up at Finn, searching his face. “Assuming you’re rebuilding?”
She needed to know his answer. And, at the same time, feared what he might say.
His expression gentled. “How else is Wisteria going to get a savory counterbalance to your dainty confections?”
She laughed—and then cried a little—and nearly launched herself back into his arms. But a soft voice broke through the chorus
of teasing.
“Daddy?”
Lucy blinked awake from her place on the little couch, her expression moving from drowsy to delighted in a heartbeat. She
pushed back the donated blanket, slid off the couch, and ran to her dad.
Finn caught her up and kissed the top of her head. “There’s my girl.” His words rasped out, his gaze trailing back to Daphne. And with a look to the crowd and a flick of his grin, he added. “Both my girls?”
The charmer emerged in that moment, and Daphne embraced him—crooked grin, kissable lips, flirtiness, and all.
Daphne stepped to his other side, pressing a kiss to his smile.
“Oh yeah. Your girl . . . and the better cook.”
The crowd laughed, and for a moment, the heaviness of the day eased.
Yes, there were going to be many hard moments in the weeks and months to come, much grief to bear and many struggles to work
through. But Finn’s answer promised that he wasn’t going anywhere.
This—this moment of connection, of healing, of joy in the midst of ruin—was proof of something enduring.
Something that tasted a lot like hope.
Whatever was unfolding between her and Finn—sweet, spicy, decadent, and slightly chaotic—felt like the beginning of something
worth holding on to.
Something lasting.
And she’d welcome that in her kitchen and her heart every day.
The loss was devastating.
Even though Daphne had heard story after story from folks pouring into the inn over the last forty-eight hours—had seen the
photos, the shaky videos—nothing prepared her for the sight in person.
Words didn’t cover it.
Mud. So much of it. Everywhere. It coated the streets, clung to the sidewalks, piled inside buildings like someone had shoveled
a few feet of it in each one.
And now, as the sun began drying everything out, the muck turned into a fine, gritty dust that hung in the air. Cloaking the town in the scent of mold, waste, and . . . brokenness.
Her beautiful world—her wonderful town—looked like the ruins you’d see in a postapocalyptic movie. A ghost town.
She walked down Main Street with Jack on one side and Finn on the other, each step bracing her for what she already knew she’d
see. The upper third of the street gave the impression of business as usual—power still out, sure, but flower boxes on the
antique shop’s windows still stood at attention, as if trying to pretend the world hadn’t crumbled beneath them.
But the farther downhill they walked, the more the damage came into focus. Boarded-up windows. Others gaping dark and empty.
Sludge-caked entryways littered with soggy chairs, splintered shelving, a teddy bear lying face down in a puddle. An overturned
car rusting into the sidewalk. A streetlamp folded in half. A once-cozy park bench pretzeled into a tree.
And an alarming lack of green. Something she’d never imagined before. Dirt covered much of what had once been grass, and many
of the trees lay splintered, wind stripped, or dust covered, their natural beauty failing to patch into the dull hues of their
surroundings.
All around her, Daphne walked the street in slow, quiet steps. Faces stunned. Moving with an eerie silence of unutterable
loss. Grief and numbness layered over everything like the film of dust still drifting through the air.
And when Tea Thyme came into view, her chest pulled tight.
She’d expected it. Jack had sent her a photo to prepare her. But still, seeing it in person, sunlight almost too bright and
raw against the dim, mud-smudged windows, sliced pain through her middle.
The chalkboard lay in two pieces across the door’s threshold. Her café tables were sludge-smeared or missing entirely. One
of the chairs had somehow ended up two buildings down, propped like it had simply wandered off.
Finn veered away, dodging a flowerpot that had once stood across the street, to make it to the door of The Green Dragon, its windows as dark and lifeless as her own.
“It’s going to be tough, Daph,” Jack whispered, searching her face and handing her a mask to help protect from the mold infecting
the air inside.
“I know.” She took his offering with a nod and slipped it onto her face.
He nodded and, with a careful step forward, pushed open the front door and flipped on his flashlight. A gust of damp, basement-scented
air drifted out—mold, oil, and something else she didn’t want to define.
She followed Jack, the large boots he’d brought for her to wear squishing into the mud as she crossed the threshold of her
dear shop.
She couldn’t see the floor. At least a foot of mud covered the dining room. Tables and chairs had toppled in chaotic disarray,
some jammed into the far corner where she’d once hung a painting of Haddon Hall—her granny’s favorite English estate. The
painting now lay face down in the sludge.
The force of the water must have undercut some of the shelving, because several of the counters slanted, leaving appliances
stuck in the mud. Her teapots—Granny’s, hers, the ones with the sweet hand-painted flowers—lay scattered in glinting shards
beneath the muck.
“We need to get as much out of your apartment as we can,” Jack said, moving carefully toward the back, “and transfer it to
my house. I think I can get the truck behind the shop. There’s a semi-clear path.”
She nodded numbly, her gaze still locked on the ruined room.
She and Winston had been staying at Jack’s place—his cabin perched on the ridge above town. He’d gotten by with only a damaged
garage and flooded driveway.
Last night they’d sat on Jack’s couch in silence for a few hours. No words. Just grief shared side by side. Until he’d gone back out to continue with rescues.
Another grief.
Another loss.
Her attention pulled back to Jack as he made slow progress forward in the room. He looked exhausted. Pale.
But whole.
And alive.
At least she still had him.
Some dear people in Wisteria couldn’t say that. Some had lost much more than their shops or homes or cars. They’d lost their
pets. Even their people.
She swallowed through the lump in her throat as tears trailed down her cheeks.
Rosemary’s grandpa had been swept away in the current. Found two miles from his home.
Jodie—sweet and sassy Jodie from Wisteria General Store—had lost her brother, a first responder. He’d saved a little girl
but hadn’t made it out of the floodwaters himself.
And there were dozens of similar stories of loss.
Too many. And more to come, she suspected.
The comparison didn’t lessen the pain of looking over her devastated shop.
Or make the gaping hole of loss any less.
But it did bring things into perspective.
“I’ve got the whole upstairs of the cabin where we can keep your things until we can repair the shop,” Jack said, leading
the way to the kitchen.
Until we can repair the shop? Was that even possible?
She swallowed the growing lump in her throat and followed him. It was too much to think about. Right now, all she could do
was put one foot in front of the other.
The kitchen looked similar to the front of the restaurant. Mud everywhere. Broken items in various places around the floor. Wallpaper peeling like shedding skin. Several of the lower cabinets stood open, revealing mud-covered pots and pans.
Among the brown and gray mess, her attention caught on the sight of some red tape wrapped around a pipe beneath her larger
sink that abutted the wall connecting Finn’s restaurant to hers. She moved closer, bending to get a better look.