4. Chapter 4 Eli
By eleven-thirty, I’m already regretting agreeing to let Dottie June Benson babysit.
Not because she isn’t trustworthy.
Dottie June would throw herself into traffic for Sophie without hesitation.
The problem is that Dottie June approaches childcare with the energy of a cruise director and the emotional boundaries of an overly affectionate golden retriever.
“She’ll be perfectly fine,” Dottie June assures me for the fourth time while standing in the Prairie Rose lobby holding Sophie’s tote bag and what appears to be an entire container of homemade snack mix.
“I know she’ll be fine.”
Sophie giggles from beside the front desk where she’s carefully arranging the origami frog Maggie made her beside a bowl of peppermints.
Traitor.
Dottie June pats my arm sympathetically. “We raised three boys, Eli. We can manage one eight-year-old for a few hours.”
“I’m aware.”
“We’ll feed her dinner.”
“I know.”
“We’ll deliver her back here before bedtime.”
“I know.”
Dottie June studies me for a moment before softening slightly. “Honey, you are allowed to go to work without carrying the entire world on your back for twelve hours.”
That lands closer than I’d prefer.
I glance toward Sophie automatically.
She’s wearing her soccer T-shirt and one purple sneaker, currently hopping around trying to pull the second shoe on without using her hands for reasons known only to children.
For one strange second, the image overlaps sharply with memory.
Different kitchen. Different house. Sophie younger and laughing while her mother filmed videos on her phone instead of helping.
The ache hits fast and familiar before I shove it aside.
No time for that today.
“Dad,” Sophie says, wobbling dramatically on one foot, “if I fall and break my head open, please tell people I died bravely.”
“You’re putting on a sneaker.”
“Dangerously.”
Dottie June presses both hands over her heart. “I love this child.”
“That makes one of us currently encouraging circus behavior.”
“Oh hush.”
The screen door bangs open behind us as Maggie steps onto the porch carrying a canvas tote bag overflowing with folders and brightly colored sticky notes.
“That bag looks concerning,” Earl tells her.
“It contains dreams and administrative panic.”
“Ah.” He nods wisely. “Government work.”
Maggie laughs and shifts the tote higher onto her shoulder before spotting Sophie.
“There you are. I have something important for you.”
Sophie immediately lights up.
Again.
I should probably be more alarmed by how quickly that keeps happening.
Maggie digs through the tote bag and pulls out a bookmark shaped like a frog wearing a tiny crown.
Sophie gasps softly like Maggie just handed her rare treasure.
“For me?”
“Well, technically for whichever book you’re currently ruling over.”
Sophie clutches it carefully. “He’s perfect.”
“I thought so too.”
Dottie June makes a suspiciously emotional noise beside me.
I point at her without looking away from Sophie. “Absolutely not.”
“I didn’t even say anything.”
“You were about to.”
“I just think kindness matters,” she whispers loudly.
The problem is that she’s right.
That’s exactly the problem.
Because Maggie isn’t trying to win Sophie over. She’s simply paying attention to her, and Sophie responds to that attention like a flower turning toward sunlight.
Temporary people should not feel this steady.
I check my watch and straighten. “I need to head in.”
Sophie immediately crosses the lobby toward me for a hug, wrapping both arms around my middle hard enough to wrinkle my station shirt.
“Have a good shift,” she says against my chest.
“You too.”
“That doesn’t make sense. I’m not firefighting.”
“You’re surviving Dottie June supervision. Similar risk level.”
“Rude,” Dottie June says.
Sophie grins up at me. “Bring home snacks if there’s an emergency grocery store stop.”
“That is not how emergencies work.”
“Still worth asking.”
I brush one hand gently over the top of her curls before stepping back toward the door.
Then I head to the Station and spend the next six hours wondering why the image of a librarian with green-colored glasses keeps showing up in the middle of my thoughts.
The firehouse is already chaos when I arrive.
Gear checks. Radio chatter. Somebody arguing over missing batteries. A rookie nearly dropping a medical bag down the apparatus bay stairs.
Captain Reyes stands beside the engine holding a clipboard and the expression of a man reconsidering every career decision that led him here.
“You’re late,” he says as I walk in.
“I’m three minutes early.”
“You’re emotionally late.”
“That’s not measurable.”
“It is to me.”
I grab my turnout coat from the locker while Reyes studies me for another second.
“You sleeping at all?”
“Enough.”
“That answer usually means no.”
I ignore him and finish checking air tanks instead.
The station doors rumble open minutes later for a routine medical assist involving an elderly man who accidentally glued his hand to a lawn chair.
By the time we return, one firefighter is cleaning adhesive off equipment while another argues that duct tape “would’ve prevented the entire situation.”
Normal shift energy.
Mostly.
Still, Reyes watches me too closely through all of it.
Finally, while we restock the medic unit, he leans one shoulder against the compartment door and says quietly, “You’re running on fumes, Turner.”
“I’m functioning.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
I slam the compartment shut harder than necessary.
“I’ve got it handled.”
Reyes nods once, calm and unimpressed. “That answer worries me too.”
Reyes decides my shift is over at nine and sends me home with orders to get some sleep before tomorrow.
I smell like smoke, disinfectant, and poor decisions.
The glue-call guy turned into a vehicle fire on Highway 177, which turned into a diabetic emergency at a gas station outside town, which somehow turned into Jenkins microwaving fish in the station kitchen at seven-thirty and nearly causing a firefighter uprising.
I’m tired enough that the Prairie Rose Inn looks almost unreal when I pull into the gravel drive.
The porch lights glow warm against the dark Oklahoma sky while cottonwoods rustle overhead in the wind. Somebody left lanterns lit along the porch railings, and soft music drifts faintly through one open downstairs window.
The whole place looks peaceful.
Which immediately makes me suspicious.
I climb the porch steps quietly, hoping Sophie is already asleep and Dottie June didn’t fill her full of enough sugar to launch her directly into orbit.
The second I step inside the lobby, I stop.
Paper is everywhere.
Not messy everywhere.
Intentional everywhere.
Small handwritten cards are tucked along shelves, windowsills, side tables, and lamp bases like colorful literary breadcrumbs scattered across the inn.
READ THIS IF YOU LIKE:
grumpy heroes who secretly care
chaotic road trips
emotionally devastating farm animals
people kissing in bookstores
Another card beside the staircase says:
FOR PEOPLE WHO CLAIM THEY “DON’T READ”(you are often wrong)
And near the fireplace:
THIS BOOK WILL FIX YOUR MOOD OR AT LEAST DISTRACT YOU FOR 300 PAGES
I stare at the nearest card for a second.
Then another.
Then another.
The entire lobby looks like a bookstore and a craft tornado had a surprisingly charming baby.
Of course Maggie did this.
A quiet laugh drifts from the sitting room before I can investigate further.
I follow the sound automatically.
Sophie sits cross-legged on the rug in pajama pants and socks while collecting handwritten recommendation cards into neat little piles around her. Maggie kneels beside the coffee table helping organize them while Earl attempts to tape one crookedly onto a lamp.
“That’s upside down,” Maggie tells him.
“It’s artistic.”
“It says ‘sad cowboys’ backward.”
“Some readers enjoy a challenge.”
Sophie giggles.
Again.
She’s done that more in forty-eight hours than she did some entire weeks after Stacey left.
Something in my chest tightens before I can stop it.
Dottie June notices me first from her spot on the couch where she’s folding laundry that absolutely does not belong to her.
“There he is,” she says softly.
Sophie spins around instantly. “Dad! You’re early!”
She scrambles upright and runs toward me in mismatched socks, nearly wiping out on the hardwood floor before catching herself against my legs.
My hand settles automatically against the back of her head.
“How was babysitting?” I ask.
Dottie June gasps dramatically. “Babysitting?”
“You know what I mean.”
“We had a perfectly respectable evening of educational enrichment.”
Earl snorts from the lamp. “Y’all watched a baking competition for two hours.”
“There were emotional stakes.”
Sophie beams up at me. “Maggie made a scavenger hunt.”
I glance toward Maggie before I can stop myself.
She’s sitting back on her heels near the coffee table wearing soft gray lounge pants and an oversized Cedar Hollow High T-shirt that probably belonged to Wren at some point. Her dark hair is twisted into a loose knot, and tonight’s glasses are blue.
Blue.
Apparently I catalog those now against my will.
“What kind of scavenger hunt?” I ask carefully.
“A library one,” Sophie says excitedly. “You had to find recommendation cards based on clues.”
“She dominated,” Maggie admits. “Honestly a little concerning.”
“I’m extremely competitive.”
“That became clear during the incident with the mystery section.”
Sophie grins proudly.
The entire room hums with warmth again.
Soft lighting.
Half-finished cocoa on coasters.
Recommendation cards scattered across the rug.
Dottie June emotionally attached to everybody’s business.
Earl still arguing with tape.
It should feel chaotic.
Instead, it feels… easy.
Which is somehow worse.
Because Maggie looks up then and catches me standing there watching all of them.
For one brief second, her expression softens.
Not performative cheerful. Not playful. Just warm.
Like she’s genuinely glad I came home.
And that feeling hits me hard enough to knock the air briefly sideways in my chest.
Dottie June finally leaves after hugging Sophie twice, reminding me three separate times that children require “joy and hydration,” and slipping a container of homemade snack mix into the kitchenette “for later.”
Earl lingers long enough to help Sophie tape one final recommendation card near the staircase before he points at me with the seriousness of a man delivering military intelligence.
“You look tired, son.”
“Thanks.”
“That wasn’t criticism. That was concern.”
“Worse.”
Earl grins into his fountain soda before finally heading downstairs.
The inn quiets noticeably after they leave.
Not silent exactly. Old buildings never really become silent.
Pipes creak softly somewhere in the walls, and the cottonwoods outside brush gently against the windows in the night breeze.
But the lobby’s earlier bustle settles into something softer now, wrapped in lamplight and the lingering smell of cinnamon.
Sophie kneels beside the coffee table in pajama pants arranging recommendation cards into categories only she understands.
“This pile is books with brave animals,” she explains seriously.
“Important literary genre.”
“And this pile is books where people have emotional problems.”
I glance toward Maggie. “That seems broad.”
“Extremely broad,” she agrees.
She sits cross-legged on the rug across from Sophie with a marker tucked behind one ear, writing another recommendation card in neat looping handwriting.
READ THIS IF YOU:
enjoy unlikely friendships
secretly cry during sports movies
would absolutely survive a zombie apocalypse
“You think I’d survive a zombie apocalypse?” Sophie asks.
“You’re observant, competitive, and surprisingly fast when cinnamon rolls are involved.”
“True.”
I lean against the doorway connecting the lobby to the hallway and watch them for a moment longer than I probably should.
Maggie glances up first.
Notices me watching.
And smiles.
Not brightly the way she does with groups of people. This one is smaller. Sleepier maybe. Softer around the edges.
Something uncomfortable shifts low in my chest.
Dangerous.
Very dangerous.
Sophie suddenly yawns hard enough her entire tiny body folds forward.
“There’s the bedtime signal,” I say.
“I’m not tired,” she mumbles through another yawn.
“Your face disagrees.”
Maggie caps the marker and begins gathering scattered recommendation cards into neat stacks. “Honestly, I respect the commitment to denial.”
Sophie crawls onto the couch beside Maggie anyway, already half asleep.
I push away from the doorway and start helping clean up the coffee table mostly because standing there staring at a librarian in blue glasses feels increasingly unsafe for my mental stability.
One card catches my attention while I stack them.
FOR PEOPLE WHO PRETEND THEY’RE FINE because survival mode is exhausting
The words land harder than they should.
Before I can stop myself, I glance toward Maggie again.
She shrugs slightly when she catches me reading it. “Books are cheaper than therapy.”
“That feels medically questionable.”
“Probably. Still effective.”
I huff out a quiet laugh before I can stop it.
Maggie notices.
Of course she notices.
That woman notices everything.
She slides the final stack of cards into a basket and rises from the floor, brushing invisible dust from her jeans. “I’m hosting my first themed reading night at the library next Friday.”
“That sounds ambitious.”
“That’s because I enjoy emotionally overcommitting to community engagement.”
“Honest answer.”
“I find honesty refreshing.”
There’s teasing in her voice, but something steadier underneath it too.
Sophie curls deeper into the couch cushions beside us while Maggie continues casually, like the invitation means nothing at all.
“You should come.”
I blink once.
“To the reading night?”
“Yes. I’m calling it Mystery and Mug Cake Night.”
“That title sounds suspiciously specific.”
“It’s branding.” She folds her arms. “People trust dessert themes.”
“I’m not sure firefighters are your target demographic.”
“Please.” Her eyes flick toward me over those blue frames. “Firefighters absolutely love snacks and dramatic storytelling.”
I open my mouth to answer when my phone vibrates suddenly in my pocket.
The sound cuts cleanly through the quiet room.
Without thinking, I pull it out.
And freeze.
Because for the first time in years, Stacey’s name flashes across my screen.