17. Salem
SALEM
The kitchen smelled like cinnamon, sugar, and something that had confidently crossed the line into burnt. This was evidence, if anyone needed it, that I was better at fixing cars than I was at baking.
“It’s not burnt,” Rowan said, not even glancing at me. “It’s caramelized.”
“It’s smoking.”
She gave the pan a shake.
Flour was everywhere. Not in a cute, baking-with-your-best-friend way—more like we had accidentally created a low-grade weather event in the kitchen. It dusted the counters and the floor, and somehow I suspected it was behind the refrigerator.
I leaned my hip against the counter, watching her hover over my creation with a spatula, her jaw set. Rowan was committed to saving something that had passed the point of no return at least four minutes ago.
“If the alarm goes off,” I say, “I’m leaving you here to explain it.”
“You’re not leaving. You’re on cookies, and we have a million more to make.”
“I regret this entire morning.”
“You are the one who volunteered for it.” She pointed the spatula at me. “You said, and I quote, ‘the kids deserve something homemade,’ which felt out of character for you. You should have given them a coupon for an oil change.”
I winced. “I say a lot of things when I’m trying to make sick kids feel better. Their little faces are so cute, I would absolutely rob a bank if they asked nicely.”
“Halloween-themed good person?” She held up a bag of googly eyes and a pack of tiny witch hats.
“God, no. Regular good person who is filled to the brim with Halloween-ness”
Her mouth dropped open. “You’re ruining the vision.”
“I don’t want to be stared at by the cookie I am eating, and I thought this was my fault.”
“It is, now lean into it.”
“Terrifying.”
She shook her head like I was deeply disappointing and turned back to the stove.
The hospital had reached out earlier in the week, asking for donations for their Halloween treat giveaway—cookies, decorations, anything that made the place feel a little less sterile. I had loved the idea, so I said yes.
I grabbed the tray and lined up another row of cookies. The oven hummed. Rowan moved around me, reaching past me for the cinnamon, and the domesticity of it settled over the kitchen.
I watched her measure out sugar with focused precision.
Now. Tell her now.
About the shop, Chuck, and the loan application I had been quietly refining. That I was not going to Madison, had probably never been going to Madison. The longer I waited to say it, the worse it was going to get.
I opened my mouth.
“Do you think the blood splatters are too much?” Rowan asked, holding two cookies side by side and studying them with the gravity of an art curator.
I closed my mouth again. “Nah.”
“You think?”
“The right one could belong in an episode of Dexter.”
She set it down, satisfied. “The right one it is.”
The timer went off, and I pulled the tray out, and for a few minutes we just moved around each other in the easy rhythm we’d had since grade school.
“You’ve been somewhere else all morning,” Rowan said, not looking up from the cookie she was decorating.
I picked up a spatula. Moved a cookie that didn’t need moving. “I told you what happened.”
“With Lucy’s very public love letter to Ethan?” She set down the piping bag. “Yeah. Show me.”
I handed her my phone without looking at it again. I already knew what it looked like. What I needed was someone else’s face confirming I wasn’t losing my mind.
On Lucy’s feed, there was a carousel of photos from the other night at the Den—her and Ethan, carefully framed, the kind of shots that looked candid but weren’t.
I knew they weren’t because I witnessed their creation.
Her leaning into him. Her hand on his chest. The one where she’d pressed her lips to his cheek.
The caption was perfectly innocent—Happy Halloween, volunteers!
—but the song she’d set it to was not. The kind of song that said everything the caption didn’t. Soft. Certain.
Six hundred shares and climbing, too.
Rowan was quiet for longer than I expected.
“Oh,” she said finally.
“Yeah.”
She kept looking at it. “That’s not subtle.”
“No.”
“That’s intentional.”
“Very.” I crossed my arms. “Typical Lucy.”
Before I could stop it, the image arrived uninvited—her father’s hand on her shoulder, already withdrawing.
The way her face had gone small for a second before she pulled herself together.
There was such a small part of me that felt maybe this was Lucy’s way of harnessing control in a world where she had none.
I pushed it away. It didn’t change anything.
Rowan handed my phone back and picked up her piping bag.
“I feel ridiculous,” I said before she could say anything. “It’s a PR arrangement. A few weird moments, and I’m standing in my kitchen spiraling over something that isn’t even mine to spiral over.”
Rowan didn’t interrupt.
“I don’t like not knowing where I stand,” I whispered, “and I really don’t like that someone else seems very certain of where they stand.”
“That’s fair.”
I leaned back against the counter. “What do I do?”
“You could ignore it.”
“Terrible plan.”
“It is, but it’s an option.”
“What’s the other option?”
“Ask him.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Why not?”
“I would rather eat glass.”
She smiled slightly. “Dramatic.”
“I would rather run directly into traffic.”
“Now you’re just listing things that cause you pain.”
I let out a short laugh.
“For what it’s worth,” she said softer, “I don’t think you’re imagining it. The way he looks at you when he doesn’t think anyone’s watching”—she shook her head slightly—“that’s not fake.”
“That doesn’t help. You’re supposed to be my voice of reason.”
“I am your voice of reason. Reason says you’re not imagining it.” She tilted her head. “Also, does it even matter? We’re leaving in the fall. Madison. Whole new life. This is just October. It ends.”
Something landed in my chest. Not quite guilt. Not relief. Something between that didn’t have a clean name.
“Yeah,” I said. “You’re right, but there are long-distance relationships.”
“True.”
I was such a coward.
Wisconsin was cold, at least. Rowan loved the cold. She would have good cheese and nine blankets, and eventually she would be fine. That was what I told myself. It didn’t help as much as I needed.
Rowan declared the cookie situation resolved and disappeared down the hall, mumbling something about her skin care routine and leaving the kitchen quiet behind her.
I stood at the counter for a moment, not moving.
The cookies were cooling in their rows. Outside, October was doing what October did in Gray Harbor—gray and gold, the light coming through at that particular angle that made everything look like it was already a memory.
I thought about the shop.
Rowan’s voice floated down the hall—something about ribbon, whether ribbon was too much to put on the cookie boxes, had I seen the ribbon—and I exhaled slowly.
I loved her. I loved her so much it was almost funny, the way she could be simultaneously the easiest and the most complicated person. She would be devastated when I told her, and I never want to be the one to hurt her.
I kept putting it off because telling her made it real in a way the loan application didn’t. The loan application was just numbers. Telling Rowan was a door closing.
I picked up my phone.
Me:
Hey.
I hit send before I could talk myself out of it, which was becoming a pattern I was going to have to examine at some point.
The response came back almost instantly.
Hey there. How’s your day going?
I leaned against the counter and stayed there.
I had a best friend down the hall who didn’t know I was staying, and a shop that didn’t know I was coming.
And apparently, a person who could undo a whole morning’s worth of complicated feelings with four words and a question mark that was leaving. I had absolutely no idea what to do with any of it, but I kept the thread open.