CHAPTER FOUR
The Roasted Wren
Sam and I made the drive into Miller's Creek that Friday morning, the last clear window the forecasters were promising before the system properly arrived, and the whole town had a particular brisk, purposeful energy to it, everybody out running the same last minute errands, hardware store carts loaded with rock salt and batteries, the grocery's shelves already thinning out in the specific way they always did right before a storm gave the complete county an excuse to overbuy canned soup.
We split the list between us, Sam heading off toward the hardware store for a few things Denny had specifically requested, propane fittings and a spare length of hose for the generator, while I took the grocery run, and we agreed to meet after at The Roasted Wren for coffee before heading back, a small, deliberate indulgence neither of us needed much convincing to justify.
The shop's little bell rang bright and familiar overhead when I pushed through the door, warmth and the smell of good coffee and a piece of it cinnamon rolling out to meet me, and I found Odette behind the counter, flour still dusting one forearm, looking up with the easy, unguarded smile of a woman thoroughly at home in her own life.
"Josie! I was hoping you'd make it in before the roads got ugly.
" She came around the counter to hug me thoroughly, warm and quick, before returning to whatever she'd been assembling on the back counter.
"Emmett's in the back arguing with the espresso machine again.
It's been temperamental all week, I think it can sense the weather coming same as the rest of us. "
"How's business holding up?" I asked, settling onto a stool near the counter, and watched her face light up in the specific way it always did when the subject turned to the shop itself.
"Busier than ever, honestly. I think people want something warm and bright to sit in right before a storm shuts everything down, and we've got both those things in spades.
" She slid a mug across to me without asking, already knowing just how I took it, the small easy intimacy of a friendship that had outgrown the need for constant explanation.
"We're thinking about adding a second oven come spring.
Beau's been begging for one for months, says the current setup can't keep up with his ambitions. "
"His ambitions being?"
"Croissants, apparently. Proper laminated ones, the kind that take three days and a level of patience I personally do not possess.
" She laughed, easy and fond. "He's been practicing at home on his own time, brings a sample in every week for us to critique.
They keep getting better. I think we'll cave on the oven by February. "
Emmett emerged from the back a moment later, wiping his hands on a rag, and broke into a wide, unhurried smile the second he spotted me. "Josie Marlowe. Come to check up on us before the world ices over?"
"Something like that." I hugged him too, warm and familiar, and settled back onto my stool while he claimed the one beside me, comfortable in the particular unhurried way of a man who had built himself a genuinely good life and wasn't shy about enjoying it.
"How's married life treating the two of you? "
Odette and Emmett exchanged a quick, warm glance, the kind that still carried a little private thrill in it even after, what was it now, nearly two years married, and Odette held up her left hand with exaggerated ceremony, though the ring on it had long since stopped being news to anybody in this town.
"Treating us very well, thank you for asking," she said. "Emmett fixed the shop's back door hinge for the third time this month, which I have decided officially counts as a love language at this point in our relationship."
"It absolutely does," Emmett agreed, completely serious. "A man shows his devotion however the moment calls for it. Sometimes that's flowers. Sometimes it's a properly greased hinge that stops waking the whole shop up every time someone uses the back entrance."
"I'm inclined to agree with him," I said, laughing, and meant it.
There was some part of it deeply satisfying about watching two people settle into a happiness this steady, this unhurried, after the hard, complicated road that had brought them together, and I found myself, sipping my coffee in the warm, bright shop, genuinely glad for both of them in a way that had nothing to do with the mystery still sitting unresolved in my own kitchen drawer at home.
"How's Priya these days?" I asked. "And Beau?"
"Priya's thriving," Odette said. "She took over most of the ordering and inventory this year, turns out she's got a real head for it, and Beau's been steady as ever, still walking her home most evenings even though it's barely three blocks and neither one of them will admit that's the actual reason he offers every single time.
" She grinned. "They're good, Josie. Really good.
It still does my heart good, watching the two of them, considering everything that first year threw at all of us. "
"It does mine too."
The shop's bell chimed again, and a small cluster of customers came in stamping cold off their boots, and Odette excused herself back to the counter with the easy, practiced grace of a woman who ran her own business exactly the way she wanted to, no longer flinching at every unexpected arrival the way she once had, back when Grant Ashworth's shadow still hung heavy over every square foot of this place.
"You headed back to the lake after this?" Emmett asked, glancing out the window at the sky, which had gone noticeably darker even in the short time we'd been sitting there, thick and gray and pressing low over the rooftops of Elm Street.
"Once Sam finishes at the hardware store, yeah. Why?"
"No reason, precisely. Just, that sky's got a look to it I don't much care for.
" He said it easy, unworried, the practical observation of a man who'd spent a good chunk of his life working outdoors and had learned to trust his own read on weather more than most forecasts.
"Might not want to dawdle too long on your way home, is all. "
"We won't," I promised, though the words came easier than the actual feeling behind them, some small, uneasy prickle running up my spine at the flat, heavy way that sky sat over the town, considerably darker and lower than I remembered it looking even an hour earlier when I'd first walked in.
Odette must have caught something in my face, because she paused on her way back to the counter and leaned against it a moment, studying me with the certain gentle attention of an old friend who had learned to read the small things.
"You've still got that letter on your mind, haven't you. I can always tell."
"Is it that obvious?"
"Only to somebody who's watched you carry it around a full year now." She wiped her hands on her apron, thoughtful. "Any closer to knowing who sent it?"
"Not really. Sam's chasing an old surveyor's name, a land fraud that goes back decades, but it moves slow.
Painfully slow, some weeks." I turned my mug in a slow circle on the counter.
"I keep thinking about Idella. What she must have known, near the end, and never got the chance to tell anybody fully. "
"You'll get there," Odette said, with the plain, unhurried confidence of a woman who had lived through her own hard mystery and come out the other side of it entire.
"I didn't think I'd ever understand what happened in this shop either, and here we are.
" She reached across and squeezed my hand, brief and warm.
"Some things just take the time they take, Josie. Doesn't mean they're not moving."
Emmett emerged from the back a moment later, propane fittings and hose bundled under one arm, and accepted the coffee Odette had ready for him with genuine gratitude, settling in beside me for a few last minutes of warmth before we braved the cold again.
We talked easy, unhurried nonsense with Odette and Emmett both, the specific comfortable rhythm of old friends catching up over good coffee, and I found myself, more than once, glancing toward the window at that heavy, darkening sky, some part of me registering, even before the weather service's next update reached my phone, that whatever this storm intended to do, it seemed to be arriving considerably faster than anybody had planned for.
"We should get moving," Sam said finally, following my gaze to the window, his own voice gone a shade more purposeful than it had been a few minutes earlier. "Still got the Wayside and the antique shop to stop by before we head back."
"You do," Odette said, coming around the counter to hug us both goodbye. "Be measured out there. And come back once this is all over, both of you, I want a proper update on how bad it actually gets."
"We will," I promised, and meant it, and stepped back out into a cold that had sharpened considerably even in the hour we'd spent inside, the wind picking up in short, testing gusts that rattled the shop's hanging sign overhead, and thought, walking toward the truck with Sam's hand steady in mine, that whatever Emmett's instincts had picked up on, mine were beginning to agree with him rather more than I would have liked.
"You've been soft since the shop," Sam said, once we'd climbed in and he'd gotten the heater blowing warm against the windshield's early frost. "Everything all right?"
"Odette asked about the letter. Whether we're any closer.
" I buckled in, watching a few of the shop's neighbors hurrying past with armfuls of last minute groceries, the whole street moving with that particular brisk, watchful energy a town got right before weather.
"I don't have much of an answer for her yet.
It's strange, Sam. A year now, and some days it feels like we've barely moved past where we started. "
"We've moved," Sam said, easy, pulling out onto the street.
"Slower than either of us would like, maybe, but we know things now we didn't a year ago.
Corliss's name. The Ashford connection running deeper than anybody in the county's ever admitted publicly.
Pratt's name sitting closer to the middle of it than feels comfortable.
" He glanced at me, steady. "That's not nothing, even if it doesn't feel like an answer yet. "
"I know. I just keep thinking about her, alone with whatever she knew, nobody to tell it to.
" I watched the last of Miller's Creek's storefronts slide past, string lights already glowing warm in a few windows despite the hour.
"I hope whoever sent that letter knows we're still looking. I hope they haven't given up on us."
"I hope so too," Sam said, quiet, and reached over to find my hand across the console, and we drove the rest of the way toward the hardware store in a comfortable, thoughtful silence, the sky outside going steadily heavier and grayer with every passing block.