Chapter 2
As Rebecca exited the highway and the country roads began to unspool like parade ticker tape toward Bramley Hollow, she finally started to relax.
The maples and oaks on either side of the car blazed with gold and crimson.
She opened the car windows and the sunroof, and there it was again: that trademark sense of September possibility, brought to her as a scent on the wind by the smoke of a distant leaf burn.
But she still missed her. Rebecca let out a long sigh as her car’s tires crunched over fallen leaves.
The winding road toward town dipped past fields edged with stone walls, and the trees alongside them glowed with color so bright it was almost neon.
As she crested the final hill, she caught her first glimpse of the town square: a slate-gray stone gazebo with a white roof standing proud at the center, decorated for fall with wreaths made of russet leaves and dried corn husks.
A large wooden sign advertising the Bramley Hollow Autumn Festival in painted script hung on the south side of the gazebo, a smaller sign with details about the Autumn Gala, a dance during the festival everyone in town attended, on the other.
She turned onto Main Street and felt like she was slipping into a postcard she always kept tucked in her back pocket, forgotten until she needed it.
Home. It had been a long time since she’d been back here.
More than a year. And yet somehow, and like always, it felt like she had never been away.
Bramley Hollow had a way of never changing, making Rebecca feel like she hadn’t changed, either—like she was still awkward and teenaged, not an adult with another life somewhere else.
She drove slowly, taking in the brick storefronts that had been there since her childhood: Jonagold General Store, Bramley Bakery, Ida’s Market, the Tipsy Apple, the post office, with its Canadian flag fluttering gently in the apple-scented air of the early-autumn evening.
Maple, oak, and gingko trees grew out of beds edged in interlocking stone beside the wide sidewalk.
Old-fashioned lampposts stood by; they would all flicker to life at once when the sun dipped lower, as if a witch had cast a Hallows’ Eve spell on them.
Every establishment was decorated for autumn in some way: urns filled with gourds and mini pumpkins, stacks of hay bales in window displays, more russet and corn husk wreaths than Rebecca could count.
Bramley Hollow always dressed well for autumn—but Rebecca knew there was also a certain amount of tyranny behind it, these days.
Sabrina had been telling her for months about Crispin Klune’s ever-increasing decoration rules and regulations for the businesses lining Bramley Hollow’s Main Street.
Two pumpkins per doorway, three if one was white.
Burlap bows. No plastic leaves, ever. Rebecca had laughed it off as yet another Bramley Hollow quirk—until she had received that recent call from Crispin himself, his tone more than vaguely threatening, telling her that according to some obscure regulation she was in breach of, there was sudden urgency.
As Crispin had put it, she needed to either “resurrect McIntosh’s Diner, or sell it and put it out of its misery. ” Or else, apparently.
“Can he really do that?” Rebecca had asked Sabrina, who was the first person she had called after hanging up with Crispin the month before.
“No one is sure what Crispin can and can’t do,” Sabrina had replied, her tone uncharacteristically grave. “His regime is equal parts bylaws and burlap bows.”
“You make it sound so cute, but it isn’t, is it?”
Sabrina had sighed, and her voice had lowered. “He has definitely created a culture of fear, all covered in a seemingly adorable layer of harvest-themed decorations.”
Rebecca had to admit, Main Street did look great, though.
Crispin had promised to boost tourism, and judging from the number of cars lining Main Street, the gaggles of people wandering the sidewalks carrying steaming mugs of apple cider, wandering in and out of the well-decorated shops, or tottering out of the Tipsy Apple wearing “I got sauced in Bramley Hollow” T-shirts, it was working.
When a man with sandy-blond hair stepped out of a store, her heart skipped a beat.
But when the man turned, she saw a different face.
It wasn’t him, not yet. She couldn’t figure out if she was disappointed or relieved as her car’s speaker signaled that a phone call was incoming, and Sabrina’s name and number popped up on the dashboard screen. “Just checking in on you! Almost here?”
“I’m two minutes away. Sorry I’m late. Want to just meet at Mooney’s?
” Mooney’s was the town’s Italian restaurant—although no one knew why it was called Mooney’s.
The owner, Vlad, was not Italian, but apparently he had an Italian ex-wife.
Still, the restaurant’s pizza and pasta remained some of the best Rebecca had ever had.
“Just come straight to the diner,” Sabrina said—and something in her voice made Rebecca slow down her car.
“Are you up to something?”
“Who, me?” Sabrina’s voice was full of mock innocence. “Just get here!”
“Please tell me the entire town is not going to be waiting in the parking lot when I pull in. Also, the place is a mess. I don’t even know the level of mess yet. I really—”
“I have been your best friend for more than twenty years. I obviously know you well enough not to spring a surprise party on you. Stop overthinking. I’ll see you soon.”
Rebecca drove past the fire hall, the church, then a strip of shops, before, finally, she was in front of the now-closed McIntosh’s Table.
Its time-softened red-and-white-striped awning was as familiar as the color of her own eyes.
The diner marked the spot where Bramley Hollow’s storefronts ended and the main road turned to gravel, leading off toward farmhouses and orchards.
This road then meandered up and down hillsides as it stretched toward Evergreen, a town twenty minutes north that had a lake with deep, cool water for swimming in summer—or diving into, feverish with summer nostalgia, on those days when warm temperatures made it possible to believe autumn would stay golden forever and winter didn’t exist.
The diner building had a soft orange brick exterior and walnut-brown shutters dressing the windows above.
When Rebecca had lived there with Lenore, her grandmother always used to leave a Tiffany lamp, its red-and-gold shade decorated with apple blossoms, lit by the middle window.
When Rebecca moved away, the warm light of the lamp still always welcomed her home.
Now Rebecca could see its shadow upstairs in the darkness, and the ache she had felt earlier as she drove into town intensified.
Until, suddenly, the lamp flicked on. She felt confused hope for a moment, half expected to see the familiar silhouette of her grandmother waving from the window.
It wasn’t Lenore: It was Sabrina. The loneliness dispersed like dried leaves on a strong breeze, and Rebecca waved before turning off the car.
—
Rebecca pulled down her sun visor, coaxed her hair out of its messy bun, attempted to tame it.
She examined herself in the mirror for a moment.
One of the many things she hadn’t heard in the year she’d stayed away from her hometown was anyone telling her, You look like your mother.
It was a constant refrain here in Bramley Hollow.
Rebecca had never known her mother, Evie McIntosh, who had died when Rebecca was an infant.
She knew from photographs that she had her mother’s aquiline nose, wide mouth, thick-lashed dark brown eyes—but had once heard Mrs. Bell, town gossip and a diner patron, whisper, There was a light in Evie McIntosh’s eyes that that daughter of hers just does not have.
That poor child, though, with a mother like that. Imagine having no idea who the father—
And here Grannie Lenore would step in. She’d cluck her tongue loudly, sometimes might even snatch a plate away, no matter that it contained a few more bites of one of the diner’s delicious dishes.
A quick glance at Rebecca—who would likely have had her head bent over a book, wanting to hear about the mother and father she had never known and being afraid of the truth at the same time—and the moment would be over.
Always, there would come the soothing and warm reassurance of her grandmother’s hand on her shoulder, a quick squeeze that said, I’m here.
I love you. Don’t listen to them. It doesn’t matter what they think.
Rebecca flipped the visor shut and popped open the trunk.
She left the box of succulents where they were and hoisted her duffel bag and a canvas shopping bag heavy with gifts for Sabrina over her shoulder.
The hinges of the diner’s side kitchen door creaked as Rebecca pushed it open.
Familiar smells—coffee grounds, cinnamon, and sugar, left over from decades of brewing endless pots and baking countless pies—greeted her but mingled with dust and disuse.
She took in the low stainless steel counters, the shelves still stacked with plates and platters.
There was the Viking gas range and the industrial-sized fridge, propped open and defrosted.
Dust motes danced in the dim light. It was always strange to see the diner, a place once so full of vibrance and life, empty and closed, no matter how much time passed.
“Hello?”
The word echoed through the dark kitchen, and for a heartbeat there was no reply. Then her friend’s voice rang out from the apartment—“I’m up here! Come on!”—and Rebecca followed the familiar sound.