Chapter 25
TWENTY-FIVE
ROBYN
The bookstore smelled of cinnamon candles and pumpkin spice lattes, and Robyn was losing her mind.
Not visibly, of course. Visibly, she was restocking paperbacks in the fiction section, hair pinned up with her tortoiseshell clip, sleeves of her gray sweater pushed to her elbows, the picture of a competent woman running a bookstore on a Thursday afternoon.
But underneath the calm smile she gave customers, and the polite conversation she engaged in while ringing them up, her body was still in her bathtub.
You’d think that after sharing a bath and about a hundred soft, devastating touches the night before, the edge would have worn off.
But no. Every time she caught Tyler’s eye across the store, her brain treated her to a little highlight reel: the way his hands had moved over her in the water, how his mouth had found every piece of her that could be set alight, the raw sound of her name on his lips when he came undone.
She was fairly certain she could get behind the idea of co-bath time as a nightly ritual.
Through the front window, she could see Tyler running the clearance table on the sidewalk, sandy hair catching the pale autumn sun, chatting easily with a customer. He looked relaxed. Annoyingly relaxed. Like a man who hadn’t spent last night making her forget her own name in a candlelit bathroom.
She still hadn’t heard anything from Meg about the sale. Maybe, just maybe, they still had a chance to find a better buyer at the Halloween event.
“I take it from that pumpkin emoji that you’re on board with my text about the newspaper research?” Mayor Bloomfield strode in, looking ready for Halloween with his black slacks and bright orange vest with little embroidered candy corns on it.
“I am,” Robyn said, tucking a stray hair behind her ear. “Tyler and I are headed to the library in a bit, when we close up here.”
Mayor Bloomfield nodded, satisfied. “I always assumed the Fall Festival had been around since the town was founded, but apparently the pumpkin pie contest came first. It’ll be in the archives. If Maple Falls crowned a pie champion, you can bet someone made sure it was printed.”
She hoped he was right. If not, they were running out of leads.
After buying the latest Highland romance for Edith—“she likes when there are kilts,” he said with a wink—the mayor tipped his hat and headed back out into the afternoon.
Three hours later, Tyler had picked Emma up from school, and they met outside the Maple Falls Public Library.
The outside was decorated for Halloween, with pumpkins lined up along the front steps and fake cobwebs stretched over the bushes.
A plastic skeleton lounged on the bench by the entrance, a library card tucked between its bony fingers, and paper bats swooped across the glass doors, taped in a crooked arc that made it look like they were flying right into the warm, book-scented glow inside.
“Hey, Robyn!” Emma called, skipping the last couple of steps to catch up. “Daddy said we’re pretending to be detectives. We’re looking for old micro… micro—” She wrinkled her nose, trying to pull the word back up.
“Microfilm,” Tyler supplied.
“Microfilm,” she repeated, proud of herself.
“We’re going to look at microfilm to see if we can find the pumpkin pie contest winner from a long time ago.
” She glanced up at her dad for confirmation.
He nodded. “I told him I could help. I’m good at research.
I researched all sorts of stuff for Zoe to help with the llamas at the sanctuary.
Did you know llamas hum when they’re happy? And they have three stomachs. Three.”
Robyn grinned. “You know, I know surprisingly little about llamas.”
Emma’s eyes went wide, scandalized. “Really? Oh, I can teach you so much. Maybe you can come with me and Zoe to the sanctuary sometime. We could do llama research together.”
“I’d like that,” Robyn said, meaning it more than Emma could possibly know. She held the library door open for both of them. “Deal.”
Inside, the library felt exactly like it always did and yet a little different now that she was here with them.
High arched windows flooded the space with pale afternoon light, dust motes drifting in the beams like slow-motion snow.
The familiar smell of paper, ink, and lemon-scented cleaner wrapped around them as they walked past the front desk toward the back corner where the old machines lived.
“How about you get started on your homework first?” Tyler suggested, nodding toward a small table near the windows. “Then you can come help us. Okay?”
Emma heaved a dramatic sigh and unzipped her backpack. “That sounds like no fun,” she said, clearly put upon. “But I guess if I have to, I will.”
“You have to,” Tyler said mildly.
Emma rolled her eyes with all the patience of a long-suffering parent, then started unloading. Chromebook. Textbook. A math notebook opened to double-digit subtraction. And, finally, a snack pack and a sleeve of graham crackers.
Robyn leaned in. “Is that chocolate pudding and graham crackers?”
“Mmm-hmm.” Emma peeled back the foil lid, the scent of cocoa drifting up. “I really like it with chocolate frosting,” she confided. “But Dad says that’s not healthy.” Another eye roll.
“He’s not wrong,” Robyn said, fighting a smile. “But I do like pudding and graham crackers too. Classic brain fuel.”
Robyn caught Tyler’s gaze over Emma’s bent head, and smiled, letting the simple warmth of the moment wash over them as the trio settled into their roles—Emma with her math and snacks, Tyler and Robyn heading toward the microfilm machines, ready to solve their Maple Falls mystery.
Within minutes, the microfilm machine whirred to life, its soft glow washing over their faces as they leaned in. Tyler loaded the first reel while Robyn scanned the labels.
“Do you think we should start in the fall of 1955?” Robyn asked, squinting at the dates.
“Sure. Makes sense to me,” Tyler said.
They started there, pulling out reel after reel, scrolling through day after day of newspapers, looking for any mention of pumpkin pies.
Headlines blurred past—local harvests, school announcements, PTA bake sales, the occasional wedding photo—until the October issues gave way to November and still nothing looked promising.
By the time they hit late November, Emma was officially done.
“I thought you said this was going to be fun,” she said, slumping in her chair and swinging her feet.
“All you guys are doing is staring at a very tiny screen. Don’t your eyes hurt?
That would make my eyes hurt. You’re sitting awfully close to it.
Remember, Dad, you said you need to take a brain break every now and then? ”
She kept going, a steady stream of commentary. Tyler looked like he was about to apologize for her, but Robyn smiled.
“She’s not wrong,” Robyn admitted, sitting back from the machine and rubbing the bridge of her nose. “And honestly, I’m a little surprised we haven’t found anything.”
“I know.” Tyler frowned at the spinning reel. “You’d think it’d be easy to find the annual pumpkin pie winner in a small-town newspaper.”
A familiar voice drifted around the end of the aisle. “Any luck?”
Mrs. C. appeared out of nowhere, like librarians tended to do in Robyn’s experience. They were sneaky, those ones. Officially retired, Mrs. C. still volunteered a few afternoons a week, keeping the shelves—and the patrons—on their toes. She adjusted her glasses and peered at the microfilm machine.
“I finished my homework,” Emma said quickly, seizing the opportunity. “And I can do my minute math in less than a minute. I timed myself, so I know.”
Mrs. C.’s mouth twitched. “Outstanding.”
“Unfortunately, no luck on the pie front,” Robyn said. “We started with the October first issue and we’re all the way up to November twentieth. Still nothing.”
“Well, of course you didn’t find anything,” Mrs. C.
said, in the tone of someone announcing that water was wet.
“You started too late in the year. Didn’t the mayor tell you?
Back then, the pie contest was part of the county fair—which everybody knows takes place the first week of August. Has since the fair was founded in 1854. ”
She looked between them, clearly expecting this to be obvious.
For two relative newcomers who had maybe two combined years of Maple Falls residency between them, it… wasn’t.
“First week of August,” Mrs. C. repeated pointedly.
“Got it,” Tyler said, already on his feet, moving to the cabinet to hunt down the correct reel.
They worked together to swap it out—Tyler handling the reel, Robyn lining it up—and within a few minutes, they were scrolling through sun-bleached headlines about Ferris wheels, livestock shows, and prize-winning jams.
And then Robyn saw it.
“Wait—go back,” she said, leaning in.
Tyler reversed the dial, and there it was: a grainy black-and-white photo of three women standing behind a long table, each with a pie in front of her. The headline read: County Fair Crowns Pumpkin Pie Champion.
Great-Grandma Isabel stood in the center, younger but unmistakable, a ribbon pinned to her dress, her shoulders back with pride. It reminded Robyn of the photo her mother had snapped of her when she’d won the high school science fair.
Robyn let out a disbelieving laugh. “She won the pie contest that year?”
“Looks that way,” Tyler said, leaning closer, shoulder brushing hers.
The caption listed the names. Isabel was front and center, the words First Place right beside her name.
Robyn stared at her great-grandmother’s face for a long moment, shaking her head at the perfect audacity of it all. Of course Isabel had won. Of course she had left them chasing down her victory decades later.
“Does this mean we can go home now?” Emma asked, dragging out the last word in a way that made all three adults chuckle.
“Almost,” Tyler said. “We still need to print this out.”
Once they had the article copied, Tyler turned back to Robyn. “So… where would Isabel’s recipe be?”
“There’s only one place I can think of,” Robyn said slowly, grateful that her grandparents had gotten back into town last night. “My grandparents’ place.”
Tyler checked his watch, then met her gaze. “We’re free to join you, if you want company.”
“You don’t think Emma will revolt?” Robyn asked, arching a brow.
“Does your grandma still keep homemade ice cream in the freezer?” he countered.
Robyn’s mouth curved. “She does.”
“Then let’s go,” Tyler said.
Emma whooped, already stuffing her books back into her backpack, and as they headed for the doors, Robyn felt the strange, thrilling certainty settle over her.
Whatever Isabel had hidden all those years ago, they were about to find it.