Jasper
Iwoke to light filtering in through the windows, pale and cool. It was early enough that the day hadn’t decided what it wanted from me yet. I lay there for a moment, staring up at the beamed ceiling.
My knee made itself known as soon as I shifted.
Not pain—nothing sharp or alarming. It was stiff, a reminder of what happened to me.
I bent it slowly, testing the range the way I’d learned to do without thinking about it, waiting for resistance that never quite came and still managing to feel annoyed when it didn’t feel effortless.
“Functional,” I muttered under my breath. “Sure.”
I swung my legs over the side of the bed and stood. The cabin was quiet and orderly, everything where I’d left it the night before. Clean counters. Boots by the door. Coffee already measured out, waiting. I liked it this way—nothing surprising, nothing demanding more than I had to give.
I brewed the coffee and carried my mug to the small table by the window, easing into the chair as the river came fully into view.
The far bank had been turning for a week now, gold and rust creeping in at the edges, and in the early morning light, it looked softer than it would later in the day, the colors not yet showing off.
Morning mist hovered just above the surface, catching the light and drifting away as fast as it formed.
I watched it for a while, letting the heat from my mug seep into my hands.
The air coming through the cracked window was cold enough to mean it.
The mallards came around the bend about ten minutes in—four of them, working the far bank in their slow, methodical way, dipping and righting themselves with a patience that looked like contentment.
I had started watching for them without meaning to.
Some mornings they were there, and some mornings they weren’t, and on the mornings they weren’t, I noticed their absence, which told me something about what I had started to need from this place.
I wasn’t broken. I knew that. My body worked.
My life worked. But I’d never be like I was before.
If I was staying—for now, at least—this was what staying looked like.
A river, four mallards, and a mug of coffee cooling from hot to drinkable as the mist burned off and the morning decided what it would be.
I picked up my phone and scrolled without much interest—bank alerts, a message from Paige about a shift swap—until I saw the name I wasn’t ready for yet.
I didn’t open it. Didn’t even tap the preview.
I could already guess what it said. Checking in.
Seeing how I was holding up. Maybe offering something that looked like help and felt like pity if I thought about it too long.
I locked the screen and set the phone face down on the table, finished my coffee, and decided a muffin and better coffee were reason enough to go into town.
The Coffee Cabin sat just off the main stretch, already busy despite the early hour.
I pulled in, parked, and joined the short line at the walk-up window with my hands shoved into my jacket pockets.
It sat just off the highway, a cedar-sided hut with twinkle lights tucked under the eaves and a chalkboard menu smudged by constant updates.
Someone had set a row of small pumpkins along the ledge of the walk-up window, orange and white and one deeply lopsided one that looked like it had been chosen out of pity, or for its personality.
The air smelled like espresso and vanilla, warm even in the morning chill.
When I reached the window, Paige and Cara’s sister, Eliza, leaned out with a grin that suggested she’d already noticed me.
The thought of Cara surfaced uninvited, and I pushed it aside before it could take shape into anything I wasn’t ready to acknowledge.
‘Well,” she said. “If it isn’t Paige’s new favorite employee. You’re sticking around town, I hear. It’s about time you visited this place and discovered the town’s best coffee.”
I huffed a laugh. “Morning to you, too.”
She eyed me with a knowing smirk. “You look like someone who needs caffeine and baked goods. In that order.”
“You are correct. I’d like a muffin, please,” I said. “And coffee. Black.”
“Of course you’re a black coffee guy,” she muttered, already turning away. “Very on brand.”
She reappeared a second later, setting a cup on the ledge and then pausing, hand hovering over the display case. “Blueberry or chocolate chip?”
“Whichever one you recommend.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Is this a test?”
I shrugged. “I trust you.”
She snorted. “Hmm...” Then, after a second, “Blueberry. You look like you’d appreciate the illusion of a healthy muffin.”
I laughed before I could stop myself. “Is that a compliment?”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself.” She slid the muffin toward me, then leaned her elbows on the counter, studying me with the same sharp attention I’d seen Paige use more than once.
“So,” she said casually. “You settling in?”
“I guess I am,” I said.
“Huh.” She nodded once. “Good.”
“And how’s your sister?” I asked before I could stop myself.
Eliza’s mouth curved into a sly grin. “Cara’s fine. Funny how you didn’t specify which sister and yet I knew exactly who you were curious about, isn’t it?”
My mouth dropped open, and my cheeks got hot. I didn’t answer. I couldn’t find any acceptable words. Was I really that obvious?
“I see the way you don’t look at her on our sister nights,” she added.
“Uh…”
“Anyway,” she said, letting me off the hook.
“She got a whole order of new mystery books in yesterday. She’s probably in the back, opening boxes and organizing them right now.
And she’s pretending she’s not stressed about Mystery Night—it’s her latest idea for the shop, which means she’s been living on tea, freaking out, and reading like it’s an Olympic sport.
” She shrugged lightly, watching me in a way that suggested my reaction mattered more than she was letting on.
“Mystery Night?”
“Yeah, you know, someone creates a case to solve, people gather, find clues, drink tea or cocktails, eat snacks, and solve it—Mystery Night. Ooh, you should go. I demand it. You’re going.”
Cara hosting something like Mystery Night caught me off guard.
She’d been quiet when I knew her. She had been thoughtful, observant, more comfortable in the margins than the spotlight.
She was shy. The idea of her putting herself out there like that surprised me in a way that felt warm and unfamiliar, like realizing someone you thought you understood had grown braver without you noticing.
“That’s not my kind of thing. But tell her I said hi,” I said, then immediately wondered why I’d said anything at all.
Eliza smiled, slow and knowing. “You should tell her yourself. Go buy one of those mysteries she’s unboxing.”
I took the coffee and muffin, nodding my thanks, and backed away before she could say anything else.
I didn’t plan on going into the bookstore.
That’s what I told myself, anyway. I’d been telling myself some version of it since I came back—that I’d go in eventually, that there was no particular reason to avoid it, that walking past the window of Pine & Pages on my way to wherever I was going didn’t mean anything.
It was a bookstore. I liked books. That was a thing I knew about myself now, had known for years, though I hadn’t always.
Reading had come late to me, or come back to me, depending on how you counted it.
I hadn’t been a reader in high school—hadn’t been much of anything academically until a sophomore with a serious expression and a worn copy of Jane Eyre had sat across from me in the school library and made me feel, for the first time, like understanding something was worth the effort.
Like paying attention was a skill and not a burden.
I hadn’t told her that. I’d barely admitted it to myself at the time.
But somewhere in the years after—long stretches of deployment, bases in places where there wasn’t much to do in the downtime but sleep or read—I’d found my way back to it.
Books had become the thing I reached for when everything else was loud.
I’d read things I never would have picked up on my own, and some of them had stayed with me in ways I hadn’t expected, and every so often something in a page would catch me, and I’d think, without meaning to, about a library table and afternoon light and a girl explaining why a story mattered.
Pine & Pages had been there every time I came back to Honeybrook Hollow.
I’d always had a reason not to go in. Leaving again soon.
No point starting something. Better to keep the window between us—the warm glow of it, the stacks visible through the glass.
I’d looked through that window more times than I’d ever tell anyone.
I parked at the curb and sat there with the engine idling, fingers drumming once against the steering wheel before going still.
The storefront filled the windshield—brick worn smooth at the corners, big front windows crowded with handwritten signs and stacked displays that leaned just enough to feel intentional.
A poster caught my eye, taped to the cedar siding beside the window.
Hand-illustrated in deep burgundy and gold, fall leaves scattered around the edges like evidence at a scene, a magnifying glass centered beneath the words Pine & Pages Mystery Night in careful block lettering.
Someone had drawn a small trail of footprints disappearing into the leaf pile at the bottom corner, which was either a very good touch or a clue I wasn’t equipped to follow yet.
Pine & Pages Mystery Night
A cozy whodunit inside the bookstore.
Hidden clues. Curious minds.
A mystery to solve together.
Friday evening. Limited seating.
I read it twice.
Then I killed the engine.
I stood on the sidewalk outside Pine & Pages for longer than I had any good reason to.