Jasper #2
I remembered what it had been like in the years before I enlisted—the way the house changed shape around his moods, the silence that meant he’d been drinking since noon, the way my mom would find small tasks to busy herself with in whatever room he wasn’t in.
Connor had been nineteen, already out of the house and at college, far enough away to have some distance from it.
Hannah had been fourteen and not far enough away at all.
I’d been seventeen and old enough to understand what was happening and young enough that understanding it hadn’t given me any tools to fix it.
I’d tried for a while—coming home straight after school, staying close, making myself useful.
As if my presence alone might hold something together.
Nothing I did had made any difference, and somewhere in that long, grinding year I’d made a decision I’d never said out loud to anyone: I needed to get out.
Not because I didn’t love them. Because I was drowning alongside them and I couldn’t see another way.
Enlisting had given me a door, and I’d walked through it, and I’d told myself they’d be okay, that my mom was strong, that Hannah was resilient.
I’d told myself a lot of things on that bus out of Honeybrook Hollow at eighteen.
Some of them had even been true. My dad had eventually gotten sober—not right away, not for years, but eventually.
But I hadn’t been there for any of it. Not for the worst of it, and not for the slow climb back out either.
Connor had come home from college when things got bad enough, had apparently shown up one winter and just stayed, taken a job in town, and helped my mom keep the lights on and our father steady.
I’d gotten letters about it. Phone calls I hadn’t always answered because hearing about it from a distance was easier than sitting inside it.
That was the part I couldn’t make peace with—not that I’d left, but that Connor had come back and I hadn’t, and nobody had ever said a word about it to me directly, which was almost worse than if they had.
All the while, a different image sat just under the surface—Cara at the bookstore window, sunlight on the glass, her smile slow and surprised. The contrast pressed in on me, sharp enough to notice.
I’d left Willowmist Falls once to breathe. Now I was here again, wondering what it would cost me this time.
Dinner wound down slowly. Plates were cleared, leftovers packed with unnecessary ceremony. My mom insisted I take a container home. My dad retreated to the living room, my mother and Connor followed, the low murmur of sports commentary filling the space they’d claimed.
I lingered at the sink, rinsing my plate, giving myself something to do with my hands.
“Hear that?” Hannah said quietly behind me.
I glanced over my shoulder. “Hear what?”
She nodded toward the living room. “The way they’re already planning around you. Like you’re staying.”
I dried my hands on a dish towel and leaned back against the counter. “They’re just being hopeful.”
“Yeah,” she said. “That’s kind of the problem.”
We stood there a moment, the house humming around us. Hannah folded her arms, studying the floor like she was choosing her words carefully—which meant she already knew exactly what she wanted to say.
“You don’t look like someone who’s done running,” she said finally. “But you also don’t look like someone who wants to disappear anymore.”
I didn’t answer.
She lifted her eyes to mine, and there was no humor in them. No softness. “Just don’t come back here because it’s easier than choosing what you actually want.”
The words landed clean and precise, right where they were meant to.
“I won’t,” I said. “I wouldn’t do that.”
She didn’t smile. “Good. Because I don’t think you’d survive doing that. Don’t get stuck, Jasper. Only stay if you want to. Not because you think you owe them anything.”
I swallowed and nodded once.
A few minutes later, I said my goodbyes, accepted one more hug than necessary, and walked back out into the night. The forest pressed close again as I drove away, headlights cutting through dark and shadow, the house disappearing faster than it should have.
I didn’t head back to the cabin. The thought of sitting alone by the river with nothing but my thoughts and the sound of moving water felt unbearable. I turned toward Honeybrook Hollow instead.
The Twilight Tavern was louder than usual. Glasses clinked. Someone laughed too hard near the jukebox. A song threaded through it all, bass soft enough to feel more than hear.
I slid onto a stool at the bar, the wood worn smooth under my forearms. Paige glanced up from pouring a drink and reached for a glass without being asked.
“You good?”
“Yeah.” I rubbed a hand over the back of my neck. “Just needed a minute.”
She set a beer in front of me. “What kind of minute?”
I huffed. “There’s more than one kind?”
“Mm.” She leaned an elbow on the counter. “There’s ‘I’m fine,’ and there’s ‘I’m about to make a decision I don’t want to think about.’ You look like the second one.”
I took a sip instead of answering.
Paige’s mouth twitched. “Got it. I’ll stay out of it. For now.” She straightened. “We’re going to be slammed this weekend. Snow on the mountain. You around?”
“Yeah. I’ll be here.”
I let the noise settle around me, shoulders loosening a fraction.
Then I saw Cara at the far end—one elbow on the bar, her glass cradled loosely between both hands as if she’d forgotten she was holding it.
Her cardigan had slipped off one shoulder, hair pulled back but already escaping.
She was angled toward where Paige had been standing, not fully present, as if part of her were somewhere else entirely.
I didn’t realize I’d been watching until she turned.
Her gaze moved across the room, skimming faces, then caught on mine.
For a second, she just looked at me—not the careful, managed look I’d gotten used to from her, the one that was polite and self-contained and gave nothing away—but something quieter and less guarded, like she hadn’t had time to arrange her expression before it happened.
Her mouth softened, and she lifted her fingers in a small wave.
Something settled in my chest like a decision I hadn’t consciously made.
I’d been keeping my distance for months.
It had seemed like the right thing—giving her space, not pushing, letting whatever this was between us stay manageable for both of us.
I’d been good at it. And then she’d looked at me like that, unguarded and almost tired, and every reasonable argument I had for staying on my side of the room stopped making sense.
I pushed off the stool before I could think about it too long and crossed the bar.
“Hey,” she said when I got close.
“Hey.” I slid onto the stool beside her, close enough that our knees almost brushed when I shifted. I didn’t move away.
“Didn’t expect to see you here tonight.”
“Paige insisted.” Cara exhaled a quiet laugh, eyes dropping to her drink. “She said if I spent one more night reorganizing shelves, I’d turn into one.”
“She’s probably not wrong.”
“She’s definitely not wrong,” she said, then glanced up at me. “What about you? I thought you had tonight off.”
“I do.” I rolled the bottle between my palms. “Didn’t feel like going home yet.”
“Mm.” She nodded like she understood more than I’d said. “Too quiet?”
“Something like that.”
Cara shifted on her stool, tucking one leg slightly behind the other, creating just enough space between us that I noticed it.
“How’s the bookstore?” I asked. “Aside from the turning into a shelf thing.”
“Busy.” She hesitated. “Good busy.” Her fingers traced the rim of her glass.
“I’ve been working on Mystery Night,” she went on, a little faster now.
“It’s Friday, and I—okay, I might’ve overcommitted.
There are clue envelopes, and I rewrote the opening twice, and I keep thinking I forgot something important, but I don’t know what—” She stopped herself, pressing her lips together. “Sorry. That was a lot.”
There it was. The thing I’d forgotten about her, or told myself I had—the way she’d talk herself forward and then pull back, like she was embarrassed by her own enthusiasm. I used to do everything I could to keep her going past that point. I still wanted to.
“You care about it,” I said.
“Too much,” she said under her breath.
“Is that a bad thing?”
Cara let out a breath along with her answer. “Sometimes.”
I watched her for a second. The way her shoulders were held just a little tight. The way she kept adjusting her grip on the glass. Being this close to her and keeping my expression neutral was taking more effort than I wanted to admit. “You always did that,” I said.
Her brows pulled together. “Did what?”
“Talk like you’re trying to get ahead of the problem before it shows up.”
She blinked at me. A small laugh escaped her, and something in my chest responded to it immediately, as if her laugh was a frequency I was tuned into, whether I wanted to be or not. “Okay. That’s… accurate.”
“I remember things.”
“I can see that.” Her gaze lingered on me a second longer than necessary, then dropped. “That’s slightly terrifying.”
“Should it be?”
“Maybe.” She tilted her head, studying me now. “Depends on what else you remember.”
I held her eyes. “Probably more than I should.”
Silence settled between us, warm and unresolved.
I didn’t rush to fill it. Neither did she, which I’d always liked about her; she could sit in a quiet moment without needing to fill the silence.
We used to do that in the library. Just exist in the same space without it costing anything.
I hadn’t found that easy with many people since.
Cara broke it first, reaching for her glass. “Well,” she said, too lightly. “That’s not ominous at all.”
I huffed a quiet laugh. Then—
“You should come,” she said suddenly, like she’d surprised herself. “To Mystery Night. I mean. If you—”
“I’m coming. I’ll be there.”
Her words stalled. “You will?”
“Yeah.”