Page 48 of Soft Serve

He finishes his coffee, puts money on the counter, and stands, and he looks at me one more time with the expression of a man delivering the last piece of something.

"She sold her car," he says. "To keep the shop open. Rode the bus for three months and didn't tell a soul."

I look at him.

"Mrs. Calder told you," I say.

"Mrs. Calder tells me most things," he says. "The point is, I'm telling you." He holds my gaze. "Because a woman who does that is a woman who knows what she's protecting and why. And a man who wants to stand next to that better know what he's signing up for."

"I know," I say.

"Good," he says.

He leaves with the same directness he arrived with, no ceremony, no lingering, just a man who said what he came to say and considers the matter handled.

I sit at the diner counter for a while longer with my cold coffee and the morning light coming through the windows and the town moving past outside, and complete and entirely itself.

I think about February.

About a town council meeting arguing about parking.

About a dog called Senator who needs time.

About a woman who rode the bus for three months and never asked for anything.

About a boy in a workshop with sawdust on his hands who wanted to build things that lasted.

I think about what it means to stay somewhere just because it's home.

Not because it's asking something of you.

Not because there's something to prove or repair or manage.

Just because you're here and you've chosen it, and you intend to keep choosing it on the ordinary days when there's no drama and no test and no reason except that this is where your life is now.

I pull out my phone.

Not the board. Not Eleanor.

I open the property listings I've been looking at for the last three days, the ones I haven't mentioned to anyone, and I find the one I keep returning to.

A building on the edge of town. Workshop space. Good bones. Needs work.

I look at it for a long moment, at the photograph of the wide empty space with the afternoon light coming through the high windows, and I think about a twelve-year-old boy who wanted to build things with his hands and was told that was a phase.

I save the listing, then I put the phone away.

I put money on the counter and nod at the woman behind it and step out into the Hearts Bend morning, and the sun hits my face, and the town goes about its business around me, and I breathe it in, not like a visitor cataloguing details, and not like a man performing he belongs.

Like a man who lives here.

That's new.

I decide to trust it anyway.

Chapter 15

Paloma