He's leaving early. Says he's just checking the traps. He always says he's just checking the traps.
I close the notebook carefully. My hands are shaking slightly. A few sketches and a handful of margin notes, and I can already feel the shape of it — a man who kept choosing the river, and a woman who kept recording it. Whether he was leaving or justfishing, I can't tell. But Edna could tell. That much is in every line.
I think about Marco. About how I didn't see the ending coming. About how I told myself I was paying attention, but I was just existing, day to day, assuming the structure was solid when the cracks were already forming.
I open the journal again and look at the sketches. The same hands, over and over. Hands holding a fishing rod. Hands cupped around something small. The same hands from every angle, like she was trying to memorize them. And in the margins, the same note in different ink, different dates. He's leaving early. He always leaves early. I don't know if he ever came back. But she kept drawing his hands, and she kept writing it down, and that tells me enough.
I wonder if she was angry. I wonder if she was just quiet about it the way Jace is quiet about things. I wonder if she learned to translate her heart into salmon and sourdough because words were never going to work.
Jace is already heading toward the door. He moves like someone who's said what he needed to say and isn't interested in elaborating.
"Wait—" I call out, and he stops at the threshold. "Why are you here? I mean—" I'm doing the talking thing again. "You keep showing up and leaving things and not accepting payment, and now you're validating my scone disaster, and I'm trying to figure out what I'm supposed to do with that."
He turns around. The light catches his face differently from this angle. His eyes are gray-green. I've never noticed the green before. Or maybe I noticed and filed it somewhere I'm not supposed to look.
"You needed the bench," he says.
"The bench that you built and left without saying anything."
"You needed it," he repeats. "You found a way to use it. That's the part that's right."
He leaves before I can argue. He walks out like he hasn't just rearranged something in my chest, and I want to be angry about that—want to be angry that he can show up and say things that matter and disappear before I figure out what to do with them.
Instead, I look at the salmon scones. They're cooling. They're gorgeous. They're right, whatever that means.
I spend the next four hours baking. Eight batches of salmon scones with different variations—dill and lemon, chive and old cheddar, and herb and smoked paprika. By the time the afternoon sun is coming through the front window at that golden angle that makes everything look like a painting, I've filled the cooling racks.
The scones are good. Better than good. They're the first thing I've made in Ashwood Falls that feels like mine and not like a pale imitation of my Austin life.
I set a few on a plate by the window, because they deserve to be looked at, and label the rest in wax paper for Dotty.
Edna's journal sits on the counter. I should probably put it back in the drawer. Instead, I read one more entry.
Hank's hands are rough from the river. They'll be rough from the river forever, I think. There's something about that I can't get out of my mind—the way work marks you, the way you become your hands, your body, the things you choose to do. He's choosing the river over being here. That's its own kind of truth, I suppose.
I close the book. I think about Jace's hands. I think about the specific weight of a compliment that doesn't come with strings. Ithink about an oven that runs hot and how sometimes the thing that breaks your plan is exactly what you needed.
The door chimes. It's Dotty, and she stops when she sees the cooling racks. The look on her face is complex—something between surprise and recognition, like she's seeing something familiar happen in front of her.
"What happened to the croissants?" she asks.
"Lucifer and I had a difference of opinion," I say.
Dotty picks up a salmon scone, breaks it open, and takes a bite. Her expression doesn't change. It's the same expression Jace had—just tasting, considering, absorbing.
"He's a good oven," Dotty says finally. "You just have to speak his language. Edna figured that out eventually. So will you."
"Jace came by this morning," I say, like this is a casual observation, like I'm not saying it for a reason.
Dotty looks up from the scone. "Jace doesn't do things without a reason," she says. "Never has. If he's showing up, he's showing up on purpose."
She takes another bite of the scone.
"These are good, honey," she says. "Edna would have liked them."
Somehow that lands different than when Jace said it. It lands like a blessing. Like confirmation. Like Dotty knows exactly what I'm doing here and she's okaying it.
I don't ask her what she thinks it means about Jace just randomly showing up. Some things are better left unsaid, especially in a small town where everything means something to somebody, and where a man who doesn't usually show up for things has started showing up for me.