“What?” I ask. I’ve been watching Jace across the field, and this is admittedly distracting. He’s talking to Trace—I think it’s Trace, the one who looks like he knows how to build things with his hands—but he keeps glancing in my direction. He keeps checking whether I’m still wearing the dress. Whether I’m still here. Whether I’m still visible.
“Ashwood Falls. I almost left. I had a job offer. Somewhere else. Better opportunity, bigger city, the whole thing.” She’s looking at the festival like she’s seeing a specific memory through glass. “I was going to say no to Ryder because I thought I had to choose between him and the rest of my life. Like you can only have one thing. Like staying means you give up the other part of you.”
“And?” I ask, though I know the answer. She’s standing here, not choosing.
“And I realized I was going to let fear make the decision,” she says. “That if I left, it wouldn’t be because I wanted to leave. It would be because I was scared to stay. There’s a difference. Huge difference. One is a choice and one is just running.”
I don’t know what to do with this information. It’s wrapped around my chest like something that can’t breathe. Like if I admit that I’m scared to stay, that admission becomes true and I have to deal with the consequences. Like admitting I’m scared means I have to actually face the choice instead of just letting time decide for me.
“I don’t know what I want,” I say.
“That’s okay,” Piper says. “But be honest about whether you’re leaving because you want to or because you’re scared. There’s a difference. And you’re smart enough to know which one it is.”
She walks away before I can respond, which is probably intentional, and I stand there holding my kettle corn andthinking about choices and fear and the difference between running and leaving.
At home—back at the cabin, I’ve started thinking of it as home even though I’m supposed to be temporary—I find Edna’s journal sitting on the kitchen table. The leather one, worn soft, with entries dating back decades. I don’t remember putting it there. The kitchen was empty when I left. But I open it anyway, and there’s a bookmark—actual physical bookmark—between the pages, holding a specific entry, like someone was trying to tell me something.
Thursday, June 20th, 1987. Made another three-layer cake today. Got the order for the community hall. Martha said it was the best she’d tasted. I stood in the kitchen and realized I’ve spent two months pretending like my hands know what to do while my heart is somewhere else. I’ve been baking like someone who is leaving, not baking like someone who gets to stay. When did I decide I didn’t get to stay? When did I decide that this thing I’m building doesn’t get to be permanent?
The handwriting is shaky. The ink has faded to brown, like it’s been aging for decades, which it has. Edna was running away too. Or trying to. She was baking away her fear of staying, making beautiful things with hands that knew what to do, trying to outrun a choice she’d already made by deciding the choice was made for her.
I read it a bunch of times, standing in the kitchen in the endless daylight.
In the kitchen, surrounded by my stress-baked pastries, the éclairs cooling on racks, the shortbread in boxes, the galette waiting to be plated, I sit at the table and I think about Edna’s fear and Piper’s choice and the dress I wore to the festival. Aboutowning what you arrived as instead of hiding from it. About the difference between temporary and chosen.
Jace is temporary because we decided that together. Because I said “this is a temporary situation” and he said “okay” and we both accepted the mathematics of it. But maybe I’m letting that decide everything else—maybe I’m letting temporary mean unloved, means doesn’t count, means I can hold it at arm’s length and protect myself so when I leave it won’t hurt too much. Maybe I’m making the same choice Edna made. Baking myself away instead of staying. Building things like they’re going to be temporary anyway, so why bother making them last?
Maybe the thing I’m scared of isn’t staying. Maybe the thing I’m scared of is being loved while I’m leaving. Being loved and knowing it has an expiration date. Being loved by someone who understands math better than I do, who can hold temporary and real at the same time, who kissed me like the kiss mattered while knowing full well that I’m leaving.
Can you do that? Can you love something knowing it’s going to end? Can you build something beautiful knowing it’s temporary?
Yes, the workshop is full of Jace’s answer. Yes, all those things he’s built with his hands, all those real and beautiful things—yes.
The sun is circling the horizon. It’s nine PM on the festival day and the light is still pale and golden, like the world hasn’t quite finished with the afternoon yet, like it’s going to stretch this day out indefinitely. I stand in the kitchen at nine PM, which looks like three PM and might as well be three AM, and I understand that Edna didn’t think she could stay because she’d already decided she was leaving. She’d already written the ending before she lived the middle. She’d already told herself the story of the temporary woman in the permanent town, so of course she became that story… until she didn’t.
My ledger sits on the counter. Empty of new tallies. I’ve stopped counting toward Portland without noticing I’d stopped. I’ve stopped tracking the days like they’re marching toward some inevitable deadline. And that terrifies me more than the kiss did. That terrifies me more than the dress. That terrifies me more than Jace watching me across the field like he’s seeing something in me that I don’t see in myself.
I don’t know yet what I’m going to do. I don’t know if I’m staying or leaving. I don’t know if I’m scared or brave or just prolonging the inevitable. But the dress is still on, and I’m still here, and sometimes that’s the only honesty available.
Sometimes that’s enough.
Chapter 14
Jace
The bakery smells like butter and yeast and her.
Gabby has made salmon croissants for the soft opening. This fact alone tells me something has shifted in her. The salmon croissant was a joke—the worst thing she could accidentally bake, the embodiment of fusion failure—and now it’s her flagship item. She’s leaned into the disaster. Claimed it. Made it beautiful.
The line outside wraps around the block by nine-thirty AM.
There’s maybe forty people standing outside in the early summer heat, and more are arriving every few minutes. People I recognize from Ashwood Falls. People from other towns. People who heard that the new bakery is doing something different, something special, something that shouldn’t work but does.
I’m supposed to be working—there’s a cabinet job waiting in the workshop, something about hidden drawers and precision measurements, something that’s been sitting there for a week while I’ve been here instead. But I’m here anyway. I stayed because she asked if I could help, and because staying is the only thing that makes sense.
She moves through the space like she’s built it. Like she knows exactly where everything is. The way she talks tocustomers. The way she handles the croissants like they’re real things she made instead of happy accidents waiting to happen. She introduces herself. She asks people what they usually bake. She listens when they answer like their favorite dessert is important information.
Trace is in line. Patrice is holding Brooklyn and trying to examine everything through the glass case. Jax is narrating the sales numbers like he’s invested in this venture personally. Maybe he is. Small towns are like that—your success is everyone’s success, your failure is everyone’s failure.