“Oh my God,” she gasped. “Youdiddoodle someone.”
“Drop it,” he said, but his lips twitched.
She laughed, the sound full and bright. “I’m just saying… maybe this season won’t be so bad.”
“That’s optimistic,” he said.
“It’s Mapleford in December,” she replied, spreading her arms. “Optimism is legally required.”
He rolled his eyes, but the corner of his mouth tugged up anyway.
As they closed up for the night, turning off ovens and wiping counters, his thoughts kept drifting ahead to Monday when he’d visit the community center, to become tangled up in lights and ladders.
Noah would be there too, with a clipboard and a grin and maybe, if Eli was lucky, glitter on his cheek.
He lay awake later in Aileen’s guest room, the house quiet around him. The sketchbook he’d brought from Boston sat in his duffel, zipped up, patient.
He didn’t open it. He didn’t need to.
He remembered the drawing.
He remembered the real man.
And as he drifted toward sleep, one thought anchored itself in the swirl:
On Monday, I’ll see him again.
Eli exhaled, long and slow.
“Just for the season,” he whispered to the ceiling.
But his heart was already wondering what might happen if the season didn’t feel temporary at all.
Chapter Six
Sundays in Maplefordwere usually quiet. This one was no exception.
Snow clung to rooftops, a light covering which muffled the world into quiet, lying there like powdered sugar on a sponge cake. The church bells chimed at nine as they always did, and the Mapleford Diner hummed steadily like a warm engine at the heart of town.
Which is what it always had been, unofficially.
Noah pushed through the glass door, greeted by the holy trinity of diner smells—coffee, butter, and blueberry pancakes.
“Morning, Noah!” Janette called from the counter. “You want your usual?”
“Yep,” he said. “And an extra coffee to go for Elsie. She’ll pretend she doesn’t want it, but we both know better, right?”
“Already brewing,” she replied with a smile.
He slid into a booth near the windows, shrugged out of his coat, and glanced at his phone, not because he was waiting for anything but because he wasabsolutelywaiting for something and trying very hard not to be obvious about it.
No messages from Eli.
Why would he message you? He’s working with Aileen. He said he’ll help—what more do you want?
Noah didn’t want to answer that particular question, and it didn’t stop him from staring at the blank notifications like an idiot.
Elsie Moran breezed in, wearing a sweater splattered with paint, a scarf big enough to double as a blanket, and the kind of energy only an elementary school art teacher could maintain on a Sunday.
