But I wanted to learn it.
I'd taken my coffee and the first muffin—still warm, bursting with berries—out to the back of the property where the trim along the lower porch railing had rotted through in spots. The kind of damage that happened slow, season by season, until one day the whole thing gave up and took someone's ankle with it.
Thirty minutes in, I was on my knees with a tape measure and a pencil tucked behind my ear, marking cuts on a fresh piece of pine, when I heard the crunch of tires on gravel.
A cab. Yellow and salt-weathered, pulling up the drive like it had done this route a thousand times.
I stood, brushing sawdust off my jeans, and watched a man climb out of the back seat. He moved careful, like his body hurt or the world had taught him to expect pain. Mid-forties, maybe. Thin in a way that looked recent—cheekbones too sharp, clothes hanging loose on a frame that had probably carried more weight once. His jeans were worn at the knees, his flannel shirt faded from too many washes. But the backpack slung over one shoulder was new. Cheap, but new. The kind you bought at a big-box store when you needed something functional and couldn't afford to care about quality.
His eyes swept the property—tired, wary, the look of someone who'd been moving too long and didn't trust the ground to stay solid under his feet.
I should have felt it then. The wrongness. The instinct that had kept me alive in a dozen countries where a misplaced glance could mean an ambush. But my senses had been dulled by this place, by Hazel's laugh and Maude's muffins and the quiet work of fixing instead of breaking.
I sensed nothing amiss. Just a weary traveler who needed a bed.
"Morning," I called, moving toward him with the easy confidence of someone who belonged here. Which I didn't, not really. But proximity to Hazel had given me borrowed authority.
He startled slightly, then nodded. "Morning." His voice was rough, underused. He clutched a crumpled piece of paper in one hand—an address, maybe, or directions.
"Checking in?" I asked.
He hesitated, eyes flicking to the house, then back to me. "Yeah. If you've got room."
"We do." I gestured toward the porch. "Come on."
He followed, but there was reluctance in it. Like walking toward shelter still felt dangerous somehow.
We climbed the steps together, and he stopped suddenly, staring at the white plate I'd left on the porch railing. The second muffin sat there, still waiting for me, golden and perfect in the morning light.
"That a blueberry muffin?" he asked.
The question was so strange, so specific, that I blinked. "Yeah. Why?"
His jaw worked. He looked at the muffin like it was a test he wasn't sure how to pass. "Just—been a while since I've seen one."
Something about the way he said it made my chest tighten. How long had this man been on the road? How many meals had he skipped?
"You're welcome to it," I said. "If you're checking in, I mean. Consider it part of the service."
He nodded, almost absently, and reached for the muffin with a kind of careful hunger that made me look away. He grabbed it and immediately tucked it close to his chest, like he was afraid I might change my mind and take it back. The gesture was so instinctive, so practiced, that it told a story I didn't need words for.
This man had known real hunger. Recently.
I led him inside, the screen door slapping softly behind us. The foyer was quiet, sunlight slanting through the old glass in clean bars across the worn floorboards. I poked my head intothe kitchen, expecting to find Maude with her apron and her knowing smile.
Empty.
She'd probably stepped back to her apartment for something. She did that sometimes—quick trips that took five minutes or thirty depending on whether she got distracted by a phone call or a cup of tea.
I thought about waiting. Hazel would be back soon, or Maude would reappear. But the man was standing in the foyer looking lost and small, and making him wait felt cruel.
I gave him another once-over, habit more than suspicion. Checking for the telltale bulges that meant weapons, the posture that meant training, the eyes that meant threat.
Nothing.
Just a tired man with a new cheap backpack and a muffin he was protecting like it was currency.
"I can check you in," I said, moving behind the desk and opening the guest ledger. The pages were yellowed and sparse, Hazel's neat handwriting marking my entry from two days ago. It felt like longer. It felt like I'd been here years.
