"I know you think you're honoring her memory by working yourself to death," he said. "But that's not what she would have wanted. Your grandmother came to this country and built this bakery because she wanted something better. She wanted freedom. She wanted joy. She wantedlife. And then she gave it all to you—not so you could sacrifice everything, but so you could have choices she never had."
"I don't feel like I have choices," Lucy said, and the words came out smaller than she meant them to. "I feel like if I stop, if I slow down, if I let anything slip—it all falls apart. The bakery, the recipes, her legacy. Everything she built."
"The bakery is a building, Lulu. The recipes are paper. What your grandmother built was a community, and that doesn't fall apart just because you take a day off. In fact..." He squeezed her hand. "I think the community would be happy to see you living instead of just surviving."
Lucy blinked hard, fighting tears. Mae called something from the front about a customer question, and Lucy was grateful for the interruption. She squeezed Walter's hand back and stood.
"I'm fine," she said again. "Really. I'm just in a weird mood."
Walter stood too. He was shorter than her by an inch—Lucy had inherited her height from her father's side—but he somehow still radiated the same authority he'd had in his classroom for thirty-five years.
"I'm not asking you to sell the place or abandon everything," he said. "I'm just asking you to remember that you're twenty-seven years old. You're allowed to want things for yourself. You're allowed to be selfish sometimes. You're allowed to be happy."
He kissed her forehead and left through the back door, taking his terrible coffee with him.
Lucy stood alone in the kitchen, surrounded by the smells of yeast and cinnamon and her grandmother's legacy, and wondered when "happy" had stopped being something she knew how to want.
Saturday mornings were Jake's favorite part of the week, which was saying something because Saturday mornings startedat 6 AM and involved twenty kids with varying degrees of coordination trying to skate backwards.
The Timber Falls Youth Hockey Program had been running for thirty years, staffed mostly by volunteers—former players, hockey dads, the occasional brave soul who'd never played but wanted to give back to the community. Jake had been helping out since he came back to town three years ago, initially just for something to do on weekends. Now he was the unofficial assistant coach for the 8-10 age group, which meant he got to spend Saturday mornings teaching kids who still thought hockey was fun instead of a job.
"Coach Jake! Coach Jake! Watch this!"
Emma Rodriguez, seven years old and sixty pounds soaking wet, was attempting a spin move that would have been impressive for a high school player. She executed it perfectly, stopped in a spray of ice, and beamed up at him with a gap-toothed smile.
"That was great," Jake said, and meant it. "Where'd you learn that?"
"YouTube!"
Of course.
"Okay, but can you do it while also maintaining control of the puck?"
Emma's face scrunched in concentration. "I'll try!"
She skated off, her ponytail bouncing, absolutely fearless. Jake watched her go and felt something in his chest loosen. This was why he did this. Not the drills or the fundamentals or even the eventual wins—just the pure, uncomplicated joy of a kid who loved skating for no reason other than that it made her happy.
"She's going to be better than you someday," Tommy Morrison said from beside him.
Jake glanced at his coach—hisformercoach, technically, though Tommy would probably always be Coach to him. Tommy was fifty-eight, built like a fire hydrant, and had been coaching hockey in Timber Falls since before Jake was born. He'd coached Jake through youth hockey, through high school, and then convinced him to come back and play for the Wolves when Jake's NHL dreams had imploded.
"She's already better than me," Jake said. "I could never do that move at seven."
"No, but you could do other things." Tommy blew his whistle, signaling the kids to switch from skating drills to passing practice. "You were the most determined kid I ever coached. Obsessive, really. Your dad used to joke that you'd sleep with your skates on if your mom let you."
Jake's chest tightened at the mention of his father. David Morrison had died six years ago, heart attack at sixty-one, right there in the living room of their family home while watching a Bruins game. Jake had been playing in the AHL at the time, three thousand miles away.
He hadn't made it back in time to say goodbye.
"Dad wanted me to make it," Jake said quietly.
"Your dad wanted you to be happy," Tommy corrected. "There's a difference."
They stood in silence for a moment, watching the kids fumble passes and crash into each other and laugh like it was the best thing in the world. The rink was cold, the fluorescent lightsharsh, the boards covered in scuff marks and ads for local businesses. It wasn't glamorous. It wasn't the NHL.
But it was home.
"I got a call from Derek yesterday," Jake said. He hadn't planned to say it, but the words came out anyway.
