My stomach flips. I hate when that happens. A small pang of disappointment gnaws at me, but I push it down. It can’t be helped.
The rush ebbs and flows like a tide.
A family with sticky toddlers clears out, replaced by a couple of tourists who want to know if the honey is “locallocal” or just local in the way souvenir shops like to pretend.
I smile and explain pollen ranges and flight distances, and watch their eyes glaze a little before they buy two jars anyway.
A woman asks about soaps for sensitive skin. A man wants something for his wife who “likes bees but is scared of them.”
I recommend a candle. He laughs and buys two.
By late morning, the sun is higher, the shadows shorter, and there are pockets of quiet between customers, brief stretches when I can finally breathe.
I take a sip of water, stretch my shoulders, and glance down at my phone, which has been sitting face down beside the cash box, waiting patiently.
I tell myself I’m just checking the time.
I’m lying.
I flip it over and open the browser instead.
The words from the letter echo in my head, uninvited and insistent.
There is someone else who knows. Someone who stepped away before you were old enough to understand why.
Someone who left. Someone who survived.
My thumb hovers over the search bar.
I don’t even know what I’m looking for, not really. A face that looks vaguely like my mother’s. A name that sparks recognition.
Proof that I didn’t imagine all of this because grief needed somewhere new to land.
I start with what I know: Mara Kentwood.
The name feels strange every time I think it. My aunt. My mother’s sister.
A woman who existed as a vague shape, a story told once and then never again. She lived “elsewhere.” She was “busy.” She “didn’t keep in touch.”
I was too young to ask what that really meant.
I type her name in, half-expecting nothing.
The signal out here isn’t great, so the page loads slowly, the little spinning circle giving me too much time to overthink.
Then… results.
Not many. But not zero.
My pulse picks up.
There’s a social media profile with the right name. The location is different—coastal, not inland—but the age range fits.
There’s a profile picture: a woman with silver threaded through dark hair, standing on a beach with her feet in the surf, squinting into the sun, daring it to look back.
She has my mother’s mouth.
Not exactly, not enough to be unmistakable. But enough that my chest tightens painfully.
