Owen came by every few days.
Sometimes he brought groceries. Not takeout, nothing fancy. Just the basics I kept forgetting to buy. Eggs, bread, and the good coffee from the roaster in town. He'd unpack the bags without asking where things went, because he already knew this kitchen almost as well as I did. One evening, he showed up with soup from the diner, the chicken noodle Mrs. Hendricks had been making since we were kids.
“You need to eat,” he said, setting the container in front of me.
“I'm not hungry.”
“I know.” He handed me a spoon anyway. “Eat it anyway.”
I did. Not because I wanted to, but because he’d driven twenty minutes to get it, and refusing felt harder than eating.
Sometimes he brought his toolbox. Fixed things that didn't need fixing. Tightened hinges, replaced lightbulbs, and checked the pipes under the sink. I think he needed the work as much as I needed the company.
We talked, but not about Marcus. Not about the things that mattered. Owen would tell me about calls at the station, the probie who'd nearly driven the engine into a ditch, the cat Cal's crew had rescued from a storm drain. I'd tell him about the guest who complained that the pillows were too soft. Small things. Safe things. The kind of conversation that filled the silence without asking anything of either of us.
Sometimes, though, the real stuff slipped through.
“Do you think I missed the signs?” I asked one night, staring into my tea. “With Marcus. Do you think I should have seen it coming?”
Owen was quiet for a moment. “I think people show you who they are. And sometimes you're not ready to see it.”
He took a sip of his beer. “I don't think it's your fault, Grace. If that's what you're asking.”
I wasn't sure it was. But it helped to hear him say it.
Two broken people, sitting together, with nothing he could fix and nowhere else to be.
The nausea started small.
A wave of queasiness when I smelled coffee brewing. A turning in my stomach when I bent over to pull rolls from the oven. I blamed stress. Blamed the fact that I hadn’t been eating, hadn’t been sleeping, hadn’t been doing much of anything except surviving from one hour to the next.
But it kept coming.
Morning after morning, I'd wake with my stomach churning. I'd make it through the first batch of baking, set out breakfast for the guests, and then find myself bent over the toilet in the bathroom off the kitchen, heaving up nothing because there was nothing left to heave.
One morning, I didn't make it to the bathroom in time. I barely made it to the sink before everything came up, my body shaking, my eyes watering, the smell of burning cinnamon rolls filling the kitchen because I'd forgotten to set the timer.
Elena found me there. Gripping the edge of the sink, trembling, the ruined rolls smoking in the oven behind me.
She didn't hesitate. Just turned off the oven, opened the window to let out the smoke, and guided me to the kitchen table with a hand on my back. She filled a glass of water and set it in front of me, then sat down across the table, her eyes never leaving my face.
“Grace.” Her voice was firm but kind. “This is the third morning this week.”
I wrapped my hands around the glass. “I know.”
“You're not eating. You're barely sleeping. And now this.” She gestured toward the sink, the window, the mess I'd made. “I'm worried about you.”
“I'm fine. It's just stress.”
Elena raised an eyebrow. She'd been through her own hard years. She knew what stress looked like, and she knew what denial looked like too.
“Honey.” She reached across the table and covered my hand with hers. “I've been where you are. After my divorce, I thought I could just push through. Told myself I was fine when I was anything but. It doesn't work. Trust me.”
I stared at our hands. Hers, weathered and warm. Mine, cold and shaking.
“Have you seen a doctor?” she asked gently.
I shook my head.
