Something lasting.
And she’d welcome that in her kitchen and her heart every day.
The loss was devastating.
Even though Daphne had heard story after story from folks pouring into the inn over the last forty-eight hours—had seen the photos, the shaky videos—nothing prepared her for the sight in person.
Words didn’t cover it.
Mud. So much of it. Everywhere. It coated the streets, clung to the sidewalks, piled inside buildings like someone had shoveled a few feet of it in each one.
And now, as the sun began drying everything out, the muck turnedinto a fine, gritty dust that hung in the air. Cloaking the town in the scent of mold, waste, and... brokenness.
Her beautiful world—her wonderful town—looked like the ruins you’d see in a postapocalyptic movie. A ghost town.
She walked down Main Street with Jack on one side and Finn on the other, each step bracing her for what she already knew she’d see. The upper third of the street gave the impression of business as usual—power still out, sure, but flower boxes on the antique shop’s windows still stood at attention, as if trying to pretend the world hadn’t crumbled beneath them.
But the farther downhill they walked, the more the damage came into focus. Boarded-up windows. Others gaping dark and empty. Sludge-caked entryways littered with soggy chairs, splintered shelving, a teddy bear lying face down in a puddle. An overturned car rusting into the sidewalk. A streetlamp folded in half. A once-cozy park bench pretzeled into a tree.
And an alarming lack of green. Something she’d never imagined before. Dirt covered much of what had once been grass, and many of the trees lay splintered, wind stripped, or dust covered, their natural beauty failing to patch into the dull hues of their surroundings.
All around her, Daphne walked the street in slow, quiet steps. Faces stunned. Moving with an eerie silence of unutterable loss. Grief and numbness layered over everything like the film of dust still drifting through the air.
And when Tea Thyme came into view, her chest pulled tight.
She’d expected it. Jack had sent her a photo to prepare her. But still, seeing it in person, sunlight almost too bright and raw against the dim, mud-smudged windows, sliced pain through her middle.
The chalkboard lay in two pieces across the door’s threshold. Her café tables were sludge-smeared or missing entirely. One of the chairs had somehow ended up two buildings down, propped like it had simply wandered off.
Finn veered away, dodging a flowerpot that had once stood across the street, to make it to the door of The Green Dragon, its windows as dark and lifeless as her own.
“It’s going to be tough, Daph,” Jack whispered, searching her face and handing her a mask to help protect from the mold infecting the air inside.
“I know.” She took his offering with a nod and slipped it onto her face.
He nodded and, with a careful step forward, pushed open the front door and flipped on his flashlight. A gust of damp, basement-scented air drifted out—mold, oil, and something else she didn’t want to define.
She followed Jack, the large boots he’d brought for her to wear squishing into the mud as she crossed the threshold of her dear shop.
She couldn’t see the floor. At least a foot of mud covered the dining room. Tables and chairs had toppled in chaotic disarray, some jammed into the far corner where she’d once hung a painting of Haddon Hall—her granny’s favorite English estate. The painting now lay face down in the sludge.
The force of the water must have undercut some of the shelving, because several of the counters slanted, leaving appliances stuck in the mud. Her teapots—Granny’s, hers, the ones with the sweet hand-painted flowers—lay scattered in glinting shards beneath the muck.
“We need to get as much out of your apartment as we can,” Jack said, moving carefully toward the back, “and transfer it to my house. I think I can get the truck behind the shop. There’s a semi-clear path.”
She nodded numbly, her gaze still locked on the ruined room.
She and Winston had been staying at Jack’s place—his cabin perched on the ridge above town. He’d gotten by with only a damaged garage and flooded driveway.
Last night they’d sat on Jack’s couch in silence for a few hours.No words. Just grief shared side by side. Until he’d gone back out to continue with rescues.
Another grief.
Another loss.
Her attention pulled back to Jack as he made slow progress forward in the room. He looked exhausted. Pale.
But whole.
