Page 39 of The Pumpkin Pie Book Nook

This looks magical.

I want to live there.

That ravioli!!!

The bookstore is a dream.

Robyn shouldn’t have been surprised. People fell in love with Maple Falls at first glance, even through a phone screen. She watched the views tick upward, her stomach fluttering in that thrilled-but-nervous way that always came with sharing something she cared about.

Then another notification popped up. It was a DM.

She clicked on the mail icon. It was a message from her ex.

Two words: Cute town.

Robyn stared at the screen. Her thumb hovered over the message, pulse ticking up for all the wrong reasons. She could practically hear the smooth, amused tone of his voice, the one that always made her feel like she was being judged. He’d spotted the photo of Tyler. He must have. What a dick.

She closed the app, set her phone face-down on the counter, willing her pulse to calm down.

Mr. Darcy jumped onto her lap and pressed his head firmly against her hand.

She scratched behind his ears and stared at the dark window, where her own reflection stared back. A woman in a Yale sweatshirt, sitting in a lamp-lit flat above a bookstore that might not exist in a month. Falling for a man her parents would never approve of, building a life she wasn’t sure she was brave enough to keep.

Her phone buzzed again. Tyler this time.

The pasta pic is getting more likes than me. Should I be worried?

She smiled, and the knot in her chest loosened, just a little.

But she didn’t tell him about the other message. Not yet.

EIGHTEEN

TYLER

Tyler was just finishing up cleaning the kitchen after dinner, wiping down the counters while the last of the steam from the oven faded into the air. He’d made Emma’s favorite: chicken pot pie with a flaky crust, carrots, and potatoes, and that creamy gravy that made the whole house feel warmer. It was the same recipe his mother had made when he was a kid, minus the deli rotisserie chicken he’d shredded to save time, because his life now involved fewer leisurely afternoons and more “how fast can I get dinner on the table because homework took too long?”

The thought of his mom nudged something in him, and he paused with the dish towel in his hands. He needed to check in with his parents and see if they’d found a realtor yet. He still couldn’t quite believe they were actually planning on moving to Maple Falls within the next six months. Most New Englanders headed south when they retired—away from blustery winters and black ice and cold that made your bones protest just a bit every morning—but not his parents. With his dad retiring from the post office and his mom from the elementary school, they wanted to spend more time with Emma.

Tyler was grateful. The more people in Emma’s life, the better. He’d taken a chance moving here with her, but he’d been right, Maple Falls was the place for them.

“Whoa now, careful,” Tyler said as Emma balanced her plate on top of her glass like she was stacking fine china for a circus act.

“It’s okay, I’ve got it,” Emma declared, walking a bit too fast toward the sink.

She definitely did not have it. She had all the grace of a baby giraffe on roller skates, and the glass was already tilting at an angle that promised disaster. Tyler lunged in before anything could break.

“You absolutely do not got this,” he said, taking the plate out of her hands. “How about you get the silverware instead?”

Emma rolled her eyes with deep, long-suffering patience, as if Tyler were the child in this scenario, and she was the weary parent. “Fine,” she said. “But then can I be excused? My class group is doing a video call in five minutes.”

Tyler snorted, rinsing the plate under warm water. “When I was eight, meeting my friends meant riding my bike to the end of the street and yelling until someone’s mom told us to stop.”

“I’m so glad I wasn’t born before the internet,” Emma declared, dropping the silverware into the sink with a clatter. Then she skipped down the hallway toward her room, already calling out a cheerful, “Thanks for dinner!” before he heard the familiar chime of her school app logging on.

Tyler finished loading the dishwasher, wiped down the counter, and then let himself sit for a moment in the quiet kitchen, listening to the muffled sound of Emma’s voice drifting down the hall. It was full of giggles and dramatic storytelling as she and her friends recounted the last five hours since they’d seen each other at school, as if an entire lifetime had passed in the span of one afternoon.

Tyler loved this part of his life—the simplicity of Emma’s homework spread out on the table, the calm satisfaction of a clean kitchen after a good meal. He loved that, for all the chaos single-dad life could bring, there was also a kind of predictability to it, a steadying rhythm. The biggest crisis most nights was whether Emma remembered to brush her teeth or take out her lunch box for tomorrow.