Page 39

“I’m fine,” she says finally, clearly deciding not to take offence. Or maybe too tired to fight.

Lorna points toward a booth. “Sit.”

“I was just going to⁠—”

Lorna cuts in. “No, you weren’t. Sit.”

Laurel hesitates, visibly calculates, then obeys.

Ellie brings her coffee.

Ruth and Henry lean in, not bothering to pretend anymore.

Henry asks, “Still take it black?”

Laurel looks faintly startled. “You remember that?”

“You were fourteen and told me sugar is for people who fear reality.”

Casper coughs into his coffee.

Laurel’s mouth twitches. Barely. “I admit that does sound unnecessarily dramatic.”

“But so like you,” Ruth chimes in with a soft chuckle.

A tightness moves across Laurel’s face, then disappears.

Interesting.

Lorna sets a plate in front of her. Eggs, toast, potatoes, and bacon. A meal for someone who doesn’t think she can stomach food and needs to be proven wrong by force.

“I didn’t order this,” Laurel says.

“No,” Lorna says. “You didn’t.”

“Laurel Sterling back in Redwood Run,” Ellie says softly, trying the shape of it.

Sterling.

The fork stops halfway to my mouth.

The café noise thins… and I go still.

Ben had sisters. I knew that. Of course, I knew that. He didn’t talk about his family unless grief or whiskey cracked a door open, and even then, it came in pieces.

Maggie, loud as a firecracker.

Laurel, smart as hell and gone as soon as she could be.

His words.

I look at the woman in the booth. Laurel Sterling. Ben’s sister.

I see it now. The same straight posture. The same guarded mouth. Nothing the same as him at first glance, until she reaches for her coffee with a controlled precision.

Ben used to do that with wrenches. Hold tight. Smile loose.

My chest tightens almost painfully.