Emma woke before the alarm, the sky not yet decided on morning. The apartment was a hush of floorboard creaks and the faint tick of the kitchen clock. She padded to the table, opened her laptop, and stared at the inbox like it might blink first.
A new message slid to the top.
Subject: Pickup Scan — Alvarez Freight
Status: In Transit
Her breath left in a small, startled laugh. In transit. The words felt sturdier than she expected, like planks laid across a gap.
Hannah appeared in the doorway, hair in a loose knot, cardigan pulled close. "Well?"
Emma turned the screen. Hannah read, then looked up with a grin that shook the sleep from the room. "In transit," she echoed, as if testing the taste of it.
"We should ring the bell," Emma said, only half teasing.
Hannah pointed to the tiny brass bell on the bookshelf. "Doctor's orders."
The bell chimed once, bright enough to make the cat two doors down complain. They laughed, and the morning broke open.
By eight, the café smelled like acceptance and cinnamon. Regulars filtered in with umbrellas tucked under their arms, cheeks pink from the early chill. Emma took the corner table—emails answered, supply lists updated, one tab left open to the tracking page she pretended not to refresh.
Around ten, Mrs. Ferris arrived in her pearl studs and a scarf the color of butter. She set a small envelope on the counter. "For your city wall," she said conspiratorially. Inside was a postcard of Maple Hollow from decades ago: the same fountain, the same brick storefronts, the same sky leaning in. On the back she'd written, So you don't forget which light is yours.
Hannah pressed a hand to her heart. "You're going to make me cry before lunch."
"I'll allow it," Mrs. Ferris said, then settled by the window with her tea like a sentry on leave.
At noon, Alvarez appeared in the doorway with rain on his shoulders and a grin. "Told you—scan yesterday, smile today."
Emma practically vaulted the counter to hug him. He endured it with a chuckle and a pat on the back that said he'd seen worse in loading bays. "Dock tomorrow," he added. "I'll ping you when the pallets clear the intake."
"You're our favorite courier," Hannah said, sliding a bag with a cinnamon scone across the counter.
"Flattery?" Alvarez lifted the bag. "Accepted."
That afternoon, Hannah taped a square of kraft paper to the register and wrote in neat block letters: FRIDAY 7 PM — SEND-OFF. TASTES & TUNES. ALL HEARTS WELCOME. A few customers clapped on instinct; one asked if there would be the "good" lemon bars. Hannah solemnly vowed there would be only the good ones.
"Are we really doing a party?" Emma asked, both thrilled and terrified.
"Not a party," Hannah said. "A small, strategic, emotionally supportive carbohydrate deployment." She tapped a pen against her lip. "And maybe the old record player."
"Right," Emma said, deadpan. "Not a party at all."
By seven on Friday, the café looked like itself with just a little extra glow. Hannah had strung a thin line of paper stars along the window frames—simple, white, the kind that catch light without asking for it. The record player hummed an old jazz record that sounded like the color of tea.
Neighbors trickled in—Nora from the bookstore with a wrapped paperback for train reading; Mr. and Mrs. Patel from the corner shop, carrying a bag of "train snacks approved by aunties"; three high schoolers Emma had taught at the community center, tongues blue from some alarming candy but grins wide and earnest. Even the barista from the bakery popped over on her break with two baguettes and the solemn announcement that "butter is mandatory on important nights."
Hannah kept the table perpetually full: tiny cups of tomato soup, thumbprint cookies, the famous lemon bars living up to their reputation. Emma moved slowly through the room, hugged, teased, pinned by well-wishes she thought might float away but didn't. Every time her chest got tight, Hannah's hand found hers like that was part of the plan.
At some point, the record's needle clicked to silence. Hannah lifted her mug. "Alright," she said, cheeks pink but voice steady, "before I cry in public—which, for the record, I am capable of—we're going to toast."
The room quieted; even Mrs. Ferris sat up straighter.
"To Emma," Hannah said, eyes bright. "For doing the brave thing. For showing us the beauty in the quiet. For remembering where home is, no matter how far she goes."
"To Emma," the room echoed, a soft wave of voices.
Emma swallowed around something that felt a lot like a tide. "To Hannah," she said, trying not to shake. "For teaching me what steady looks like. For every cinnamon scone that fixed what I said it couldn't. For building a place where love gets to be ordinary and, somehow, extraordinary."
"To Hannah," they answered, and someone rang the bell without asking permission.
After the toast, the crowd loosened into little eddies of talk. Nora tucked the paperback into Emma's bag and whispered, "Page 137 when the train gets loud." The high schoolers asked if they could take a selfie "for the alumni wall that we just invented." Alvarez, off-duty and somehow present, leaned in the doorframe and lifted two fingers in a salute when Emma caught his eye.
Near the register, a small square waited on the wall—the gap where Morning at the Counter had hung. Under the kraft-paper sign, Hannah had added a strip of masking tape with a date three months from now. "A goal," she said when Emma noticed. "A welcome-home timeline."
Emma traced the tape lightly. "Ambitious."
"Optimistic," Hannah countered. "It's different."
"I like different," Emma said, and somehow she did.
When the lights finally dimmed and the last guest left with a lemon bar "for the road," they stood in the spill of the doorway, listening to the town's thin, contented quiet. The stars felt close enough to touch; the street smelled like early autumn and warm sugar.
Hannah slipped a small, wrapped book into Emma's hands. "For the train," she said. "Open it when the whistle blows."
Emma raised a brow. "Cryptic."
"Motivational," Hannah said, leaning in to kiss her temple.
They walked the long way—past the bookstore window display of quilts and mysteries, past the fountain that had been in Mrs. Ferris's postcard, past the mural Emma had painted last fall, the colors sleepier but still stubbornly bright. At the fountain they paused, because that was what you did at the fountain when you were leaving or staying or deciding which you were doing.
"Tomorrow the dock," Emma said. "Then I'm officially… happening."
"You've been officially happening for a while," Hannah said, fingers lacing with hers. "This is just the paper trail catching up."
They sat on the cold stone rim and let the silence be a kind thing. When they stood, Emma held up their hands, palm to palm—an old habit that never failed to make both of them smile.
"Proof of life," she said.
"Proof of love," Hannah answered, not embarrassed in the least.
They walked home with no hurry left to spend. At the apartment door, Hannah reached for the bell they'd brought from the café and set on the little table by the coats, a private echo of that morning's chime.
"Ring it?" she asked.
Emma did. Once for the scan, once for the send-off, once for the road that curved out of sight.
"Next stop," Hannah said quietly, "the city dock."
"And after that," Emma said, tucking the wrapped book into her bag beside the brass key and the blue scarf, "a wall with my name on it."
"And after that," Hannah added, smiling in a way that warmed the whole room, "back here."
The bell's last note thinned into the kind of quiet that isn't empty at all. They stood in it together, hands still joined, already practicing the art they were about to get very good at: staying, even when one of them had to go.