By late morning, the market square was filling with light and movement. Stalls lifted their canvas roofs one by one as the sun climbed higher, casting long, thin shadows across the cobblestones. Emily carried her paper bags, folded under her arm, the smell of fresh bread and rain-washed streets clinging faintly to her coat.

Noah Bennett waved from a corner table stacked with knit caps in stubborn colors. He looked like optimism dressed in a jacket two sizes too big.  

“Morning, Ms. Rhodes.”  

“Morning, Noah.”  

“Boss said to tell you the blue flannel is on sale.”  

“Is that a threat or a promise?”  

“Depends who’s buying.”

Grace leaned toward Emily without hiding her voice.  

“He’s adorable.”  

“He’s seventeen.”  

“He’s still adorable.”

They paused for coffee poured from a stainless thermos that had seen other days. The market found its volume slowly, like a choir warming its vowels. Leaves shook themselves free of branches, one by one, falling in perfect arcs.

Mayor Collins appeared in a suit that had never met the concept of Saturday. He shook hands with people, nodded perfunctorily, and adjusted his tie when he saw Emily, as if calibrating himself for the conversation.  

“Ms. Rhodes.”  

“Mr. Mayor.”  

“Productive evening, I hope.”  

“Depends what you call productive.”  

“Sleeping is a kind of progress.”  

“Not when the roof leaks.”

His smile narrowed, tacked at the corners like a poster drenched in rain.  

“Let’s find each other Monday.”  

“We just did.”

Grace coughed a laugh into her cup and pretended it was steam. Collins disappeared into another conversation, leaving Emily to her thoughts.

They walked past pumpkins arranged like patient planets and a fiddler coaxing a tune that remembered boots and barns, the air carrying cinnamon from nearby vendors. Across the market, Harbor & Thread’s string lights blinked to life despite the morning already being decided. Liam stood at the stall, sleeves rolled, shirts hanging like flags from a future refusing to surrender.

Grace did not break stride.  

“Good morning,” she said to him.  

“Morning,” he said.  

“I’m Grace.”  

“I figured.”  

“You did your figuring well.”  

“Journalists have a tell.”  

“What’s mine?”  

“You ask with your chin first.”

Grace set down her coffee.  

“You’re going to help her keep Maple Street standing.”  

“Yes.”  

“You said that like it wasn’t a question.”  

“It isn’t.”

Emily remained an arm’s length away, the distance where touch becomes a decision. The shirts swayed once in a shared breeze.  

“Blue flannel,” Noah said from the corner. “Two-for-one if you promise to wear them to the next meeting.”  

“I don’t attend in uniform,” Emily said.  

“Make an exception,” Liam said.  

“For what?”  

“For being seen together.”

Grace’s eyebrows went up like quotation marks.  

“Buy the shirts,” she said.  

“No.”  

“Yes.”

Noah bagged them anyway and set the paper sack on the table where the sun had found it. The handles cast angular shadows briefly resembling a map. A wind swept through the square, lifting the corners of canvas roofs like punctuation.

The posters from yesterday had been taken down, but faint tape marks remained, pale squares on dark brick. A child tugged his mother toward a jar of maple candies that would last only as long as restraint permitted.  

“Walk,” Grace said softly.  

“Where?”  

“Among your people.”

They walked together. The market parted and flowed around them, conversations stitching and un-stitching with the clean sound of deciding. Liam named growers Emily had forgotten, those who had aged into their second names. Emily returned names to buildings that had tried to learn how to be empty.

At the far edge of the stalls, the lake appeared in pieces between booths, a bright broken thing mended by distance.  

“Do you ever get used to it looking smaller?” she asked.  

“You don’t,” he said.  

“Good.”

They stopped by a stand selling soap the size of pocketbooks. A woman wrapped two bars in paper as thin as breath.  

“For the house,” Liam said.  

“For the stains you can’t name,” Grace added.  

“For the rooms that remember,” Emily said.

They turned back toward the square, paper bags light against their wrists. A gust lifted one corner of the canvas roof and snapped it down again like a full stop.  

A bell from the church at the hill’s elbow began counting to noon. Pigeons startled, reconsidered, and decided to remain pigeons. Grace glanced at her watch.  

“Interview at one.”  

“With whom?”  

“With you two.”  

“That’s not on my calendar.”  

“I’m your calendar.”

A dog barked three times and then found a stick that did not belong to it. The stick belonged to the day now.

They reached the stall again. Noah had sold the stubborn purple cap to a woman who refused to consider other colors. The string lights blinked once, twice, then held, unnecessary and therefore beloved.

Liam set the bag with the two blue flannels on the table between them. Emily rested her palm on the paper as if the weight needed her agreement.  

She looked toward Maple Street. Sunlight had found the upper windows of the house, painting them a color that promised a later hour.  

“Later,” she said.

She lifted the bag.  

A leaf let go above them and spun once before landing on the open page of Grace’s notebook.

By late afternoon, the market had thinned. The smell of cinnamon and kettle corn lingered over the square. Grace’s notebook was filled with slanted handwriting, arrows between quotes, and a coffee ring that looked suspiciously intentional.

Emily walked with Liam toward the edge of town where the pavement gave up and turned to gravel. The air carried the smell of the lake—metal and pine.

“You don’t have to walk me back,” she said.  

“I know.”  

“Then why.”  

“Habit.”

She looked down at the paper bag in her hand. “You’ll make me wear these, won’t you.”  

“I’ll at least make you keep them.”  

“You’re impossible.”  

“I hear that often.”

They passed the bridge that cut the town in two. The water below reflected pieces of cloud like half-remembered promises.

“I keep thinking about what you said,” she murmured.  

“Which part?”  

“That this place doesn’t hold its shape for ghosts.”  

“I didn’t mean it as an insult.”  

“I know.”  

“But you heard it that way.”  

“I hear everything that way lately.”

He stopped walking. “Then hear this different.”

The wind picked up off the lake, ruffling her hair across her cheek.

“You can stay,” he said. “Not as who you were. As who you are now.”

She met his eyes, steady, searching. “That’s easy for you. You built something that fits you.”  

“I built it because nothing else did.”  

“Still.”  

“Still.”

They both laughed under their breath, the kind of laugh that belongs to exhaustion more than humor.

A car crossed the bridge, headlights carving the gray. When it passed, the silence settled back, thicker than before.

“You ever regret not leaving?” she asked.  

“Every February.”  

“And then?”  

“Then spring happens. The trees forgive the snow.”

She smiled. “You talk like someone who doesn’t believe in endings.”  

“I fix buttons for a living,” he said. “Endings are above my pay grade.”

At the turn for Maple Street, Grace was waiting on the porch, a mug in her hands and that grin that meant she’d been watching longer than polite.

“Well,” she said, “you two look entirely too cinematic.”  

“Don’t start,” Emily said.  

“Too late. I already have three titles.”  

“Pick one and delete it.”  

“Impossible. Art demands documentation.”

Liam looked up at Grace. “How’s the house treating you?”  

“Like a cat. Pretending it doesn’t need me.”  

“Then you’re doing fine.”

Grace tilted her head toward Emily. “You coming in or loitering with your subplot?”  

Emily rolled her eyes. “Goodnight, Liam.”  

“Night.”

He took a step back, then hesitated. “The blue flannels will look better after they’re washed once.”  

“I’ll take your word.”  

“Don’t. Try it.”

She smiled, small and unwilling. “Goodnight.”

He lifted two fingers in a wave and walked off down the street. The twilight caught on the puddles, turning them into small mirrors that carried the color of his shirt long after he was gone.

Grace watched until he disappeared. “You realize that was the emotional midpoint of your movie.”  

“I’m not in a movie.”  

“Exactly what people in movies say.”

Emily took the mug from Grace’s hand and sipped. It was tea, bitter and comforting. “You should write fiction.”  

“I do,” Grace said. “I just call it journalism.”

They sat on the steps as the streetlights came on one by one, slow and uncertain. The town exhaled—the kind of sigh that comes after trying too hard to be quiet.

“Do you miss the city?” Grace asked.  

“Every time I wake up here.”  

“And?”  

“And every time I wake up there.”

Grace nodded. “Then you’re right where you’re supposed to be.”

A train horn drifted from somewhere beyond the hills, thin and familiar. The windows of Maple House glowed faintly behind them, reflecting the street’s long light.

Emily leaned her head against the porch rail. “What time’s your train Monday?”  

“Too early.”  

“You’ll hate leaving.”  

“I’ll hate packing.”

“Then stay another day.”

Grace looked at her, the smirk gone for once. “You don’t want that?”  

“I might.”  

“You’re getting sentimental.”  

“Must be contagious.”

Grace laughed quietly. “If I turn soft, I expect a eulogy.”

“I’ll write one,” Emily said. “Short and honest.”

“Perfect,” Grace said. “Just like regret.”

They fell silent again. The wind rustled through the trees, carrying the scent of the lake and the hum of the market closing.

Inside, the hallway clock clicked toward nine. The sound slipped through the open window and into the still night.

Across the street, a single light burned above Harbor & Thread’s door, steady and patient, like someone keeping a seat for whoever might come back.