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“You’ve been drawing the same petal for ten minutes,” Saint says.

“I like committing slowly.”

“That your artistic process or your personality?”

I glance up to find his mouth twitching around the edge of his coffee mug. Saint's humor sneaks up on people, dry enough to miss if you aren't paying attention.

"You hanging around tattoo shops made you brave?" I ask.

“Nah. Watching you brood over pancakes got me curious.”

“I’m not brooding.”

He chuckles. “You’ve sighed at least four times.”

“That could be respiratory distress.”

“Bullshit.”

I lean back in the booth, pencil tapping lightly against the paper. The diner lights reflect off the chrome napkin holders, all soft gold and old scratches. The kind nobody bothers fixing because it becomes part of the shape eventually.

Saint watches me with a half-smile. “You gonna tell me what’s eating you,” he asks, “or am I supposed to read your mind?”

I drag my thumb across the edge of the sketchbook page. Ink smudges lightly against my skin. “Ben’s sister’s in town.”

Saint’s brows shoot upward. “Laurel Sterling?”

I pause, intrigued. “You know her?”

“Know of her.” He shrugs. “Small town. People talk. Ellie said she came into the café a while back looking like she wanted to fight someone.”

A laugh almost escapes me before I catch it.

“She’s looking after Maggie’s kid while Maggie’s missing,” I tell him.

Saint’s expression shifts, humor draining out of it. “Still no sign of her then?”

I shake my head once.

Rain taps steadily against the windows. Fern yells at someone for trying to put ketchup on eggs as if it’s a criminal offense.

Saint rubs a hand through his beard. “Hell.”

“Yeah.”

“She local?”

“Maggie? Was. Lived over in Everwood with her boyfriend.”

“The boyfriend clean?”

I think about Tom, the carefully blank answers Laurel gave when she talked about him. The tension sitting underneath her words like wire under skin.

“No idea,” I admit.

Saint studies me over the rim of his mug. “But you think maybe not.”

“I think Laurel’s carrying too much tension for this to just be Maggie taking off for a few days again.”