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She looked down at the mug in her hands. The good one. The only one.

He had given her his only mug.

She had to set it down on the counter for a second so she could put her hand over her face.

“What,” he said.

“Nothing,” she said through her fingers. “Nothing. Give me a minute.”

He waited, patiently, the way he waited for everything.

* * *

He drove her to her cottage so she could change. He waited in her kitchen while she did, and when she came back out in clean jeans and her green sweater he was standing at her kitchen window with his travel mug, looking at the lake through the gap in the spruce trees, the sky over the mountains just beginning to go gray.

He had not fixed anything. She checked. There was nothing left in her kitchen to fix.

“You’re standing in my kitchen like it’s normal,” she said.

“It’s getting to be,” he said, without turning around.

She had to go back into the bedroom for another minute.

* * *

At seven forty-three he parked the truck on Main Street across from The Brook and turned off the engine, and neither of them moved.

The street was blue and gold with early light. The pine garlands on the lampposts had snow on them. The windows of The Brook were fogged at the edges and glowing, and through the glass she could see shapes at the tables, the regulars, the same faces that were always there at quarter to eight on a Friday.

“Ready?” he said.

“For coffee?”

He looked at her. “For Merrybrook.”

She thought about it. About Rory, who had apparently written down their first kiss in the historical record. About Molly and Nora and the entire morning crowd. About Charlie Keller, who would absolutely be riding past on her bike at eight on the dot on her way to school.

“No,” she said honestly.

“Me neither,” he said, and opened his door.

He came around the front of the truck through the snow. He didn’t open her door for her, because he knew she’d hate it, but he waited on the sidewalk until she got out, and then they crossed the street together.

He held the door of The Brook open.

The bell rang.

Every single head in the room turned.

* * *

She had been walking into The Brook every morning since August. She had never once heard it go completely silent.

It went completely silent.

Rick Brennan’s coffee cup stopped halfway to his mouth. Karen and David Kowalski, at the table by the pastry case, stopped chewing. Rory Pike, in the corner booth with a notebook open and a pen in hand, went perfectly still, and then, slowly, without looking away from them, began to write.

Allison could hear the espresso machine hissing. She could hear the clock over the counter. She could hear, very faintly, her own heart.