Page 6 of Just One More Thing

Still. Too still.

I don’t need a second glance or a closer look. I know.

Mo.

She’s here.

Everything in me goes quiet. Ten years apart doesn’t dull that kind of knowing.

She starts across the bridge, and the sight of her lands a punch to my gut. Everything I built to keep myself steady suddenly feels like it’s crumbling.

Hank snorts at my feet, and I don’t know if he’s telling me to move or just reminding me to breathe.

I don’t blink. I’m afraid if I do, she’ll be gone.

I fight the urge to call out to her.

Because I learned the cost of moving too fast ten years ago.

Learned what it feels like to reach with your whole heart and feel nothing reach back.

CHAPTER 3

EMORY

My hands are full with a suitcase in one and a bkr in the other, so I turn sideways and hip-chuck the door open with a move that feels equal parts muscle memory and survival instinct.

The smell hits me immediately. Warm sugar, yeast, and vanilla wrapped around frying dough and the buttery sweetness of fresh glaze.

Doughnuts.

My stomach growls like it’s been waiting years for this exact moment, loud and completely unconcerned with my dignity.

“Excuse you,” I mumble.

The door swings shut behind me with a soft thump, and I just stand there.

Granny is behind the counter, rolling herself in slow, chaotic circles on a stool. Her cast leg sticks out in front of her, ready to boot the next person who gives her grief, while the other taps the floor every few seconds to redirect her spin. She looks perfectly at home.

The counter is the same butcher block Grandpa made by hand. The edges are worn smooth from decades of elbows and pastry boxes sliding across it. My eyes catch on the faint outlineof my five-year-old handprint, still there, softened by time but stubborn, refusing to disappear completely.

The chalkboard menu still lists flavors in Granny’s loopy handwriting, punctuated with entirely too many exclamation points and underlines. The old radio on the back shelf hums along to the same yacht rock station it’s been tuned to since I was a kid, playing a song I swear I don’t know and somehow still know by heart.

Colorful inner tubes still line the walls. Once the backdrop for collisions and laughter and the kind of joy you don’t realize is fleeting until it’s already gone.

The memories don’t ease in.

They stampede.

Granny standing beside me at the counter, showing me how dough should feel when it’s ready. Soft but not sticky. Alive under your palms. Me realizing, right here, that baking wasn’t just something I liked. It was something I needed.

Summer mornings when Jake knocked on the back door before I was even dressed, already grinning because he knew Granny would hand us a sack of doughnuts before we even asked.

Sleepovers upstairs in Granny’s apartment, where the floors creaked and the windows rattled when the wind came off the water just right.

His boathouse behind and catty-corner from the bakery, visible from my upstairs window. Close enough that we sent Morse code messages back and forth with flashlights when we were supposed to be asleep. I can still picture the beam cutting through the dark, the ridiculous thrill of waiting for his answer that mattered more than anything else.

And the flour fight. Right here in this kitchen when we were teenagers and dumb enough to think we could clean it up before Granny noticed. We thought we were in real trouble that time.Instead she grabbed a bag of flour and started throwing it at both of us until we were all laughing too hard to stand.