Daisy Dulac had matched half of Cabin Fever Ridge, but her own cabin stayed dark each night. She wanted one last thing before she hung up her satchel for good: to pair every lonely soul on her route. This morning she stood at the sorting bench and faced a problem she couldn't solve with stamps. She had no list of who was still single. Names blurred together after thirty years. Match the wrong two people, and she'd humiliate someone already spoken for. So she baked. She wrapped warm buttermilk biscuits in wax paper, three to a bundle, and tucked one into every mailbox. She wrote no note. She only watched. A married man would share the biscuits at his own table. A lonely one might linger, might come find the baker. It was a soft test, and no one would know they'd taken it. By noon she reached the last box on her route. It hung crooked on a post beside a sugar maple with a strange, twisted trunk. She reached to slip the bundle inside. A hand caught the door first. "Yours?" The voice was low. Cole Arnett stood there, broad in a faded flannel jacket, a gold ring swinging on a chain at his throat. She knew him only from the road, the ice trucker who drove north for weeks and came back to no one. He held up the biscuits. "Found these three days running. Figured somebody was testing me." Daisy's face went hot. "I meant no harm." "I know what you do, Daisy." He turned the wax paper in his hands, not angry, just tired. "You match folks. Half the town." His thumb brushed the ring on the chain. "I'm not one of your lonely ones to fix." She looked at the ring, then at his empty cabin behind him. "You wear it, but you sleep alone." He went quiet. The wind moved the maple leaves above them. "She's been gone four years," he said finally. "Doesn't make me single. Makes me done." Daisy nodded slowly. She saw it now. Her biscuits couldn't tell the difference between a man with no one and a man who wanted no one. Her whole plan had a hole in it as wide as this one crooked box. "I'll take them back," she said, reaching for the bundle. "Keep them." He pressed the biscuits into her ink-stained hands. "But do me a kindness. Don't guess at people from a mailbox." He climbed into his rig and pulled the door shut. Daisy walked home with the last bundle uneaten. Cole was right. A biscuit told her who ate alone. It couldn't tell her who wanted company and who only wanted to be left be. Her test had failed her at the first hard case. If she meant to finish her route, she needed to know each heart before she matched it. And there was only one way to learn a heart. She had to ask.

For three days Daisy carried her mistake with her. She had guessed at Cole Arnett from a mailbox, and she had guessed wrong. He wasn't lonely. He was grieving. She owed him an apology, but a card felt cheap and a pie felt like courting. Every gift she imagined pushed him toward romance, the exact thing he'd told her he didn't want. So she said nothing, and his cabin stayed dark, and the crooked box by the twisted maple filled with unread flyers. She stopped at the Ridge General Store to think it through. Inside, near the register, stood Ava Okafor, the event coordinator who planned every wedding and funeral on the ridge. Daisy had watched her for months. Ava held her color-coded clipboard against a basket of groceries. One chicken breast. One potato. One small carton of milk. Dinner for one, again. "You cater the whole ridge," Daisy said, "but you never eat with anyone." Ava's pen stopped. "I feed people. That's different." She checked a box on her clipboard. "You're the mail lady. The matchmaker." "I was." Daisy set her satchel on the counter. "I got one wrong this week. Made a widower think I wanted to pair him off. Now he won't open his door." Ava looked up. Her sharp face softened. "You want to fix it." "I don't know how. Everything I bring him looks like I'm still trying." Ava set down her basket. "Then don't bring him anything for him." She flipped a page. "When someone loses a wife, they lose being married. Not just her. The routine. The other name on things. You can't gift that back." She tapped her pen once. "So you honor it instead." Daisy watched her. "How?" "Ask him about her. Say her name if he'll give it. Grieving people go silent because no one wants to hear it." Ava picked her basket back up. "That's not a gift. That's just not looking away." Daisy left the store with an empty satchel and a full plan. She drove out to the crooked box. Cole's rig sat cold in the yard. She knocked and waited. When the door opened, she held up no pie, no card, no biscuits. "I'm not here to match you," she said. "I came to say I'm sorry. I read you wrong." She took a breath. "Will you tell me about her?" Cole's hand went to the ring on his chain. For a long moment he said nothing. Then he stepped back and held the door. "Her name was Ruth," he said. "She hated the ice roads." Daisy sat at his table. He talked, slow and plain, for an hour. She only listened. When she left, he walked her to the truck. "You ever want to know a heart," he said, "that's how. You ask." Daisy drove home lighter. She had her method now. But Ava's basket stayed in her mind, one plate, one fork, one woman who fed everyone but herself.

Ava's basket stayed in Daisy's mind for a week. One chicken breast. One potato. One woman who fed the whole ridge and ate alone. Cole had taught Daisy the method. You ask. So she drove to the general store, hoping to catch Ava again. She meant to ask her the same plain question she had asked Cole. Ava stood on the store porch, clipboard against her hip. A lean tabby cat sat at her feet. She tore small strips from a chicken breast and set them on the boards. The cat ate fast, ribs showing under striped fur. "You feed him too," Daisy said. Ava didn't look up. "He shows up. So do I." She checked a box on her clipboard, as if a stray cat were one more event to run. Daisy sat on the step. "I came to ask you something. The way you taught me to ask Cole." She picked her words slow. "You plan everyone's happiness. Who plans yours?" The pen stopped. Ava's shoulders went stiff. "That's not my job." "It could be someone's." Ava set the clipboard down on the rail. For the first time it left her hands. "I planned a wedding once. Mine." She watched the cat lick the boards clean. "He left two weeks before. I still had the flowers ordered. The seating chart done." She almost smiled. "So now I plan for other people. It works out for them." Daisy said nothing. She only listened, the way Cole had shown her. "I keep the clipboard so I always have something in my hands," Ava said. "So no one asks me to sit still." She looked at Daisy. "You want to fix me. Match me off. I saw it the day we met." "I did," Daisy admitted. "That was wrong. You're not a mailbox to guess at." She rested her hands in her lap. "I don't want to match you today. I just wanted to know why you hide behind that thing." Ava let out a breath. The stiffness went out of her. "Nobody's asked me that in three years." The cat finished and pressed against Ava's shin. She reached down and scratched its ears. She did not pick the clipboard back up. "Come inside," Ava said. "I'll buy you coffee. Not dinner for one, for once." They went in together. The screen door slapped shut behind them. Ava left the clipboard on the porch rail. Daisy understood now. Ava wasn't lonely by accident. She had built the walls on purpose, brick by planned brick, after a groom who left. Knowing that changed everything. Daisy could not simply pair her with a name. First someone had to convince Ava to set the clipboard down for good. And Daisy did not yet know who on her route could do that.