Petra Holt had made Milo Brant coffee every morning for ten years, and this was the morning she planned to tell him she loved him. She stood in her workshop behind the house, sawdust on her overalls, two mugs steaming on the bench beside a half-planed board. Ten years of sanding the same secret smooth. Today she would hand him the coffee and the truth together, and either he would kiss her or she would lose the only person who knew how she took her own. She rehearsed it against the wood. "Milo. I need to say a thing." Her hands shook. She set down the plane before she ruined the board. Through the open workshop doors she could see the path he took every morning, the one that cut past the florist's back gate. He was late. Milo was never late. A hummingbird darted through the doorway, hung above the mugs, and shot out again. Petra took it as a sign, then laughed at herself for needing one. She was halfway across the yard with both mugs when she saw them at the florist's gate. Milo, silver needle behind his ear, tape measure loose around his neck. And a woman Petra hadn't seen in years — Nola Jasper, back in town, ink on her apron, a bundle of yellow clover blooms pressed into Milo's hands. Nola, who had left Vinemaw at seventeen. Nola, whose name Milo used to say like a bruise he was proud of. Petra stopped on the path. Milo was laughing the loud, open laugh he usually saved for her. Nola tucked a stem behind his ear next to the needle. He let her. Petra's coffee went cold in her hands. She could turn around. She could go back to the workshop and sand the board and never say it. That was the safe plan. That was ten more years of mugs on the bench. Instead she walked up to them. Her boots were loud on the gravel. Milo turned, saw her, and his whole face changed — pleased, guilty, something else she couldn't name. "Petra," he said. "You remember Nola." "I brought your coffee," Petra said. She held out the mug. Her voice came out steady, which surprised her. "Milo. I need to say a thing. I've needed to say it for ten years." Nola's sharp eyes went to the clover in Milo's hand, then to Petra's face, and she took one careful step back. Milo's mouth opened. Closed. He looked at the yellow blooms like he'd forgotten he was holding them. "Say it," he said quietly. Petra had planned this in the workshop, alone. She had not planned it in front of the woman he used to love. She set the second mug down on the gatepost so her hands were free. "I love you," she said. "That's the thing."

The words hung in the air between them. Milo stared at the yellow clover in his hand. Nola Jasper took another step back and found something urgent to do with her apron strings. Petra's heart hammered against her ribs. She had said it. Now he had to say something back, or the silence would become the answer. A screen door creaked across the lane. Mildred Patterson stepped out onto her porch in her purple cardigan, watering can forgotten in one hand. The old woman had lived next to Petra's workshop for twenty years. She had watched Petra carry two mugs down that path every morning for ten of them. She did not pretend to look away now. She met Petra's eyes and gave one small, firm nod. Go on, girl. Finish it. Petra swallowed. "Not here," she said to Milo. "Come with me. Ten minutes. Then you can say whatever you need to say." Milo nodded once, dazed. He set the clover on the gatepost beside the cold mug. Nola did not stop them. Petra walked him down to the boathouse by the lake. Weathered planks, sloped roof, the door hanging open on still water. No one came here in the mornings. She had built half of it herself, three summers ago, while he handed her nails and talked about nothing. Inside, she pulled a wooden heart-shaped box down from the shelf above the workbench. She had carved it two winters back and never given it to him. Her hands shook worse now than they had at the gate. "I made this for you," she said. "I kept losing my nerve." Milo took the box. He turned it over in his palms like a man reading a letter. Then he lifted the lid. Inside was a folded paper she had put there and forgotten. A sketch. Her own face, freckles and all, drawn in careful pencil. She had found it slipped inside one of his shirts a year ago when she mended a cuff for him. She had never asked. She had put it in the box because she did not know where else to put it. Milo went still. He recognized his own hand. "You drew that," Petra said. "I found it. I didn't know what it meant. I still don't." He closed the box. He looked at her the way he had looked at Nola at the gate, and then differently — steadier, scared, his. "It meant I was a coward," he said. "Petra. I've been drawing you for years." He stepped forward and kissed her. Once. Quick. Like a man testing whether the floor would hold. It held. Then he pulled back, and his face crumpled. "But Nola came back yesterday," he said. "And I told her I'd give her an answer by tonight. Before you said anything. Petra, I already promised her I'd try."