The café opened to the soft clatter of trays and the papery sigh of flattened boxes. Hannah had stacked shipping cartons along the back wall, a little fortress of corrugated hope. Emma stood beside the worktable with a roll of bubble wrap under one arm and a pencil tucked behind her ear like it might keep the day in place.
"Okay," Hannah said, tying her apron like a general tightening a sash. "We start small. Warm-up pieces first. Coffee in reach. No panic."
"No panic," Emma echoed, eyeing the framed drawings lined like quiet witnesses along the counter. Her chest did that too-tight thing anyway.
They found their rhythm quickly. Hannah laid down kraft paper with the care of making a bed; Emma wrapped bubble around frames until the edges looked soft. Corner guards clicked on with satisfying little snaps. The room filled with the friendly sounds of work—tape tearing cleanly, a Sharpie squeaking over cardboard, the bell over the door chiming for regulars who ordered, lingered, and accepted with smiles that today the back half of the café was an art-staging zone.
Around midmorning the first hiccup came dressed as a printer jam.
"The labels," Emma said, peering into the tray. "They printed… hieroglyphics."
Hannah arrived with a look that said I am not afraid of you, demon machine. She lifted the lid, freed a stubborn label like a thorn, and tapped the side of the printer twice—affectionate menace. The next page came out crisp, black text neat as a ledger.
"Appliances respect you," Emma said.
"They respect boundaries," Hannah corrected. "And snacks." She slid a saucer with two cinnamon scones to the edge of the table like a bribe to the gods of logistics. "Eat. No one makes good decisions on an empty stomach."
By noon, six pieces were swaddled, labeled, and stacked. The seventh—Morning at the Counter—wobbled in its frame when Emma checked the hanging wire.
"It's loose," she murmured, the old fear spiking. What if something breaks on the way? What if the city chews this up and spits it out? What if—
Hannah's hand landed warm at the small of her back. "We've got it." She produced a tiny screwdriver from the miscellaneous drawer (which, Emma had learned, was actually meticulously curated). Two careful turns, a test tug—solid.
"Thank you," Emma breathed.
"Team," Hannah said simply.
Early afternoon brought the courier—a tall man with kind eyes and a clipboard worn smooth by a thousand signatures. "Alvarez," he introduced himself, glancing at the stack. "You ladies done good already. I'll bring the dolly."
He returned in time for hiccup number two: a cloud sweeping in from the west, thinning daylight into a suggestion. The forecast had promised clear. Maple Hollow liked its surprises.
"Rain," Emma said, watching the street gray.
"Door-to-truck dash," Hannah countered, already rolling a runner mat across the floor. She wrapped a plastic painter's sheet around the tallest carton with the brisk grace of swaddling a baby. "Alvarez, we doing this relay-style?"
Alvarez grinned. "On your mark."
They moved like choreography—Hannah at the door with towels, Alvarez with the dolly, Emma guiding and steadying, her hands sure even when her breath wasn't. Two trips out and back, a light drizzle turning to a smatter of drops that beaded and ran off the plastic in harmless rivulets.
On the third trip, a regular—Mrs. Ferris, cardigan, pearl studs—rose from her tea like a volunteer from the home front. "I can hold the door," she declared, and did, jaw set against the weather as if daring it to try anything.
By three, the crates were loaded, the air in the café smelling like rain and tape adhesive. Emma printed the manifest; Hannah triple-checked the tracking numbers with the solemnity of a vow. Alvarez waited, easy and unhurried, thumbs hooked in his vest pockets.
"You'd be surprised how many folks cry at pickups," he said conversationally. "Doesn't mean anything's wrong. Just means it matters."
Emma blinked faster than she meant to. Hannah slid a tissue into her hand without looking away from the clipboard.
When it was time to sign, Emma's hand shook just enough to make the first letter wobble. She paused, then pressed the pen down steady. Emma Caldwell. A line under the name, neat and hard.
Alvarez tipped his cap when the back door of the truck swung shut. "We'll take care of them," he said, not like a script but a promise. "Tomorrow you'll have a scan. Day after, a city dock. You'll see."
The truck pulled away with a heavy, comforting rumble. Emma stood beside Hannah under the awning, both of them a little damp at the cuffs, a little wrung out, a lot relieved. The empty space inside where the pieces had been yawned at her like a missing tooth.
"It looks… bare," Emma said.
"It looks like room," Hannah answered, fingers finding hers. "Room for the next thing."
They went back in and cleaned the battlefield: tape tails in a little pile, cardboard slivers swept, the printer patted approvingly. Hannah brewed two mugs and set them at the worktable like a benediction.
"For the record," she said, tapping the small brass bell near the register, "I think we deserve a little ceremony."
Emma arched a brow. "Ceremony?"
Hannah rang the bell once—a bright, happy note that made the air feel thinner. "For shipped art. For bravery. For the moment you did the thing."
The sound made something laugh in Emma's chest. "Do it again."
Hannah rang it twice. Mrs. Ferris applauded from her corner and called, "To the gallery!"
Emma lifted her mug. "To the gallery," she echoed, surprised to find the words tasted not like fear but like cinnamon and light.
They carried the last of the packing scraps to the back and, on impulse, Emma paused before the little space near the register where Morning at the Counter used to hang. There, on a tiny clothespin, waited Hannah's kraft-paper note: Reserved for when she's back.
Emma touched the corner of it as if it might hum. "I'll bring it home," she said, mostly to herself.
"You will," Hannah said, as if she could see the painting already returning, as if she could see the woman who would, too.
When the café finally emptied and the rain softened to a sheen on the street, they locked the door and stood shoulder to shoulder in the dim, looking at the quiet that follows a good kind of work. Emma slipped the brass key from her pocket and rubbed her thumb across its smooth face.
"In my bag tomorrow," she said. "Next to the scarf. Top of the For When It's Hard list."
Hannah smiled, small and certain. "And second on that list?"
"Call you," Emma said, no hesitation.
They stepped out into the rinsed evening. Maple Hollow smelled like wet leaves and something sweet cooling somewhere you couldn't see. They didn't rush. The truck was already far down the highway, and the art was out in the world, and for once the future didn't feel like a cliff—it felt like a road that curved out of sight, with someone's hand in yours as you walked it.
"Victory soup?" Hannah asked as they rounded the corner. "And bread with too much butter?"
"Excessive butter," Emma corrected, laughing for real this time. "And maybe we ring the bell once more when we get home, just to make sure."
"Deal," Hannah said.
They went the long way, because some days—especially first-shipping days—deserve to be stretched, and named, and quietly celebrated all the way back to the door.