Emma woke to the soft buzz of her phone and a square of early light on the ceiling. She didn't need to open the email to know; the subject line was already doing a small, bright dance.
Alvarez Freight — ARRIVED: City Dock / Intake Complete
She exhaled—a laugh and a breath in one—and rolled toward the doorway. "Hannah?"
Hannah appeared with two mugs and sleep-warmed hair. "Tell me."
"Docked," Emma said, the word landing like a sure step.
They rang the little brass bell on the bookshelf—once for arrival, once for courage—and the sound lifted into the quiet like a promise that knew where to go.
By nine, the café smelled like toasted sugar and weathered wood. Emma kept the tracking page open in a tiny corner of her screen, pretending it wasn't there. At ten-thirty, her phone lit again. Unknown number. She swallowed and answered.
"Emma Caldwell? Hi, this is Marin from Marshall Gallery. We've got your crates—beautiful packing job, by the way. Can we confirm your install for Wednesday morning? Press preview is Thursday at noon."
"Wednesday," Emma repeated, pen already moving. "Yes. I'll be there."
"Wonderful. Two quick things," Marin added. "Could you send a final titles list and a 200-word artist statement by tomorrow? We're building labels and the press kit this weekend."
"Tomorrow," Emma said, trying to keep her voice steady. "You'll have it."
"Great. We're excited, Emma. Your work… it breathes."
The line clicked off. Emma stared at the phone for a heartbeat too long.
Hannah set a croissant on her notebook like it was a paperweight for nerves. "Tell me everything."
"Docked. Install Wednesday. Press Thursday. Titles list and… artist statement by tomorrow." Emma blinked. "Two hundred words feels tiny and impossible."
"Then we'll write two hundred good ones," Hannah said, as if they were discussing how much milk to steam. "Lull hits at eleven. We'll steal the corner and make sentences."
The lull arrived right on schedule. They took the corner table—two mugs, one notebook. Emma started with facts and kept tripping over feelings. Hannah listened, chin in hand, the way she always did when customers told her life stories they hadn't meant to share.
"What is your work doing to a room?" Hannah asked finally. "Not what it looks like—what it does."
Emma watched the steam rise from her mug. "It… slows things down. Or asks them to. The moments nobody bothers to name."
Hannah smiled. "Write that. Put it right at the top."
Emma wrote. The pencil got less squeaky. They found a tone that felt like stepping into morning light: quiet, precise, unafraid to be simple. In the last line, at Hannah's nudge, Emma added a sentence she'd said in passing weeks ago and didn't know she'd meant so much:
I paint the stillness that love makes possible.
They read it twice. It held.
"Titles?" Hannah prompted.
Emma turned to the list and spoke them aloud, testing their weight. Morning at the Counter. After the Rain. Paper Stars. The Long Way Home. When she reached Reserved for When She's Back, her voice caught. Hannah penciled a check mark beside it without looking up.
By two, the email had gone off to Marin with a tidy little whoosh. Emma watched the sent message sit in the folder like a bird on a wire and let her shoulders drop.
"Train?" Hannah asked gently. "We should book before courage gets ideas."
Emma pulled up the timetable. They scanned the options in silence until Hannah tapped the earliest one on Wednesday, 7:18 a.m. "Less room to think ourselves out of it," she said.
"Less room to think," Emma echoed, clicking Purchase. The confirmation ding felt both ridiculous and enormous.
They printed the itinerary and stuck it to the café fridge with a magnet shaped like a lemon. Under it, Hannah taped a narrow strip of kraft paper and wrote in neat block letters: RING THE BELL BEFORE YOU GO.
Late afternoon, Alvarez texted a photo: two labeled crates resting in a neat row, a sliver of city skyline beyond the loading bay.
Safe and signed. See you on the wall, artist. — A.
Emma showed Hannah. They didn't speak for a moment. They didn't need to.
Evening came in with a pale blue edge. The café emptied to a hush. Hannah locked the door, then pulled the For-When-It's-Hard list from under the register and read it aloud, one line at a time, like directions you can trust in bad weather.
"Walk to the fountain," she said.
"Hold the mug with both hands."
"Read the top letter first."
"Call me, even if you don't know what to say."
"Remember the smell of cinnamon."
Emma tied the blue scarf—Hannah's scarf—loosely around her neck. "Add one?" she asked.
Hannah handed her the pen.
Emma wrote beneath the last line, small and firm: Ring the bell, then go.
They turned off the lamps and stepped outside. Maple Hollow felt close and kind—the kind of night that lets you think you can carry it with you. At the fountain, they didn't throw coins. They leaned on the stone rim and watched the surface settle after a breeze, the ripples returning to glass.
"Wednesday, 7:18," Hannah said, not testing, just aware.
"I'll text you from the platform," Emma said. "Then from the first stop. Then from anywhere the sky looks like home."
Hannah took her hand. "Take a little of our quiet with you," she said. "Leave the rest here. I'll keep it warm."
They walked back the long way, past windows that held their reflections for a second and then let them go. At the apartment, Hannah set the brass bell on the table by the door and touched it with one finger—just enough to wake a whisper of sound.
"Practice," she said.
Emma rang it, soft and certain.
"Perfect," Hannah said.
They stood for a moment with their foreheads touching, neither trying to memorize the other—just letting the gravity of here do what it does. When they pulled apart, the list was in Emma's pocket, the scarf a comfort at her throat, the itinerary bright on the fridge like a small flag.
The crates were at the dock. The words were on their way to labels. The train had a number and a time.
And between all of it, a clear path: bell, door, morning, sky.