Come to Moonmist

Fiction Friday — Secret of the Moonmist Brooch

Good morning, and happy Friday!

Last week, you met Briar Calloway in a Columbus kitchen at eleven-thirty PM, staring down a velvet box she’d been avoiding for three days. This week, she’s made the drive — and Moonmist is waiting.

Chapter One - COME TO MOONMIST

I found Moonmist the way you find anything you weren’t entirely sure existed — by refusing to turn around.

The GPS had given up on me forty minutes outside of Portsmouth, throwing up its hands somewhere on a two-lane road that wound through birch trees and low stone walls and the occasional farmhouse set so far back from the road it looked like it was trying to hide. I’d taken three turns that felt right and one that definitely wasn’t, doubled back, and eventually followed a hand-lettered sign nailed to a wooden post that said simply Moonmist — 3 mi in letters faded enough to suggest the sign had been there since before anyone currently living had thought to replace it.

The road narrowed. The forest became dense. And then, between one breath and the next, the trees gave way, and the town appeared.

I stopped the car in the middle of the road.

I’m not someone who does that. I’m the person who thoughtfully pulls over and parks in the designated area, checks for traffic, and then proceeds to her destination. But Moonmist opened up in front of me, and my foot slammed on the brake before my brain had time to think about it.

It was early evening in October, that twilight hour when the departing sun turns the sky shades of pink, and gold and purple…making it seem slightly apologetic before giving up entirely. And the town captured that glow beautifully. Up ahead, the blacktop-paved road came to an abrupt end, giving way to cobblestone streets. Rolling forward again, I was delighted to see cozy-looking businesses with window boxes filled with geraniums. Old-world-looking lampposts dotting the street were already lit, casting warm circles on the sidewalks even though it wasn’t quite dark. There was a town green in the center of it all, featuring an enormous oak tree so large and so old that it looked like the town had been built around it.

Which, knowing what I knew about Moonmist — which was exactly nothing — seemed entirely possible.

I pulled into the first available parking space and sat there for a long moment with the engine running. The lake was visible through the trees at the far end of the main street, flat and gray in the fading light, and I could detect a gathering mist already beginning at its edges.

Moonmist, I thought. Oh. That’s literal.

I turned off the engine and opened the door.

The town smelled of woodsmoke and something herbal, and, very faintly, bakery sweets. Locking the car, I strolled to the sidewalk in my good jeans and a favorite tunic — I’d changed at a rest stop outside of Manchester because eight hours of driving in scrubs felt like a personal failure. I stood there, glancing around at a town that didn’t appear on any map I’d been able to find, and was trying to determine a single reasonable explanation for why I was here.

Three words and a brooch. That was the full extent of my reasoning.

A woman walking past with a canvas bag full of groceries nodded at me with a smile, and I nodded back as she kept walking. I filed that under things I already liked about the town.

I needed to find Tilda Moonmist.

Her note had included a return address — a café on the main street, which I seemed to be standing on. I looked up and down the block. There was a diner with a chalkboard sign out front — The Tidal Spoon, Today’s Pie: Maple Walnut — which sounded extraordinary and made my stomach growl, reminding me I’d only eaten a granola bar since somewhere around Concord. There was a small library with a light on inside. And a shop with climbing plants growing up its front and a sign I couldn’t quite read from here.

And there, two doors down, was a café with a bookshelf visible through the front window and a small hand-lettered sign above the door that read simply: Tilda’s.

A bell above the door announced me when I pushed it open.

The smell hit me first — coffee, deep and serious, and something baked with cardamom; this must be where that fragrance outside was coming from. And underneath both of those scents was something older and more complicated that I associated immediately, without knowing why, with the general impression I retained from my one visit to my grandmother at age three. I stopped inside the doorway for half a second before my brain caught up and told me to keep moving.

The café was small and impeccably kept. Bookshelves lined every wall, arranged with precision. Small tables with comfortable-looking chairs — not the flimsy sort that made you want to leave after twenty minutes. And a counter with a gigantic, shiny chrome espresso machine that looked like it could have its own zip code. The day’s pastry selection was displayed under a glass dome, and whatever was in there with the cardamom was doing things to the air that should probably require a permit.

Behind the counter, a woman looked up from whatever she was doing.

I revised every assumption I’d made about what a woman named Tilda Moonmist would look like. I’d been picturing a plump, Bohemian-looking lady wearing layered skirts and interesting jewelry. Maybe she conveyed a general air of comfortable mysticism.

But this woman? She was definitely not what I’d pictured. Tilda was elegant, wearing a discreet strand of good pearls that just grazed her collarbone, and a cashmere sweater in a shade of grey that perfectly matched her well-styled silver hair. Her posture proudly declared that she’d decided decades ago exactly who she was and hadn’t revisited the question.

She looked like she should chair the city council, and had never owned a shawl in her life.

Tilda glanced up at me across the café with an expression of such careful, composed warmth that I almost missed the other thing underneath it — the thing that looked, for just a fraction of a second, like relief.

“You must be Briar,” she said.

“I must be,” I agreed.

She came around the counter — unhurried — and extended her hand. Her grip was firm and brief and revealed nothing.

“Tilda Moonmist,” she said. “Your grandmother’s family. I’m very glad you’ve come.” She paused. “I’m also very sorry about your mother. Elena was — “ Something moved across her face, there and gone. “She was loved.”

I nodded. I had a collection of responses to condolences in rotation I’d normally sort through at this point, but something about the way Tilda said — she was loved, plainly, like it was a fact — caught in my chest, so the usual offerings didn’t work.

“Thank you for the note,” I said instead. “And for — “ I gestured vaguely, which covered the brooch and the package and the general orchestration of a dead woman’s dying wishes across several decades. “All of it.”

“Of course.” She moved back behind the counter with the same unhurried gait. “Have a seat. I’ll get you something. You’ve had a long drive.”

It wasn’t a question, so I sat.

She put a coffee in front of me that smelled like an entirely different category of beverage than those I’d been drinking out of paper cups all day, and one of those enormous cardamom sweet rolls that turned out to be filled with a decadent almond paste, and I thought it was possibly the best thing I’d ever eaten.

“The shop is yours,” Tilda said, settling across from me with her own cup. “Your grandmother’s shop, that is. She left clear instructions on that point. It’s just down the block and across the street.” She waved a hand toward the front window. “I have the key.” She produced it from a pocket. It was a proper old key, the kind with actual teeth — and she placed it on the table between us.

I looked at it. Then at her.

“She left her shop to me?” I said. “A granddaughter she hadn’t seen since I was three?”

“Yes.”

“Without explanation?”

“There is an explanation,” Tilda said. “Several, actually. But they’ll keep until you’ve settled in.” She said this with finality. “The shop has been maintained. The water and electricity are on. And there’s a small apartment above it. The inventory hasn’t been touched since Sylvie — “ A pause so brief I almost missed it. “Since she passed.”

She slid the key toward me.

I picked it up. It was heavier than it looked, which was becoming a theme in my life.

“Is there anything I should know?” I asked. “Before I go over there.”

Tilda considered this with what appeared to be genuine care. “The third stair creaks,” she said. “And Briar — “ She waited until I looked up. “Welcome home.”

She said it the same way she’d said she was loved. Like it was a fact. Something she’d been holding inside for a long time and was only now delivering to its intended recipient.

I finished my coffee, picked up the key, and had absolutely no idea what to do with either statement.

Outside, the lamplight had shifted from gold to something cooler, and the mist off the lake had crept halfway up the main street. I stood on the sidewalk with a key in my hand and looked toward the shop with the climbing plants — I could read the sign now: Moonmist Tea & Apothecary — and something emotional settled over me.

I was probably just tired.

I was definitely tired. Overtired.

Then, from somewhere above me — from the big, old oak on the green, I realized, looking up, a large black bird was staring at me with one bright, unblinking eye.

I held its gaze for a long moment. But the raven didn’t look away. Finally, I turned and walked toward the shop, inserting the key into the door handle.

The key fit the lock on the first try.

Of course it did.

Twisting the knob, I pushed the door open and felt for a switch on the wall, flooding the space with a warm glow.

The shop smelled like a memory — lavender and old wood and herbs. I stood there for a long moment and didn’t examine why my eyes were watering.

Stepping inside, I closed the door behind me.

I hadn’t noticed that the moon was just now coming up over the lake.

That’s Chapter One.

If you’d like to follow along each week, make sure you’re subscribed so Chapter Two lands right in your inbox. And if you have a theory about the role that raven is going to play, I’d genuinely love to hear it. (Can you guess its name?)

Secret of the Moonmist Brooch is available now for pre-order on Amazon

Until next Friday —

— Tracy