Secret of the Moonmist Brooch

Fiction Friday — The Box on the Counter

Today, I thought I’d try something a little different.

Over the next several Fridays, I’ll be sharing one chapter at a time from Secret of the Moonmist Brooch - Book One in my upcoming Moonmist Tea & Tarot cozy paranormal series — a cozy mystery filled with strange heirlooms, whispered secrets, tea-shop warmth, and a touch of everyday magic.

This week:

Briar Calloway returns to Moonmist after inheriting her grandmother’s tea shop… but something about the old brooch left waiting for her feels unsettling from the moment she touches it.

PROLOGUE

The box had been sitting on my kitchen counter for three days.

I’d been ignoring it — walking past, making coffee, eating cereal directly in its line of sight. I’m a champion-level avoider when I want to be. It’s a skill, and I’ve had a lot of practice lately.

I was on my second bowl of Lucky Charms at eleven-thirty PM, still in my scrubs after a grueling twelve-hour shift, when I finally pulled it toward me across the counter.

It was small, neatly wrapped in brown paper, the kind of home-wrapped packaging that belongs to another era. It had arrived by courier three days ago with a note from a woman named Tilda Moonmist, whom I’d never heard of, expressing condolences for my mother’s passing and explaining that she was fulfilling Sylvie Moonmist’s dying wish — that this package be delivered to her granddaughter upon Elena’s death.

My grandmother. Whom I had met exactly once, at about age three, and barely remembered.

I’d read the note several times that first day and then put it on the counter next to the box and gone to work, because going to work was the thing I was doing to keep from coming apart at the seams.

Fourteen months since Owen. Three weeks since Mom. The ER doesn’t care about any of that, which is either its greatest flaw or its greatest virtue, depending on the day.

I finished my cereal, rinsed the bowl, and ran out of reasons.

I pulled the scotch tape away from the brown paper folds and sliced open the cardboard box with a scalpel. Inside, nestled among scrunched white tissue paper, was a deep blue velvet jewelry box — old, but cared for, the velvet still holding a subtle sheen. A small card was tucked beside it. One line, written in careful old-fashioned cursive, the kind they stopped teaching before I was born.

Come to Moonmist. — Grandma

I flipped it over. Blank.

The brooch was beautiful. Oval, set in antiqued silver that had been polished and loved. At its center, a large faceted stone shifted from deep blue to something almost emerald green depending on how the kitchen light caught it. The metalwork around the edges was delicate, refined — the kind of heirloom made to last longer than the person who wore it.

I picked it up and turned it in my palm. Heavier than it looked, and not just in the obvious way. This brooch felt like someone had reached for it every morning. Like it had a before.

My grandmother had worn this. And apparently decided it should bypass my mother entirely and find its way to me.

Mom never mentioned the piece. But then again, Mom hadn’t mentioned a lot of things, as it turned out. That thought had been surfacing regularly in the three weeks since her death, and I still hadn’t figured out what to do with it.

I read the note one more time.

Come to Moonmist.

Three words. Zero context. Delivered three weeks after I’d buried my mother, sent by a woman I barely remembered, through a stranger named Tilda who somehow knew exactly where to find me.

I’m a pragmatist. I believe in evidence and triage and the kind of problems you can actually solve during a twelve-hour shift. I do not believe in signs.

But I was sitting in a kitchen that still had Owen’s coffee mug on the counter — washed, of course, because I wasn’t doing that. Present, because I still wasn’t ready to let it go. And somewhere north of Boston, there was a little town that my deceased grandmother thought I should visit.

Eight and a half hours. I’d have to find it first.

I pulled my suitcase from the back of the closet where I’d put it after the last vacation Owen and I had taken together. I didn’t think about that as I sat on the edge of the bed and started packing.

I left on a grey Thursday morning with the velvet box on the passenger seat and a travel mug of coffee already going cold.

—End of Prologue—

So now I have to ask…

Would YOU have opened the box?

And what do you think Briar is about to discover in Moonmist?

I’d genuinely love to know your theories before next Friday’s chapter.

And if you’d like more cozy mysteries, reflective letters, seasonal inspiration, and everyday magic, you can also find me over at Substack.

Until next Friday…

— Tracy