The Disappearance

Fiction Friday — Secret of the Moonmist Brooch

Good morning, and happy Fiction Friday!

Last week, Briar spent her first night alone in Sylvie’s shop — and something old and warm woke up in her palm. This week, she’s seven days into Moonmist and finally lets herself eat at the diner. It should be a quiet Wednesday morning. It isn’t.

Chapter 3: GRANNY ORIN

I’d been in Moonmist for seven days when I finally let myself eat at the diner.

I’d walked past it every morning on my way to the post office — The Tidal Spoon, with its chalkboard sign out front announcing the day’s pie in vibrant pastel handwriting suggesting genuine enthusiasm for the subject. Maple Walnut had given way to Brown Sugar Pear, which had given way to a heavenly-sounding dessert called Harvest Crumble that featured pumpkin, and spice, and toasted pecans. I’d been eating breakfast upstairs, telling myself this was practical. It wasn’t really about practicality. It was more like avoidance dressed as routine, and I’d gotten quite good at avoidance over the past fourteen months.

On day seven, I ran out of eggs.

The diner was warm and low-ceilinged, and smelled of fresh-roasted coffee, smoky bacon, and the kind of rich maple syrup that comes in a jug. There were booths along the far wall upholstered in cracked red vinyl that had probably been replaced at least once since the place was built, and were overdue for a makeover. A dark oak counter (oak seems to be a theme in this town) with chrome swivel stools ran the width of the room. Every stool was occupied. And half the booths were full. For a Wednesday morning in a town of five hundred people, the Tidal Spoon appeared to be doing a hopping business. I stood in the entrance for a long moment, trying to figure out if I’d needed to wait for someone to seat me.

“Sit anywhere,” a woman called from behind the counter, not looking up from the steaming pot of coffee she was pouring. She had a long gray braid draped over one shoulder, and moved like someone who had been doing this job for a very long time and saw no reason to rush.

I took a booth by the window with a clear view of the town green and the large oak at its center. Now late October, the tree was shedding a profusion of crunchy-looking leaves in enchanting shades of gold, burnt orange, chestnut brown, deep crimson, and burgundy.

A laminated menu materialized beside me. I looked at it for all of thirty seconds, then ordered eggs and toast when the woman with the braid appeared, because when I’m somewhere new, I always order the thing I could have made myself. It’s a character flaw I’ve accepted.

“You’re the new gal at Sylvie’s shop,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

“Yes, I am,” I smiled.

“Dottie Farwell.” She tucked her order pad into the front pocket of her apron. “I went to school with your grandmother. She was three years ahead of me, but I always admired her.” She said with warmth, tucking the pencil behind one ear. “It’s good to have a Moonmist descendant in that shop again.”

That was the second time someone had said something like that to me.

The scrambled eggs were creamy, and the toast was made from dense, crusty bread, slathered with real butter, and the coffee was excellent — not Tilda’s level, but Tilda’s level was probably not achievable in a diner setting without violating some law of physics. I ate slowly and observed the other diners. This place was clearly Moonmist’s unofficial nerve center. Two men in canvas work jackets sat at the counter discussing something about a fence line with the intensity of a UN negotiation. A teenage boy in a booth near the back was doing homework with focused misery, making it obvious he’d procrastinated until the absolute last possible minute. The older couple in the booth ahead of mine shared a newspaper without speaking, each reading their half in comfortable silence.

I was halfway through my second cup of coffee, feeling almost alive, when the door creaked open with a jingle, and two women walked in, abruptly altering the temperature of the room.

Not literally. But dining rooms have a kind of frequency — from multiple conversations happening at once — but as soon as those two women walked in, the frequency dropped.

They slid into the booth directly across from me. The younger of the two appeared to be in her early forties and wore red blotches on her face, making it clear she'd been crying. Her companion faced her, holding both her friend's hands on the table top saying nothing, just holding them.

Dottie arrived at their booth in under a minute, and she didn’t carry menus. Instead, she brought a pot of coffee and two mugs, whispering something quiet I couldn’t catch, and the younger woman shook her head.

I looked away, not wanting to listen. But the diner’s noise level had dropped so much that I didn’t even have to try.

“Nobody’s seen her in two days”, the younger woman said. “And her door was standing wide open this morning, Vera. Her house was cold.”

The woman called Vera said something inaudible.

“She wouldn’t just leave,” the younger woman said. “That’s what I’m saying. Granny Orin wouldn’t just take off without telling anyone.”

The name moved through the diner like a current. I watched the news travel from table to table. Heads turned toward the two women. Conversations dipped and realigned. Dottie came back from the kitchen and paused behind the counter with the coffee pot held at her side, listening.

The couple with the newspaper had stopped turning pages. The two men who’d been debating the fence line went silent, staring at one another. The teenage boy had set down his pencil.

The only sound in the Tidal Spoon was the younger woman crying quietly into a paper napkin, and the faint hiss of meat on the griddle in back that nobody was paying attention to anymore.

I’d worked oncology for six years. I knew the uncomfortable silence of a room that has just registered bad news, and didn’t know what to do with it. This was that silence.

I looked out the window at the green.

The name was familiar. I’d heard it mentioned several times since arriving in Moonmist. Granny Orin. People spoke of her the way they spoke of the oak or the lake—as though she’d always been there, a reliable fixture in the town.

I paid for my breakfast and left a larger tip than necessary, because Dottie had clearly just had her morning reorganized around a crisis and still brought the coffee hot, and that deserved acknowledgment.

Outside, the air was cold and clear. I turned toward the shop, pulling my jacket tighter around me, and was halfway across the street when I registered what I was seeing.

At the far edge of the green, where the cobblestone gave way to a flagstone path leading toward the residential streets beyond, stood a low iron gate that I’d walked past every day without really looking at. A cottage garden behind it had gone dormant now, the beds neatly edged even in late fall. A hand-painted sign on the gate read Granny Orin’s in faded script.

And there, on top of the gate post, sat that raven.

He wasn’t doing anything in particular. He was just there — perfectly still, facing the path beyond the gate, as if he’d been there for some time and intended to stay. He didn’t look at me when I stopped. He didn’t even turn. He was intently watching something I couldn’t see, with focused attention.

I stood on the edge of the green and watched him for a long moment.

Then I looked at the cottage. There was no smoke coming from the chimney, and I could see a pair of green garden clogs set neatly beside the front porch, the kind someone would have slipped off before going inside. And there, tipped on its side near the clogs, lay a tin watering can, the painted flowers on it cheerful and oblivious.

That detail felt wrong. Seven days in Moonmist had taught me that the people here cared about their town — their gardens, their storefronts, their window boxes in October. A tipped-over watering can, left where it fell, didn’t fit.

She wouldn’t just leave without telling anyone.

I was a pragmatist. I believed in evidence and reasonable explanations and the kind of problems you could actually solve. An elderly woman was missing, the town was worried, and the appropriate response was to let the people who knew her handle it, because I had been here just seven days and had no standing in this situation.

But the raven still hadn’t moved.

I went to the shop and opened up, turned the sign to Open, and started the kettle. Standing behind the counter while the water came to a boil, I couldn’t stop thinking about the watering can lying on its side, the cold fireplace, and the front door standing wide open in late October. And the garden clogs, neatly placed, waiting for someone to put them on.

It was not my problem.

But I was fairly certain it was about to become my problem.

That’s Chapter Three.

Chapter Four arrives next Friday — and Briar is about to pick up something beautiful in a dead woman’s reading room. She’ll wish she hadn’t. She won’t be able to put it down.

If you’re not subscribed yet, now’s the time. And if the raven is already getting under your skin — good. Drop a comment and let me know.

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

Until next Friday —

— Tracy