From the kitchen, Mae called, "Hope is free. Butter is not. Stop wasting both, and stop telling strangers our business before they've finished their pie."
Claire laughed into her coffee, a startled sound that fogged the mug. Jack's ears went faintly pink, which Claire found unfairly charming for a man who could plate a feast under pressure.
"She's hard of hearing except when she isn't," he murmured.
"I heard that too," Mae said.
Claire ate until the plate showed its white china face again, decorated only with a smear of cranberry like a painter's afterthought. Outside, the wind changed pitch, rising into something that sounded like a freight train assembled entirely from ice and complaint. Jack went to the front windows and peered out, hands in his apron pockets. The parking lot had vanished. The road was a suggestion whispered by buried yellow lines. Claire's Plymouth was a blue hump under white, identifiable only by a corner of bumper that refused, stubbornly, to surrender.