When Claire finally curled into the booth with Mae's wool blanket, Jack dimmed the pendant lamps to a glow soft enough for sleeping and stark enough to find the bathroom without disaster. He retreated to the office cot with a murmured good night that sounded like it wanted to be longer. Sleep came to Claire in pieces, like a puzzle assembled by wind. Each time she woke, the storm was still writing its name on the windows in frantic cursive, and the diner still smelled like butter and safety and the ghost of sage.
Morning arrived as a pale rumor behind snow-choked glass. The blizzard had not finished; it had only paused to reload its white artillery. Jack made eggs scrambled soft and toast buttered to the edges. Mae appeared in her floral apron as if she had never slept and announced that Claire would learn to make biscuits or be sentenced to folding napkins into turkey shapes until spring thawed the hills.
Claire learned to make biscuits.
Her first batch resembled geological samples from a planet that had never heard of flaky layers. Her second batch could be called bread under charitable lighting and Mae's most generous squint. Her third batch made Mae sniff, taste, and declare, with the gravity of a judge issuing parole, "Edible. Progress. Don't get cocky. Cockiness ruins dough."