Page 2 of Protector of Talon Mountain

By the time a year passes, I’ve learned how to stock a pantry for winter, how to read a snowstorm in the shape of the clouds, and how to hold my own when a drunken logger gets mouthy. I’m not the same woman who stumbled through the café doors with one boot and shaking hands.

But I still wake up sometimes expecting the floor to crack beneath me.

Maggie never says it, but she knows. She always knows.

When she gets sick, she tells no one until she has no choice. It starts with fatigue. Then the coughing. Then the ER visit that turns into an overnight that turns into something terminal.

Lung cancer. Fast. Mean. The kind that doesn’t care if you’re a fighter.

Maggie never smoked a day in her life.

The town rallies, but Maggie waves off the casseroles and the pity. “I’ve had a good run,” she tells me, sitting in her recliner like it’s a throne. “But you—you’ve got decades left. You gonna spend them hiding or making something that matters?”

I cry then. For the first time in front of her.

She doesn’t hug me. She just puts her hand over mine and squeezes. “I’m leaving the café to you.”

I shake my head. “No, Maggie. I can’t…”

“You already are.” She fixes me with that stare again. The one that sees too much. “You think this place runs without you? You think I gave you a home for nothing? Nah, girl. I picked you.”

I sit beside her until her breathing slows. Until the only sound in the room is the steady tick of the clock.

* * *

The funeral is small. Snow falls lightly as we lower her into the ground beside her husband. Locals huddle in coats, hats in hands, faces drawn. There’s no pastor. Just me, reading the words she left behind on a scrap of paper folded in a flour tin.

“Don’t mourn me. Mourn the ones who waste their lives being scared. I wasn’t one of them.”

When it’s over, I don’t talk to anyone. I don’t go to the potluck in the church basement or the bar down the road where her favorite whiskey sits untouched. I go back to the café… my café.

The door creaks the same way it always has. The lights hum softly overhead. It smells like coffee and cinnamon and ghosts. I lock the door behind me and walk to the kitchen. The apron she always wore is still hanging on the hook by the pantry. I take it down, tie it around my waist. My hands don’t shake this time.

I roll out dough. Measure sugar. Start a new batch from scratch.

I think about the girl I used to be. And the woman I’ve become here. Not because someone saved me—although Maggie certainly did that—but because someone believed I could do more than survive.

I press my palms into the counter and whisper, “I’ll make it count, Maggie. I promise.”

The oven clicks as it heats. Outside, the wind howls, and I no longer flinch.

* * *

ZEKE

The op went smooth. Quick in, quick out—one shot fired, none returned. That’s rare. Rarer still? My gut staying quiet. No alarms blaring beneath my ribs, no static buzzing behind my eyes. Just the steady crunch of boots on gravel, the low murmur of comms in my ear, and the solid weight of my Glock pressed to my thigh.

We exfil at 0200, load into the bird by 0215, and I’m back on American soil before sunrise. Not bad for a Tuesday.

I should feel satisfied. We did good work. Saved a life. Neutralized threats. No civilian casualties. That’s the kind of win commanders jerk off to in their sleep.

But me? I don’t celebrate wins. Not anymore. Not when it all feels the same.

I land early, grab my go-bag, and skip the debrief. I’m not on rotation for another three days and nobody argues when I walk off base. They know me. I’m the guy who doesn’t screw up. The one who always comes back. The one who doesn't talk.

Isla’s probably still asleep. She likes her silk sheets and blackout curtains. Keeps lavender oil on her nightstand, calls it ‘soothing.’ Says I don’t understand how to relax. Says a lot of things when she thinks I’m not listening.

The apartment smells like her perfume when I step inside—floral, heavy, cloying. The kind that sticks to your skin whether or not you want it to.

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