Dear Mom, I found your house.

Post No.3. First trip into town.

June oak crest. Friday afternoon— back before dark I promised.

Dear Mom,

I went to town. I found people. Human ones, which—after two days of squirrels with opinions and forests with door policies- felt genuinely novel.

The town is small but not sad about it. One main street, a hardware store, a bookshop that looked like it hadn’t reorganized since 1980 and was fine with that, a little market with vegetables outside on wooden stands. And a café. I headed straight for the café because I needed coffee and also because I needed to sit somewhere with other humans and remember what that was like.  Only two days here, I may have underestimated how deep the city runs in me. 

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The café is called, straightforwardly, Matteo’s—which I only understood when the owner came out from behind the counter to wipe down the table next to mine and introduced himself. Mat. Short for Matteo, he said, with the faint trace of an accent that explained his name, and honestly, also quite a lot else. Tall, dark hair, the kind of hands that have done actual work—broad and sun-warmed, flour still in the creases when he set the cup down. He has the particular ease of someone very comfortable in the space he has made for himself. And green eyes. Which I noticed, and then immediately decided I hadn’t.

He is the owner, the barista, apparently also the one who bakes the things in the glass case. He caught sight of your journal on the table at once and asked about it with genuine curiosity, not as small talk but as actual interest, leaning against the chair across from me  like he had a moment and was choosing to spend it here. I told him it belonged to someone who lived up on the hill. He smiled— a warm smile, a real one—  and then something shifted just slightly behind his eyes. Quick, like a cloud crossing. He said he knew the hill. He said it pleasantly. And then he said he’d bring me something to try, a new thing he was testing, and disappeared back behind the counter before I could tell him I hadn’t asked for anything yet.

He brought a small cup of something with cardamom in it, and stood there while I tasted it and watched my face with completely unself-conscious attention, like my opinion genuinely mattered, and when I said it was very good he smiled again— differently this time, more to himself— and said good, good, and went back to work. 

He refilled my water without being asked. Twice.

There was a man at the table near the door— I barely noticed him, the way you don’t notice furniture. But at some point while Mat and I were talking about the journal he glanced over. Just once, the kind of look that takes in more than it should in less than it should take. And then he folded his newspaper, left his coffee half-finished, and walked out. Completely normal. I watched the door close behind him and thought: that was nothing. 

Then I kept thinking about it anyway while admiring the charming café and its very nice barista. I found it very charming. I was not expecting this town to contain a Matteo. He has a small flower tattooed on his wrist, Mom, a flower! I was not prepared for all of that at all.

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The tea and plant shop is on the small street just off the main one, I almost missed it, which I suspect is deliberate. The sign is handwritten, Apothecary, and the window is so full of hanging dried herbs and bottled things and small hand labeled jars that you can barely see inside. I pushed the door open and the smell reached me before my eyes had adjusted— cedar and pine, deep and woody, and underneath it something sweeter, a honey candle burning somewhere I couldn’t see, and just at the edge of everything, barely there, jasmine. Like a forest that I had decided to come indoors and make itself comfortable. I stood in the doorway for a moment just breathing it. 

The person who runs it is Miss Dahlia. She is your age, with very curly wild silver hair, pinned up with what appeared to be an actual twig, and she was in the middle of an intense conversation with a plant when I walked in. She did not stop the conversation to greet me.  She finished it first. 

I showed her your journal. Mom— she went very still when she saw it. Her hands stopped moving completely, just for a moment, like something in her head paused to listen. Not alarmed. More like someone hearing a piece of music they hadn’t thought about it in months and finding they still knew every word. She turned the pages carefully, paused at the three unidentified dried plants, and said– And I’m quoting directly :  she always found the ones that didn’t want to be found.

I said: you know her?

She smiled…

And then she sold me four tins of tea and a small jar of something she said was for sleeping and changed the subject so smoothly I didn’t realize it happened until I was back on the street with a paper bag in my hands and more questions than I’d arrived with. 

I’m going back tomorrow. She knows more. I’m certain of it.

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On the way back to the car a little woman appeared at my elbow — I genuinely don’t know where she came from, she was simply suddenly there — and introduced herself as Dot. She is somewhere between fifty and a hundred and twenty, approximately four foot nine, has an impressive white bun, and the air of someone who has decided to find everything delightful and is completely committed to that decision. 

She asked if I was new. I said I was visiting. She asked where. I said the house on the hill—and she patted my arm and said there was a market on Saturday, very good vegetables, a man who makes preserves that are apparently life—changing, and that I absolutely must come. She said this like it had already been decided, which I suppose it  had. 

She did not ask whose house. She didn't ask my name. She just patted my arm again and walked off toward the bookshop at a speed that was frankly impressive.

I liked her immediately. 

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Mom— everyone here is so warm. And everyone here is so careful. It’s the specific warmth of people who know something and have decided, quietly to let you find it yourself. I can feel it. The way the sentence stops just before it gets to the part I need. The way eyes go quiet for just a second when I mention the hill. The way a man leaves his coffee half-finished and walks out a little too smoothly, and nobody in the café looks up — because they already know not to.

This town has eyes and ears. Nobody is speaking. I don’t know what they know. But I’m going to the market on Saturday and I’m taking your plant journal and I'm going to find out. 

Home before dark, both locks, kettle on. 

June

P. S. I bought groceries. Also three tins of tea, a jar of mysterious sleep remedy, and a paperback about local birds from the bookshop that appears to be permanently stuck in 1980. It was a full afternoon.

P.P.S. Mat said "see you soon" when I left. Not goodbye. Not have a good evening. See you soon. As if that had already been decided too.