Chapter One: No Coffee, No Power, Just Peace
Kit Carlyle stood barefoot in her kitchen, staring at the lifeless coffee pot like it had betrayed her. The storm had knocked the power out sometime before dawn, and the hum of her old fridge had fallen quiet. No coffee. No music. No warm muffin test batch for the morning crowd at Honey Bee’s.
She cracked open the window above the sink. Rain misted in sideways, cool and gentle. The only sounds were the tapping of droplets and the morning chatter of birds from the trees behind her tiny rented house. Kit wrapped her cardigan tighter around herself and smiled. “Well,” she muttered, “I guess that’s the Lord’s way of saying, ‘Be still.’”
With nothing to bake, no alarms to reset, and no caffeine to coax her into motion, she reached for her Bible instead. The bookmark, a faded photograph of her and her mom at the Maplewood Fall Fest, opened to Matthew 14. She’d been reading about storms all week — not on purpose, but as if the pages knew her mood before she did.
Her eyes landed on verse 23:
“After he had dismissed them, he went up on a mountainside by himself to pray. Later that night, he was there alone...”
Kit whispered the words aloud. They felt good in her mouth, like a prayer soaked in rain.
She didn’t need a mountain — just a neighborhood sidewalk and a little faith.
Pulling on her boots and sliding her hood over still-damp curls, she stepped into the storm’s quiet aftermath. Puddles mirrored grey skies and swaying trees, but the worst of it had passed. There was that peculiar brightness that came after a storm — not sunlight, not exactly, but the promise of it.
As she passed the little blue food pantry near the library, she paused. Its door hung crooked again. Probably the third time this month. She made a mental note to ask Tori Rae if the Rec Center could spare a sturdier hinge. Maybe Huck had tools. Maybe Honey had a quote about repairs scribbled in one of her herbal journals.
Then she spotted two men pacing the church steps. One of them glanced up and smiled when he saw her.
“Kit? We thought you were here to let us in.”
“Oh! Nope — just taking a walk. The power’s out.”
She guided them to the hidden doorbell buzzer by the church office window, then waved toward the side entrance. “Buzz the secretary. Miss Claire’s usually in by now.”
One of them chuckled. “You’re like a little welcome committee.”
Kit grinned, but her mind wandered. Maybe that’s what she was — not a hero, not a preacher, not even a full-time anything. But a quiet presence in the right place at the right time. A muffin-baking, bird-listening, Bible-reading welcome sign with muddy boots.
And maybe that was enough.
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