Alder Harbor Seasons

Hana wakes to the soft scrape of gulls and the low hum of the harbor dieselboats. Light bleeds through the blinds in thin lines across her kitchen table; a glass jar of baking twine sits where she left it the night before, a small, stubborn island of purpose. She pads to the window in socks that know every squeak of the floor, and the street below is still a watercolor: streetlights pooling on wet paving, the café sign—Low Tide—glowing like a dull coin.

Steam answers when she flips the kettle. The apartment smells of yeast and salt; there is, for Hana, a sweetness in that combination. She ties her hair into a braid and lets the braid thrum against her neck like a metronome. By the time she unlocks the café door, the dawn is pulling the town into shape. The first light finds the bakery’s rows of dough, waiting like patient thoughts. Etta, who runs the front, hums while she arranges blue-and-white cups. "You’re early," she says without looking up.

Hana shrugs, rolling her shoulders. “The oven’s stubborn in the morning,” she answers and slides her hand into dough with practiced ease. The cafe warms around them. Coffee breath and toast, a little radio playing somewhere between songs.

Across the street, the garden—Alder Patch—breathes under a glassy sheen. Raised beds, mismatched signs, a trellis someone fixed last summer with salvaged chair legs; the whole square looks like a quilt made by uncertain hands that nevertheless match colors somehow. Marta is there, a figure like a steady post, watering with a tin can that’s dented and splendid. Ilya, whose knees creak like old floorboards, sits on the bench, sanding the armrest with slow, responsible strokes. Tomas, nine and forever sticky with jam, is chasing a green scarf like it owes him something.

The garden is not dramatic. It does not declare itself heroic. People come with jars, with scissors, with a handful of seeds and leave with basil and conversation. In summer the tomatoes blush in such bright concord they look like small, stubborn promises; in winter the beds are wrapped in straw like sleeping animals. When Hana needs thyme for a tart or mint for iced tea, she crosses the street and asks. When someone loses a job or a mother grows ill, baskets of bread appear on the bench like weathered witnesses.

A regular—Mr. Leung, who reads the Times sideways—leans on the gate and calls over to Hana. "Careful with the lemon tarts today," he says, peering as if the pastries might break, "they always go quick."

Hana grins, sliding a tray in front of him. "They have a vote," she says. "They vote with crumbs."

The day moves in small fidelities: the bell over the café door, the clink of spoons, a child's laugh from the patch. If you timed the town by these things, you would not miss an hour. Hana likes that steady rhythm. She likes, too, how the garden looks from the café window, as if it were a breathing thing separate from the architecture of commerce, a private margin where public life softens.