Juniper & Third

The train let her off at a station that knew all the small names of the city. Mara walked with a suitcase that had seen more airports than she liked to admit, and with hands that still smelled faintly of her aunt's lemon cleaner. The neighborhood around Juniper and Third had kept its corners and its patience: a grocer with a bell over the door, a nail salon that never closed on Friday, a row of maple trees that leaned like old listeners. It was the kind of slow geography that had shaped her childhood; small enough to leave footprints that lingered, wide enough to forgive mistakes. People came and went like pages, but the café at the corner seemed to prefer a steady paragraph. Rosa's sign, painted in handworn letters, read Juniper & Third and had a tiny cup drawn beside the name as if someone had doodled warmth on the hard city. She paused there, suitcase between her knees and the afternoon pressing its long hand on the pavement, and found herself listening for a bell that didn't ring anymore. Funerals had a way of resetting the grid: people returned to where they had been anchored, and everyone who had mattered to Rosa came forward with small stories and awkward hands. Her aunt had been larger in the memory than in the coffin; the crowd at the little chapel laughed like they were making room, sharing the space she had once filled alone. After, people drifted back into their routines like birds returning to a familiar wire, and Mara walked the few blocks that used to be a short run between home and school. There were remnants of the wake in the alley — a paper cup, a folded program, wrapping that had once held pastries — and when she pushed the café door she felt the world tilt like something had been moved on a shelf. Dust rose in the shape of memories and landed on the counter where a row of mismatched mugs waited like old friends who had been keeping watch.