Hope

Being married to a police officer wasn't nearly as sexy as Isabella had been led to believe. If the book covers in her mom's Kindle library were any indicator, she would be swept off her feet daily by a six-foot-five bodybuilder who knew his way around a pair of handcuffs.

Instead, she was alone in her queen-size bed, wrists unbound, and dressed in a very modest pair of flannel pajamas.

Her husband, Carver, just started night shift, and it was Isabella's first night alone in their two-bedroom rental cottage in Dogwood Pass, Virginia, a forgotten railroad town that few people knew about and even fewer people visited. But the town had openings at its sheriff's office. Her husband had been dreaming of a career in law enforcement since he was a child. After a few rejected applications from larger agencies, he was finally hired by the Dogwood Pass Sheriff's Office.

There were some things similar to the books. For one, the uniform was pretty great. In addition to dark brown tactical pants that accentuated Carver’s glutes, he was also issued a Stetson hat. Law enforcement and cowboys: two of Isabella’s favorite romance subgenres.

She grabbed the book from her nightstand, a short and sweet Christmas romance, and opened up to her dog-eared page. Like mother, like daughter. Isabella at least had the decency to read books with inconspicuous covers. This one had a cute illustration of a man and a woman embracing inside a snow globe.

Isabella had always been a romantic, and Carver was happy to play Prince Charming. They’d only been married for two years, but he made her feel special every day, and butterflies still flitted in her stomach when he came home from work. But now, lying alone in bed, she was cold and sad, missing his presence and body heat.

He'd be back in the morning. A lot can happen in twelve hours, and she'd already checked in with him a few times. Not much was going on. But with the holidays approaching and the weather getting colder, she knew there would be more and more domestic calls. Turns out, when it's cold outside and disagreeable people are trapped together inside, they fight. Carver had responded to mostly domestic calls while he was in field training, and from the sound of it, tonight would be no different.

Isabella only made it through a few pages of her novel before falling asleep. She woke up the next morning when Carver’s thick-soled boots made their presence known on the creaking hardwood floors.

She blinked her eyes open just as he entered their bedroom. The sun hadn't risen yet, but she could see his silhouette as he pulled off his bulletproof vest and snapped off his belt keepers. She drifted back to sleep. 

She was awake when he finally joined her in bed, warm and damp from a shower.

“Hi,” she said, voice still gravely from sleep. 

He pulled her to his chest and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Hi.” 

The warmth and solidity of his body felt like home, and she took a deep breath of his cedarwood scent. “I missed you last night.” 

“I missed you, too,” he murmured. “What are you going to do today?” 

Isabella didn't know. Since they moved to Dogwood Pass, she hadn't achieved a consistent schedule. They lived in Richmond for the first year and a half of their marriage, and she stayed there while he was in the police academy. There, she worked for their alma mater as an enrollment counselor. However, she had to leave that role when they moved six weeks ago, and she still hadn't found a full-time job.

"I'm not sure," she said. "Maybe I'll go grab a cup of coffee or something from that little cafe down the street just to get out of the house."

"That's a good idea." The words were barely intelligible on his tired lips.

As the sun rose, illuminating their sparsely decorated room, his eyes drifted closed. She traced the lines of his face—his severe eyebrows and thick lashes. Carver had always been so easygoing. What would this job do to him? How would it change him? Change them?

Isabella sighed and climbed out of bed.

---

There was hardly anything in Dogwood Pass. Main Street was about a block long and had a library, a greasy spoon diner, a bookstore and coffee shop, a flower shop, an antique store, a boutique, a bank, and a barbershop. 

It was the Saturday before Thanksgiving, but the Christmas decorations were already going up. Wreaths with fat red bows adorned all the street lamps. A couple of the shops started setting up their holiday window displays. Isabella had heard there was some type of competition among the Main Street businesses, and the community would vote on the best window display at the annual Christmas tree lighting event.

Their rental cottage was just a few blocks off Main Street, so she walked, and by the time she made it to bookstore and coffee shop—The Melting Plot—her fingers and nose were frozen. The front door greeted her with the chime of the bell, and she stepped into the cozy shop.

The front section of the space was filled with overstuffed leather couches and armchairs. A couple of bistro tables sat here and there, but most of the seating was reserved for patrons who wanted to curl up with a book. Dark wood bookcases stuffed with used books crowded the right half of the store. To the left, a coffee counter and bakery case boasted the majority of the shop’s customers. A few people queued at the counter, and a young woman, maybe a few years older than Isabella, bounced between the register and the hissing espresso machine. Long black braids hung down her back, and the top portion was tied up into a tall knot in top of her head.

Isabella ran her fingers over the books on a table at the end of the bookshelves, displaying classic fall titles like Frankenstein, Dracula, and Wuthering Heights. After a quick lap through the shelves, she stepped up to the coffee counter.

“What can I getcha?” The barista smiled, exposing a frenulum piercing that seemed to bejewel her front teeth. Two gold rings adorned her nose, and a variety of studs and rods decorated her left ear. She wore a flannel shirt and black skinny jeans under her floral canvas apron. Isabella liked her immediately.

“White chocolate mocha, please.” Isabella retrieved the leather wallet from her matching crossbody bag and pulled out her debit card. 

“$5.75.” The barista swiveled the register, displaying a tip screen. Dainty tattoos etched her fingers a disappeared beneath her shirt sleeve. “First time in the shop?” 

Isabella selected “No Tip” and then tapped her card on the payment block. “Yeah, I’ve been meaning to stop in since we moved to town.” 

With her back to Isabella, the barista grabbed a paper cup from a towering stack and added a few pumps of flavor. “What brought you to Dogwood Falls?” She grabbed a handle on the espresso machine and gave it a hefty turn. It dropped out of the machine, and she banged it on a box in the counter before shoving it under a coffee grinder. It whined and spit grounds into the little basket attached to the handle. 

Mesmerized by the process, Isabella hesitated. “Um.” The barista compressed the coffee, reassembled the machine, and set two shot glasses below the spout on the bottom of the basket. “My husband’s job.” Isabella left out the fact that Carver works in law enforcement—at least in Richmond, people didn’t take too kindly to cops, especially after the George Floyd protests that erupted around the country in 2020. 

“He the new deputy?” There was no hint of disdain in her voice. 

“Yeah…” Isabella tucked a strand of blonde hair behind her ear and stepped around to the far side of the counter, near the espresso machine. “How did you know?”

The barista grabbed a jug of milk from a fridge below the counter and filled a metal pitcher before steaming it with a wand attached to the machine. “Word travels fast around here.” A smirk played on her full lips. 

The espresso machine’s hiss fizzled out, and the barista added the milk to the paper cup. She slid it across the counter, displaying a heart sketched in white foam. 

“Enjoy,” she said. 

Isabella snapped a lid onto the cup and took a seat on one of the leather couches facing the front windows. Despite being early on a Saturday morning, there were quite a few folks, mostly older, out and about—lots of gray hair, Sketchers, and suspenders. But a few other young people were in the coffee shop. A guy, probably a college student, hunkered over a thick book at one of the tables hidden in the stacks. And of course, there was the barista.

Isabella had always loved people watching, but she especially liked doing it with Carver. They used to sit in the lobby of their college’s library and watch people come and go—a place between places with no real permanence. Just a bridge from point A to point B. They used to make up stories about the people they’d see, creating characters out of strangers who seemed larger than life.

Right now, Carver was probably deep in a sleep cycle, dreaming about nothing and unaware of the fact that Isabella was lonely—sitting in a coffee shop on a Saturday morning in a town where she had no friends, no career, and no purpose.

Carver was her true north. She wanted to do whatever she could to make him happy. To make their marriage a great one. And she'd done a good job. They were happy. Weren’t they?

Isabella wasn't feeling very happy at the moment, and even the delicious white chocolate mocha couldn't boost her spirits. An older man with a wooly white beard wearing a red and green flannel shirt ambled past the front windows, a slight hitch in his step that he corrected with a wooden walking stick. Santa Claus. Carver would be tickled. But Carver wasn’t here. And perhaps she was foolish for hoping for a little Christmas magic.

Before leaving, Isabella took one more walk through the bookshelves, scanning the titles and hoping something would catch her eye. But even books weren't potent enough to rouse her from her bad mood. When she tossed her cup in the trash can near the register, the barista flagged her down.

“Thanks for stopping in.” She wiped down the counter with a rag and gave Isabella another sequined smile. “Make sure you check out our events calendar—we have open mic night every Tuesday, poetry readings, and book clubs. Lots of cool stuff.” With one of those tattooed fingers, she drew a rack card from the counter and extended it toward Isabella. “I’d love to see you there.” 

This girl was overenthusiastic, almost to the point of making Isabella feel smothered. Isabella accepted the rack card and offered a tight smile. “Thanks.”

“I’m Alex, by the way.” Her deep brown eyes sparkled under the track lighting, earnest and open. 

“Isabella.”

“Nice to meet you.” The corners of Alex’s eyes and mouth crinkled when she smiled, like curtains drawn back to let in the sun. 

---

Isabella was not good at being alone. By the time she got home from her trip to town, it was only 9:30 a.m., and Carver still had quite a few hours of sleep ahead of him. She did quiet chores around the house, loading and unloading the dishwasher, dusting the living room, and getting it ready for Christmas decorations that she would be putting up within the next week. Thanksgiving was coming up in a couple of days, and she would be driving back to Richmond by herself to spend the holiday with her parents. Carver would be working.

It's not that she didn't know being married to a law-enforcement officer would be difficult, but it was one of those things that wasn't truly understood until it was experienced. Carver was here in their house, just a few feet away on the other side of the bedroom door, yet he was unavailable. As much as she wanted to sneak into the bedroom and curl up next to him or kiss him until he woke up, she knew he was exhausted and needed to sleep. They would have about two hours together between the time he woke up and when he left for work, so she planned to make the most of it.

Isabella drove out to the grocery store, picked up a few things for dinner, and started preparing a home-cooked meal around 3 o'clock. As onions sautéed on the stove, the bedsprings groaned and the warped wood of the bedroom door squeaked open.

"Good morning, sleepyhead," she said with as much cheer in her voice as she could muster.

Carver stood with a pair of black sweatpants slung low on his hips, bare-chested. His inky black hair was mussed from sleep, and she wanted to run her fingers through it before he had to gel it down for his shift. She missed the old him—the wild version that let his curls run free and had the makings of a Duck-Dynasty beard. But when he went to the police academy, he had to cut his hair and shave his face, and now he was a clean-cut, presentable, professional young man. She was still attracted to him, definitely, but it felt like he had gotten more than a new job. It was almost like she had a new husband.

"Do you wanna eat dinner before you go?" she asked. He yawned and stretched his hands overhead, finger knuckles nearly brushing the ceiling. Their seven-foot pre-lit Christmas tree definitely wouldn't fit in the house.

"Sure," he replied. "I'm going to get cleaned up first, and then I'll eat before I get dressed."

She nodded and turned back to the soup on the stove. She added the rest of the ingredients and placed a lid on the pot for the meal to simmer.

They ate early, around five, so that he could get to work. While the meal was nice, she couldn't help but dread what was coming next—him leaving for work and her being alone. When he finally left for the evening, decked out in his uniform and gear, Isabella retreated into the house, locked the door, sank to her knees, and cried.

---

The next morning, after Carver had gotten home and tucked into bed for the day, Isabella had an entire day ahead of her and nothing to do to fill it. She could only clean the kitchen so many times before there was nothing left to clean. She thought about calling a friend, but with it being Sunday morning, she knew that they would all be in church until at least lunchtime, and then after that, they would probably be spending time with their families, their husbands who were home from work on a weekend because they had normal jobs with normal schedules and lived normal lives like normal people. And even if she did get them on the phone, it wouldn’t compare to being with them in person.

Thinking she would take a walk to clear her head, Isabella grabbed her bag from next to the door and slung it over her shoulder. On her way out, she stuffed her keys into the bag and felt something in the bottom of the leather satchel—the rack card Alex had given her, outlining all of the events at the bookstore. Most of them didn't interest her; Isabella wasn't big into open mic nights or trivia, but she did love books, and it looked like there was a book club coming up this evening.

---

After she got Carver sent off to work, Isabella donned her winter coat and boots and started her walk to the bookstore. It was only a few blocks away, probably about a five-minute walk, but it was a cold night, and without the sun to at least warm her face, she would need her winter gear. When she stepped outside, the frigid air bit at her nose, but she barely noticed it because the street was lit up with the magic of Christmas.

Her rental stood dark, but her neighbors had already set up their decorations—Christmas trees in their front windows, swag lights on their fences, lit garland around the doors, and candles in the windows. And that was just her little side street.

When she made it to the corner with Main Street, the sight nearly took her breath away. In Richmond, people didn't really start to decorate for Christmas until after Thanksgiving. There was usually an outlier or two who put their Christmas tree up on November 1, right after Halloween, but never to this scale.

Every lamp post on Main Street was wrapped in white lights. The old train depot, which now served as the area’s visitor center, was outlined in red and white bulbs. The shop windows were illuminated as well, displaying their holiday decorations. All except one shop—the bookstore.

But where there wasn't a Christmas scene, Isabella spotted a group of women gathered on the mismatched couches near the front window, laughing together. The sight warmed her through more than any Christmas display could.

She approached the door cautiously at first, wondering if she was about to intrude on a gathering of friends—people who knew each other well and would never welcome her. But the ache in her chest to experience that kind of friendship, that kind of connection that she saw through the window, was too strong, and she pushed through the front door.

She saw Alex first—the tall woman popped to her feet, a dazzling smile spread across her freckled face. "Isabella! I'm so glad you could join us!"

Without warning, Alex pulled Isabella into a strong hug, and Isabella felt herself giving in to the woman's embrace. It was nice to be recognized. To be the object of excitement.

"Guys, this is Isabella—she's new to town." Alex introduced her to the small group of women.

Each of the women stood and smiled. Several of them shook Isabella's hand, but one of them—an older woman with fluffy blonde hair streaked with gray—pulled her into a hug that was so soft and so motherly that Isabella about broke down into tears right there.

Within minutes, Alex had a cup of hot cocoa in Isabella's hand, and they made room for her on the couch, right next to the older woman who had introduced herself as “Jennifer—but you can call me Jenny.”

Isabella hadn't read the book, but it didn't matter. Several of the other book club members hadn't read it either. They spent most of the time talking about the ideas and themes anyway, rather than the actual plot points, and Isabella found herself connecting with these women—feeling safe, feeling heard—despite only having met them moments before.

The loneliness, the hopelessness, that had been tightening around her heart since moving to Dogwood Pass, began to ease. By the time they wrapped up for the evening, discarded their empty cups of hot chocolate, and pushed the sofas back into their usual spots, it had slackened to the point where Isabella could feel her heart beating again. She could carry the weight of change and loneliness with the knowledge that she wouldn’t feel this way forever.