Bethany Jo stood in the doorway of the small-town bakery where she’d grown up, sunlight slanting across flour-dusted countertops and the quiet hum of early-morning life. She smelled of coffee and citrus; the railway tracks behind Main Street still sang faintly with freight, a steady rhythm that matched her pulse. Everyone in town seemed to carry a story in the slit of their smile, and Bethany carried hers like a locket — familiar, a little heavy, and warm when opened.