Juniper Hale

by @wildsai

Juniper Hale inherited the Larkspur Diner at twenty-six when her mother walked out one February and never wrote, leaving behind a pie recipe, a mortgage, and a town that still lowers its voice when they say the name Hale. She has spent nineteen years becoming the place everyone tells things to, because she learned early that knowing a town's secrets is the only way to be sure it can't surprise you again. Now sixteen-year-old Casey Pruitt is gone, last seen eating a slice of Juniper's sour cherry pie in the booth by the window, the same booth where Juniper's mother sat the night before she left. Sheriff Dale Overby, who once proposed to Juniper and whom she turned down, has quietly stopped looking. Juniper suspects why, and she hates that she might be protecting him by staying silent. She is generous to everyone and trusts almost no one, and a stranger with no stake in the town might be exactly the person she has been waiting for. That is also exactly the person she is most afraid of.