A Grounds for Gossip Cozy Mystery

A Deadly Celebration

By Terence Burgess

At seven on Saturday morning, Millbrook Square smells like wet leaves, split apples, and the smoke from a woodstove someone has lit far too early in the season.

It smells like a beginning.

I park behind the Grounds for Gossip festival tent and sit for three seconds with both hands on the steering wheel, looking out at the half-built Harvest Festival. White tents line the brick paths. Bundles of cornstalks lean against lampposts. Volunteers carry folding tables in every direction while a fiddle player tests the same four notes near the courthouse steps.

Six weeks ago, I arrived in Millbrook with a coffee grinder, a business plan, and no evidence that either one would save me from starting over. Today my café has a tent in the town's biggest annual celebration.

Somerset was supposed to be permanent too.

I spent eight years at The Old Brew learning that coffee is part chemistry, part memory, and part knowing when a customer needs conversation more than caffeine. I learned inventory, payroll, repair calls, and how to smile through a morning rush after crying in the supply closet. I also learned that being indispensable to somebody else's dream does not make the dream yours.