Chapter 212: She Came, She Saw, She Wanted Everything

DOVE’S POV

The campground store smelled of cedar shelves, dust, and the coffee its keeper had just spilled across his own paperwork. Dove trusted him more for the coffee than she did the hand-painted EVERYTHING MUST GO sign.

"Everything?" she asked, looking past him.

"Everything I can sell before my nephew gets here. I’m moving in with his family."

She liked a man with a deadline that was not secretly hers.

The store opened straight into a long room with groceries on the left and camping equipment on the right. Rolled blankets filled cubbies behind the register. Through the back doorway she could see a broom, a laundry basket, and the rear of a machine covered with a tarp.

Outside, the cabins stood beyond the gravel lot. A wooden fence kept people off the wet ground near the lake path. Dove would look at the view later. Right now, a whole shelf of sealed coffee was looking at her.

"Please tell me we’re allowed to be irresponsible," she murmured to Thorne.

He took a jar down and checked the lid. "With the coffee?"

"I was going to start there and see how I felt."

Edrik stood behind her, close enough that she felt his chest when she stepped back. "You look like you’re about to marry the shelf."

"It has excellent qualities."

"Can it carry you upstairs?"

She turned to find him watching her mouth. "I haven’t asked. Stop being threatened by furniture."

Before they went outside, Thorne touched her hand and quietly pointed through the store window. "Ash followed us. We saw him above the road, and now he’s by the gate."

Dove found the horns beyond the fence. "Of course he did. Does he expect me to applaud the wings?"

"Do you want to change anything?"

"Yes. His personality. I’m still buying coffee. If he comes closer, tell me."

The loud supplier offered a wrapped gift before she reached the porch.

"Little something for a pretty woman," he said, holding it where she would have to take it or walk around him.

Dove walked around him. "No, thank you."

"Have a look first."

Edrik caught the man’s elbow and guided him out of her path with a smile that made Dove want to know what he had whispered. The supplier stopped arguing.

The keeper allowed her to set up beneath the porch, beside the store entrance rather than across it. Dove checked the space, moved a loose chair, and called the storefront out where nobody stood. The cream awning shaded the wooden counter. At its right end, protected glass enclosed the shelves, with the payment tray beside the product buttons and the collection hatch underneath.

From the path, people could see what was for sale without stepping behind her counter. That was what she wanted: a shop she could leave working while she looked at something other than customers.

"Food and drinks," she told Sprout privately. "Something breakfast-sized. For people with actual stomachs."

Eight clear family packs filled the middle shelf. Each contained six thick burritos wrapped in foil, with red labels naming eggs, potatoes, and sausage.

Dove stared at them happily. "That’s more like it. Are they going to stay hot?"

"They are ready to eat now. Once issued, normal food storage applies."

"So I can’t leave one in a sunny truck and blame you when it tries to kill me."

"Correct."

"You agreed with that much too quickly."

The morning mission offered eighty-four normal coins for six pack sales. Dove could keep a pack for four Favor, as usual. She checked the terms before approving a short list of sealed goods she would accept in barter. The keeper inspected one pack’s label, agreed to the exchange, and used the public buttons.

His payment settled into the tray. The hatch opened with his breakfast inside.

"Does it do the dishes?" he asked.

"If it did, I’d be sitting down while you admired my clean plates."

Thorne laughed. Dove paid the retention fee for their own pack and carried it to the picnic table beside the porch. Six burritos, three mugs, and the apples they already owned made a proper meal. Edrik unwrapped one and pushed another toward her before she could start talking about the coffee again.

"Eat first. You negotiate better when you aren’t considering biting people."

"That sounds like an assumption."

"A hopeful one."

She took a bite. Warm potato, salty sausage, and a soft tortilla made her close her eyes for a moment. She missed drive-through breakfasts. She missed buying one because she was late, not because she had survived another collection of terrible decisions.

When she opened her eyes, Thorne was watching her.

"Good?"

"Annoyingly good. I was prepared to complain."

He brushed his thumb over her wrist and went back to eating. He did not turn her quiet moment into a question she had to answer in public.

While the cabinet handled approved trades, Dove searched the keeper’s shelves. She rejected swollen cans, checked package seams, and opened a rolled blanket with permission to inspect the center. Mice had chewed one corner. She put it back.

"That one is free," the keeper said.

"So are the mice. I don’t want them either."

She chose sound coffee jars, sealed rice, dish soap, two clean blankets, and a box of sturdy lidded food containers. She pressed each lid down and tipped an empty box sideways. No loose corners, no cracks. These could keep their coffee dry instead of spreading it through the bottom of a bag.

The goods customers brought to her cabinet helped pay for the purchase. She kept their personal food separate and checked the heavy items with Cal before promising anything. He looked at the bags, then at the store.

"How much more?"

"That depends how emotionally prepared you are for my answer."

"Try a weight."

She touch-stored the coffee, rice, soap, and folded blankets later in private. Lunch and barter goods stayed outside for her husbands to use. Cal only needed to allow for that physical cargo, not everything she bought. Dove liked the suddenly lighter bags almost as much as she liked the coffee.

By afternoon, seven breakfast packs had sold. The sixth had completed the mission, and the last sale left no system stock to return. She had paid for their retained pack already. Sprout recorded the reward, then let her close the empty cabinet without announcing every cheerful customer twice.

"Look at us getting along," she told it.

"Would you like a relationship task?"

"I meant professionally. Don’t ruin it."

The keeper showed her the back room before his nephew arrived. Sunlight came through a high window onto a portable generator with a scratched red frame. It sat on the concrete beside two empty fuel cans.

Dove stopped in the doorway.

At home, a fan and cold drinks depended on whatever power they could arrange. Out on the road, she wanted more choices than sweating and complaining about it.

"Does that work?"

The keeper pulled the starter. The engine caught, rattled into a promising steady hum, and died before Dove finished smiling.

She looked from the machine to him.

"All right," she said. "Tell me the expensive part."