The Great Lake Haven Turkey Shootout

I caught my reflection in the frost-edged window of Henderson’s Diner—hair escaping from under my knit hat, cheeks pink from the November cold, eyes betraying the nervousness I was trying so hard to hide. Behind my ghosted image, warm golden light spilled across worn wooden tables and mismatched chairs, creating a honey-colored world that looked like a snow globe someone had forgotten to shake.

“Second thoughts?” Jake’s voice was soft beside my ear, his breath visible in the cold air between us.

I turned to find him watching me with that particular combination of concern and understanding that still made my chest tight. Even after everything—Sutton, Connor, the video that had turned my life inside out—Jake still looked at me like I might bolt. Like I was something precious that might slip away if he held on too tight.

“About meeting the infamous Lake Haven gossip mill?” I forced lightness into my voice. “What’s the worst that could happen? They feed me to the locals? Use me as a cautionary tale for future girlfriends?”

“Em—”

“‘Here lies Emma Dubois,’” I continued, warming to my theme, “‘She dated up and got eaten up.’”

Jake’s laugh was half-exasperation, half-fondness. His hand found the small of my back, gentle pressure through my coat, grounding me the way he always did. “They’re going to love you.”

“They’re going to judge me.”

“That too,” he admitted, and I appreciated the honesty. “But mostly love.”

Before I could lose my nerve entirely, Jake pulled open the door. The bell above it chimed like an announcement—here she is, the girl from the video, the one who brought down Connor McLaughlin—and I stepped through.

The warmth hit me first, a wall of it that made my glasses fog instantly. I pulled them off, blinking as the world went soft-focus, and was immediately overwhelmed by the rest of it: coffee strong enough to wake the dead, cinnamon and nutmeg dancing with butter-rich pie crust, the underlying note of decades of bacon grease that had seeped into the very bones of the building. Someone in the corner was playing an acoustic guitar, picking out something that might have been Johnny Cash or might have been nothing at all, just the comfortable noodling of someone who played because their fingers needed something to do.

As my vision cleared, I catalogued the space with the same attention to detail that had helped me survive Sutton’s social geography. The chairs didn’t match—not a single one—but somehow they created a harmony that designer furniture never could. The walls were a museum of Lake Haven history: photos yellowing at the edges showed a young Wyatt in hockey gear, all cockiness and jaw; Sally with bigger hair and a smaller waist; town celebrations that looked like Norman Rockwell had been given a budget and told to go wild.

The conversations that had been humming along stopped. Not completely—that would have been too obvious—but enough that I felt the shift like a change in atmospheric pressure.

Sally Donovan looked up from the register, and I watched her face transform from professional welcome to something far more personal and infinitely more terrifying: genuine delight.

“Jake Brooks-Reynolds, as I live and breathe.” Sally’s voice carried across the diner with the authority of someone who’d been calling orders over chaos for thirty years. “And this must be...”

She came around the counter with surprising grace for someone in orthopedic shoes, and I found myself being studied by eyes that were sharp as winter ice but somehow not unkind. Sally was examining me like she was reading tea leaves, looking for signs and portents in the way I stood, the way I held Jake’s hand, the way I met that penetrating gaze without flinching.

“Emma Dubois,” Sally announced to the diner at large, as if she’d discovered something wonderful. “The skater who took down that little boy and stole our Jake’s heart, in that order.”

I felt heat rise to my cheeks. “I didn’t exactly—”

“Honey,” Sally interrupted, her wink taking any sting out of it, “in Lake Haven, we consider good gossip a public service. And that video of you telling that over-gelled trust fund baby exactly what he could do with his assumptions?” She chef-kissed the air. “That was art.”

They’ve all seen it. The realization shouldn’t have surprised me—the video had gone viral enough that people I’d never met had approached me to talk about that moment—but somehow I’d thought maybe here, in Jake’s small Vermont town, I could just be Jake’s girlfriend. Not the girl who’d stood in Sutton Academy and systematically destroyed Connor McLaughlin’s reputation with nothing but truth and a camera.

“More specifically,” came a new voice, gravelly with decades of cigarettes supposedly quit, “you’re the girl who told that boy exactly where he could shove his—”

“Dolores.” Sally’s warning was fond but firm.

A woman materialized at our table as if summoned by the promise of scandal. She was somewhere between fifty and seventy—the kind of ageless that came from sheer force of personality—with burgundy hair that defied nature and physics equally. She carried a coffee pot like a weapon and was already pouring before I could say whether I wanted any.

“What?” Dolores continued, fixing me with eyes that were evaluating me like she was checking for soft spots on a piece of fruit. “I’m complimenting her. Takes spine to do what she did. Real spine, not that manufactured prep school confidence that melts the second someone raises their voice.”

I felt Jake shift beside me, his protective instincts stirring, but I found my voice before he could speak. “Among other places, yes. I did suggest a few alternative locations for his opinions.”

Dolores barked a laugh that could have stripped paint. “I like her,” she announced to Sally, to Jake, to the diner at large. “She’s got teeth.”

“The highest compliment Dolores gives,” Jake murmured in my ear as we were led to what was apparently his booth—third from the back, with a perfect view of both the door and the kitchen. Strategic positioning, I noted. You could see trouble coming from either direction.

The booth told stories in its scars and stains. There was a worn spot on the table where someone—Jake, I’d bet anything—drummed their fingers. Initials had been carved into the wood and painted over so many times they’d become topography. WR + CB was scratched into the corner, it looked like this was a booth that had seen many “ever afters”.

I slid in across from Jake, hyperaware of the way conversations had resumed around us but with a different quality now. I was being folded into the narrative of the place, becoming part of the story they’d tell tomorrow. Fragments drifted over:

“Prettier than she looked in the video—”

“Think she’ll stay?”

“Jake looks happy. When’s the last time you saw him look that happy?”

“They mean well,” Jake said quietly, his fingers finding mine across the table. “Mostly.”

I turned my hand palm-up, interlacing our fingers in a way that still felt like a small miracle—that I could just reach for him and he’d be there, solid and real and mine.

“They love you,” I said simply. “That’s what this is. They’re trying to figure out if I’m good enough for you.”

“Em—”

“And honestly?” I squeezed his hand, finding steadiness in the contact. “I’m trying to figure out the same thing.”

The look Jake gave me then—soft and fierce and entirely too much for a public diner—made me understand why the whole town was protective of him. He was the kind of good that made you want to build walls around it, keep it safe from anything that might dim it.

“You’re too good for me,” he said, low enough that only I could hear. “But I’m keeping you anyway.”

Before I could respond, Dolores reappeared with menus we probably didn’t need and the smile of someone who’d just thought of something wonderful and terrible.

“So,” she said, settling herself against the booth’s edge like she was settling in for a show, “how long are you in town? Long enough to see our Jake thoroughly embarrass himself at the Turkey Shootout?”

And that, I thought as Jake groaned and buried his face in his hands, was how wars started in small towns—with coffee, comfort, and the promise of public humiliation for charity.

“The Turkey what now?” I asked, trying to parse the combination of words that somehow threatened Jake’s dignity.

“Nothing,” Jake mumbled through his fingers. “It’s nothing. A silly town thing that we definitely don’t need to—”

“Oh, it’s not nothing,” Dolores interrupted with the relish of someone about to reveal state secrets. “It’s only the most sacred tradition in Lake Haven, and our little Jake has participated for the last 10 years.”

I watched Jake sink lower in the booth, his ears turning pink in a way that made me want to both comfort him and request photographic evidence of these holiday hockey disasters. I squeezed his hand under the table, trying to telegraph sympathy while absolutely filing away this information for future use.

“Well,” Dolores said, pushing herself up from the booth with surprising grace, “I better go post this year’s official notice. Give everyone fair warning about what fresh humiliation awaits.” She winked at me. “Stick around, sweetheart. This year promises to be especially entertaining.”

Dolores abandoned our table with the satisfied air of someone who’d successfully planted seeds of chaos, making her way to the ancient corkboard that served as Lake Haven’s unofficial town center. I watched, mesmerized, as the older woman wrestled with a staple gun that looked like it had survived several wars and possibly caused a few.

“Is she always like that?” I asked, still processing the whirlwind of burgundy hair and unfiltered commentary that was Dolores.

“Always,” Jake confirmed, his thumb tracing absent circles on my knuckles. “But she grows on you. Like a fungus. Or a really aggressive vine.”

“Charming.”

“You should see her during the holidays. She once made a grown man cry over cranberry sauce techniques.”

The staple gun finally surrendered with a sound like a small explosion, and Dolores stepped back to admire her handiwork—a violently orange flyer that assaulted the retinas even from across the diner.

“There!” she announced to no one in particular. “Let it not be said that Dolores Fitzgerald doesn’t give fair warning.”

Curiosity got the better of me. I squinted at the flyer, trying to make out the details through the coffee steam and distance. “Lake Haven’s Annual Turkey Shootout Festival,” I read aloud. “Events include... turkey bowling, pie baking contest, and—” I felt Jake tense before I even finished. “—charity hockey game.”

His groan was profound, the kind that came from the depths of his soul. He let his head thunk against the back of the booth. “Every year. Every single year.”

“You didn’t mention there was hockey involved in Thanksgiving here.”

Jake lifted his head just enough to give me a look that managed to be both apologetic and resigned. “There’s hockey involved in everything here. Fourth of July? Hockey. Easter? Hockey. Arbor Day? Somehow, inexplicably, hockey.”

“Your dad’s doing?”

“Believe it or not, my Mom started this whole mess. Then my dad when he retired, Tank, the collective unconscious of Lake Haven that believes all problems can be solved with sticks and pucks.” He scrubbed a hand through his hair, making it stick up in ways that shouldn’t have been attractive but absolutely were. “Last year they turned the Veterans Day parade into a roller hockey demonstration. On floats. While moving.”

I bit my lip to keep from laughing at his genuine distress. “Was anyone hurt?”

“Only my dignity.” But his eyes were warm, watching me fight my smile. “Go ahead, laugh. Everyone else did.”

I lost the battle, my laugh escaping in a burst that made him grin despite himself. “I’m sorry, I’m just picturing you in full gear on a parade float—”

“While my dad narrated my stats over a megaphone,” Jake added, finally surrendering to the absurdity of it. “Including my penalty minutes from when I was fifteen.”

Our laughter drew Dolores back like a moth to flame, her coffee pot appearing as if by magic to top off cups that didn’t need topping.

“Speaking of traditions,” she said, tapping the flyer with one burgundy nail that matched her hair so perfectly it had to be intentional, “three-time pie champion, right here. Not that anyone’s counting.”

“Everyone’s counting, Dolores!” someone called from across the diner—Pete Garrison, if I remembered correctly from Jake’s crash course on Lake Haven personalities.

“Everyone’s bitter, is what they are,” Dolores shot back without missing a beat. She turned her laser focus back to me. “Last year’s winning entry: apple-cranberry with a brown butter lattice crust that could make angels weep. The year before that? Maple bourbon pecan that had grown men offering marriage proposals. And the year before that—”

“We get it,” Sally called from behind the counter. “You’re the undisputed pie queen of Lake Haven.”

“Undisputed until someone with actual spine shows up to challenge me.” Dolores’s gaze hadn’t left my face, and there was something calculating in it now, like a chess player considering her opening move. “You skate, right? All that precision, all those hours practicing the same moves over and over until they’re perfect?”

I felt my competitive instincts stir, a familiar tightening in my chest that usually preceded either triumph or disaster. “I do.”

“Bet you can’t even roll out a proper crust.”

The diner went quiet. Not completely silent—that would have been too obvious—but there was a definite suspension of forks mid-bite, coffee cups mid-sip. I could feel Jake’s concern radiating from across the table, his protective instincts warming up like a player waiting to be called off the bench.

But I had spent years being underestimated. By judges who thought I couldn’t compete without expensive coaches. By Connor and his circle who’d thought I was just another townie to be used and discarded. By everyone who’d assumed that because I came from less, I was less.

My smile shifted, and I saw Jake recognize it—the same expression I wore before attempting a triple axel, before stepping onto ice that could either make me or break me.

“After the last year that I’ve had,” I said, my voice carrying the same quiet confidence that had made a viral video watched by millions. “How hard can pie be?”

Dolores’s eyes lit up with unholy glee, like Christmas and her birthday and the downfall of her enemies had all arrived at once. “Sally!” she practically shrieked. “Sally, you hearing this? The girl thinks pie is easy.”

Sally’s response was bone-dry: “I heard. I’m also hearing my insurance premiums going up.”

But I was already past the point of no return, that place where backing down would be worse than any potential failure. “I’ll enter. Why not?”

“Em,” Jake whispered, leaning across the table, his voice low and urgent. “You don’t have to prove anything to anyone here—”

“She started it,” I whispered back, which was perhaps not my most mature moment but felt absolutely true in the way that mattered.

Dolores extended her hand across the table with the solemnity of a general accepting surrender terms. “I accept your challenge, Emma Dubois.”

The handshake that followed felt like signing a treaty. Dolores’s grip was surprisingly strong, her calluses telling stories of decades of pie crusts and coffee pots and probably at least one bar fight. I matched her pressure, and something passed between us—not quite respect, not yet, but the acknowledgment of worthy opponents.

“I need to order more flour,” Sally muttered, already reaching for her phone. “And possibly alert the fire department.”

Jake was looking at me with an expression caught between pride and concern, like he was watching me strap on roller skates to attempt a jump over flaming school buses. “You know you just agreed to compete in something you’ve never done before, against someone who’s been perfecting it for longer than you’ve been alive?”

I lifted my chin, feeling the familiar surge of determination that had carried me through every impossible thing I’d ever attempted. “I learned to land a double axel from YouTube videos in a rink that smelled like dead fish. How different can pie be?”

“Famous last words,” someone muttered from a nearby booth, but there was affection in it, the kind of gentle mockery that came from wanting to fold someone into the community joke rather than exclude them from it.

Before I could fully process what I’d just committed to, the diner door BANGED open with enough force to make the bell above it have what sounded like a nervous breakdown. Cold air rushed in, carrying snow and chaos in the form of two grown men who moved with the barely contained energy of Labrador retrievers who’d spotted water.

“JAKE!” Wyatt’s voice boomed across the diner with the same force he’d probably used to call plays over screaming crowds. “There you are!”

Tank was right behind him, both of them dusted with snow and wearing matching grins that promised nothing but trouble. “Kid, you’re skating Thursday. No arguments.”

The entire diner perked up at the promise of fresh drama, forks forgotten in favor of this new entertainment.

Jake didn’t even look up from where he’d buried his face in his hands. “We got here five minutes ago—”

“Five minutes is four minutes longer than needed,” Wyatt interrupted, already pulling up a chair to the end of their booth without invitation. “Team’s already set. You and Tank versus me and Tommy. Losers buy the winners’ bar tab for a month.”

“I’m 16, I don’t drink,” Jake pointed out.

Tank let out a bark like laugh “This is between your Dad and I. You better not lose,” Tank said cheerfully, stealing a menu despite definitely knowing it by heart. “Kat’s already got the medical tent ready for when your dad inevitably tries to relive his glory days and pulls something.”

I watched the chaos unfold with the fascination of someone witnessing a natural phenomenon—beautiful, terrifying, and completely unstoppable. This was Jake’s world: fathers who burst through doors, competitions that sprouted from nothing, an entire town that treated every gathering like a reunion and every reunion like a championship game.

“Do I get a say in this?” Jake asked, though his tone suggested he already knew the answer.

“Sure,” Wyatt said magnanimously. “You can say yes enthusiastically or yes reluctantly. Your choice.”

Jake looked at me, something apologetic and questioning in his expression. I squeezed his hand under the table, already understanding what he needed to hear.

“I’ll make you a deal,” I said, loud enough for the table but quiet enough to feel private. “You skate in their ridiculous turkey hockey game, and I’ll actually follow through on this pie contest I just accidentally entered.”

The smile that spread across Jake’s face was worth whatever culinary disaster awaited me. “Deal.”

And that’s how I—Emma Dubois, who’d faced down Connor McLaughlin, survived Sutton Academy, and qualified for nationals—found myself committed to a pie-baking contest against a woman who treated pastry like a blood sport, all because I couldn’t resist the way Jake Brooks-Reynolds smiled when his worlds collided and somehow, impossibly, didn’t shatter.