On a quiet summer evening in Bozeman, Montana, the air was warm and still, the sky brushed in soft shades of rose and gold. Twenty-seven-year-old Sophie Steigerwald walked home from the bookstore, a canvas tote swinging lightly at her side.
Inside the bag were three paperbacks—one a weathered copy of A Room with a View, another a newly released poetry collection, and the last a journal with pressed wildflowers embossed on its linen cover. Sophie had picked it out on a whim, drawn to the delicacy of the design and the crisp promise of blank pages.
The town moved slowly in the summer twilight. A cyclist coasted down Main Street, and somewhere in the distance, a dog barked once, then fell silent. Sophie passed familiar storefronts—Wilder Café, where she sometimes lingered with a chai latte and her laptop; an old record shop still proudly displaying a “Now Hiring” sign that had faded over three months in the sun.
As she rounded the corner onto South Church Avenue, the scent of blooming lilacs reached her, and she paused a moment, just breathing it in. The gentle hush of the evening wrapped around her like a favorite song.
She didn’t know it yet, but something was waiting for her just a few blocks ahead—something that would shift the quiet rhythm of her days in Bozeman.
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