"Mm-hm." Nina leans on her broom handle. She has the posture of a woman who once ran a boardroom and now chooses to run a coffee counter because it gives her better access to gossip. "And did the deadbolt spend the night?"
I open my mouth. Close it.
Because the front door behind me opens, and Liam walks out in the same dark henley from yesterday, hair slightly damp, looking like he slept in a chair and somehow emerged more alert than most people manage after a spa weekend. I know he slept inthe parlor chair because I heard it creak through the floor at odd hours — the particular rhythm of someone who doesn't sleep so much as take shifts against consciousness. He's carrying his own mug — one of Margit's — and he stops next to me on the porch, scanning the block with those methodical gray eyes.
"Morning," he says to no one in particular.
Nina's broom clatters against the brick facade of her shop.
"Good morning." Her smile is the kind that should come with a terms-and-conditions page. "I'm Nina. I own the coffee shop. You must be — "
"Liam," he says.
"Liam." She repeats it like she's filing it. "And you're staying at the inn."
"Correct."
"With Kari."
"In the same building as Kari."
Nina looks at me. I take a very large sip of coffee.
"I'll bring scones over later," she says, and disappears inside.
That's the first domino.
The second falls when Oren Dietrich materializes on the sidewalk in his corduroy jacket and flat cap, holding a Tupperware container of something that smells aggressively of cinnamon. Oren is built like a retired middleweight and has the conversational approach of a man who has already decided what's happening and is merely informing you.
"You're the boyfriend," he says to Liam.
Liam goes very still. "I'm — "
"Oren. Two doors down. I knew Margit for forty years. You like coffee cake?"
He holds out the Tupperware. Liam takes it because Oren isn't really offering so much as placing it in his hands.
"I'm not — "
"Good. Dinner's always at six. I do a pot roast every week that'll make you weep. Kari, tell your boyfriend about the pot roast."
"He's not my — "
But Oren is already walking away, one hand raised in a wave that does not invite further discussion.
Liam stares at the Tupperware.
"Is it always like this?" I ask. "People just... assign you things. Dinner plans. Relationship status. Baked goods."
He looks at the coffee cake, then at me, then at Nina's shop where I can see her silhouette watching us through the window.
"Is there a point at which they stop?"
"I've been here one day and I've already been assigned a boyfriend and a dinner reservation, so my guess? No."
By noon, it's a settled fact.
Del calls me in all caps — not texts, actually calls, which means the situation has exceeded even her keyboard's capacity for alarm.
