"Here's my card to give to your landlord." He holds out a small, ivory-white card, and before I can stop myself, I take it from him and look at it. Lord Princeton Voss. Voss Textiles. There's an address there, and I recognize it as one of the buildings by the docks. "Please let me know if he'd be interested in selling this property."
"Why do you assume the person who owns this building is a he?" I ask sharply.
Lord Voss — no, I'm going to think of him as Princeton, since he isn't giving me the same courtesy — gives me a placid smile. "Just give him — or her, if you'd like — the card. I can make him an offer he wouldn't be able to refuse."
"I'll be sure to do that," I say, shutting the door in his face without preamble or a good-bye. I give myself a small shudder, trying to shake off the bad feeling he left behind. I take one look at the card again before crumpling it in my hand and putting it in the pocket of my apron.
There's no way my grandmother would sell the shop, even if my finances ever get to the point where I can't afford the rent. Right?
And there's no way I'd ever let my finances get that low.
Right?
The lamps flickeron along Thistle Lane by the time I reach the familiar blue door, and I've thought through my bizarre interaction with Princeton Voss so many times on the walk over that I've almost convinced myself the entire thing didn't happen.
Grammy's cottage sits at the quiet end of the lane where Starling Vale forgets to be busy. There is a light in the window, like there always is.
I let myself in without knocking, the way I have let myself in my whole life, and the warmth of the place folds over me like an embrace — woodsmoke and beeswax.
The smells of my childhood.
"Boots," Grammy says, without looking up.
"I know, Grammy." I toe them off.
She sits in her chair by the hearth with a hoop of embroidery tipped toward the firelight. A spool of thread balances on the arm of the chair, and three more threads cling to the front of her cardigan. It always seems like there are threads hanging off her. A silver thimble hangs at her throat on its chain, reflecting the firelight. She doesn't look up as I enter. At seventy-eight years old, she can still set a French knot in the dark, and she knows it, which is half the problem with her.
"You've got a face on," she says. "Sit. Kettle's hot."
"The kettle's always hot."
"And you've always got a face on. Sit."
I sit as she gets to her feet and heads to the kitchen for the kettle. I know better than to say otherwise with her.
She lets me get all the way settled, lets me pour, lets me wrap both cold hands around the cup — and only then does she hold out one gnarled hand. Not looking. Waiting.
She always knows when I've brought something along.
I dig in the pocket of my apron and put the ruined card into her hand. I don't know why I've kept it. I should have thrown it away, but it feels bigger than a passing interaction with a stranger.
She takes the card and presses it flat against her knee before reading it.
"Voss," she says, and the warmth goes out of the word, and for just a breath she is not a small old woman with candies in her pockets. She is the woman who ran the busiest dress shop on the busiest street for fifty years, buried her husband and son-in-law, lost her daughter, and raised a granddaughter on her own.
I'm reminded now how formidable she can be.
"He wants to buy the building," I say. "He told me to give that to my landlord. Which is you."
"Which is me." She makes an expression of disgust and tosses it into the fire. "There. Landlord's answer."
I should feel better.
I mostly do.
But she has gone back to her hoop a second too quickly, and I have been reading this woman my entire life, and I know that it weighs on her the same way it does me.
"Grammy."
