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“Twenty-two covers between six and seven,” she says. “Twenty-two. On a Tuesday.”

“Is that a lot?”

“Feels like it, but the lead-up to the Fall Festival is always busy.” She pulls her hair out of its band and shakes it loose. “You want the dregs, or shall I make fresh?”

“Dregs.”

“See, this is why we keep you.”

I wipe down the counter while she pours two cups of coffee that has been sitting on the hot plate since four and tastes like it. Working here is nothing like working for my dad’s company. Nobody ever asked me to come out with them for after-work drinks, let alone share a cup of burnt coffee. Everyone knew whose daughter I was, which meant no one ever said anything in front of me they wouldn’t put in an email.

Here, I know that Tess’s husband, Dustin, talks to his animal patients in a baby voice when he thinks he’s alone, and that Luca tried to start a boy band when he was thirteen, and that the whole town won’t let him forget it.

Pete’s at the counter nursing his slice of apple pie, in no hurry.

“You’re still here,” Tess tells him.

“I’m a paying customer.”

“You’re an obstacle.”

He ignores her and turns to me. “You been up to the grove yet?”

“What grove?”

“North of the creek, past the bend.” He points with his fork in a direction that could be anywhere. “Prettiest spot in the borough. Nick’ll take you up there.”

My hand freezes halfway to dumping a stack of bowls in the bus tray I’ve got perched on my hip.

Tess puts a plate down harder than she needs to. “Pete.”

“What? I’m making conversation.”

“You’re being a nuisance.” She slides his unfinished pie into a paper box and pushes it across the counter. “Out.”

He goes, grumbling, and Tess stacks the chairs.

When I’m sitting awake at four again, I write the grove in my notebook, right under my last entry, what are the rules here?, along with everything else I’ve written down about this town, which is more than I realized.

I climb the granite steps to town hall and push through into a wide-open hall. Folding chairs sit in rows in front of a low dais, the wooden floors well worn from a hundred years of residents shuffling into town meetings. There’s a refreshments table beside a door on the right and a kiosk to the left with Inquiries painted in cursive above the window. Behind the desk sits a middle-aged woman with a mass of loose red hair and freckles all the way down her arms, bangles jangling on her wrists as her pen moves across an open ledger.

“Hi.” The woman looks up with a friendly smile. Her name tag reads Hazel. “How can I help you?”

“I was hoping I might be able to view some town records. I’m doing research into the history of Ravenslight.”

“Do you have an appointment?” The smile doesn’t leave her face, but her pen stops moving.

“Sorry, no.” Shoot. I didn’t think of that. “Would it be possible to see them anyway?”

“You really do need an appointment.” She says it kindly, yet she doesn’t offer to help me get one.

The hall is deserted, and I glance around the rows of vacant seats and empty dais. “You’re sure I can’t take a look now?”

“No, I’m afraid not.”

“I’d like to make an appointment then.”

Hazel lifts every notebook and scrap of paper on the desk, then starts checking drawers before she finds what she’s after, dragging a cloth-bound appointment book from a bottom drawer.