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“I was wrong,” I said, gasping.

“Oh?” Art mumbled around my finger.

“You’re doing it exactly right.”

Art smiled, curling his tongue around the tip of my digit in a way that made my knees tremble. “That’s what I thought,” he said, before closing his mouth around my finger again.

TWENTY-FOUR

“This is it, loves! The big day! I’ve made us all a wee bit of thistle tea tae fortify us!” Fiona cried as we stumbled into the shop, bleary-eyed from a far-too-short night of sleep. “Great for balancing emotions,” she added, catching the looks on our faces.

On top of Opening Day jitters, the morning had included a heated discussion between Viv and Art about her progress on a report she was supposed to have uploaded for her teacher the previous night.

“I told you! The website wouldn’t load right!” Viv cried for the third time, stomping past Fiona with an exasperated eye roll.

“And, as I said earlier, I don’t believe that a major educational website portal just wouldn’t load. And even if that did happen last night, there’s no way it won’t load today. Can you please show me what you did?” Art replied, shooting Fiona a tight smile and an equally exasperated eye roll of his own as he followed his daughter into the snug.

“No! Dad! I am not a little kid. I can do this on my own,” Viv shrieked. “Don’t come up here! Leave me alone!” Her computer bag hit the table with a crunch that made me wince.

“I really hope that wasn’t her computer, or he’ll really lose his mind,” I whispered to Fiona.

“That better not have been your computer!” Art cried up to the snug.

“OMG, Dad. Chill. Go pick on Merry for a change,” Viv replied, her voice dripping with so much sass, I had to fight the urge to get involved.

It hadn’t taken me long to learn that it only made Viv more belligerent and even less likely to listen to either of us.

After a long pause during which I could almost hear Art counting slowly to ten in his head, he replied more calmly than he’d been speaking before. “I’ll let you upload your homework on your own… if you promise to text me when it’s done.”

“Fine! Sheesh!” Viv said.

“Tell me more about this fortifying tea?” Art asked, turning his back on the snug stairs, leaving Viv muttering angrily to herself.

“Och, sounds like ye might need a double,” Fiona teased.

“On second thought, I might just go get myself a cup of coffee. Merry, wanna come to Shona’s with me?” Art asked the little boy, who was barrel racing his imaginary horse around the shop tables.

I shot Art a grateful smile.

As Art pulled open the door for them, the early morning sun hit the ancient glass of the shop windowpanes at just the right angle to bathe the store in an ethereal rainbow glow that made me gasp.

“Are those…” I stepped closer to the wall and looked up at the crown molding I hadn’t noticed until the sun highlighted the details. “I think those are thistles. How cool!” I said, glancing over my shoulder at Fiona, who looked up from the tea she was preparing.

“Och! Ye’re right! Lovely, that,” she replied, before going back to humming to herself as she added a pinch of this and that to the teapots, then poured water over them to let them steep. She set a timer for five minutes.

“Have ye given any more thought tae the name?” she asked, drying her hands on a tea towel.

Walking back to the counter, I dropped my head into my hands and groaned. “No. I just keep getting stuck on some really terrible ones.”

“Och, not Steeping Dreams again,” she said, laughing.

“Yes! I don’t know why I keep going back to that. It’s so awful.”

“It’s better than Biscuits and Tea,” Viv called from the snug, much happier now that her dad and brother had left.

This time Fiona groaned. “I dinna ken what I was thinking with that one. It really is terrible. Maybe this will be the Nae-Name Tea Shop.”

“Or the Cookie Shop,” I offered. “Right? Cookies—that’s what we sell. We sell cookies with tea on the side.”