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“Old shelves,” said a voice from somewhere deeper in the shop. “Happens all the time.”

She looked up. A woman around her age appeared from between two shelves, dark hair, reading glasses pushed up on her head, an expression of complete serenity that Allison found slightly suspicious.

“I’m Claire,” the woman said. “I own the shop.”

“Allison. I’m the new...”

“Art teacher.” Claire smiled. “We know. Small town.” She nodded at the book in Allison’s hands. “Good one, that.”

“Did you put it there?”

Claire looked at her with something that was definitely not quite innocent. “Old shelves,” she said again, pleasantly, and disappeared back between the stacks.

Allison looked down at the book.

She bought it.

* * *

She found the café last, at the end of Main Street where it widened slightly around a small square with a gazebo in the center, Founders Square, she’d learn later, though nobody told her that this morning. The café had no sign she could see from the outside, just a painted name on the glass: Merrybrook Café, in letters that had been there long enough to fade slightly at the tops.

The door had a bell.

Inside was warm, and smelled like coffee and something baked, and was occupied by what appeared to be about a third of the town’s population having what sounded like four different conversations simultaneously. She stood in the doorway for a moment, adjusting.

“Sit anywhere,” called a voice from behind the counter, a young woman, maybe her age, with the energy of someone who moved through a crowded room the way water moved through a landscape: around things, between things, without slowing. “I’ll find you.”

Allison found a small table near the window. Through the glass she could see the gazebo in Founders Square, a maple tree near it just beginning to think about turning, and beyond that the roofline of the hardware store on the far side, a sign she could read from here: Colter Hardware. Est. 1958.

“First time in?”

The young woman had appeared beside her table without her noticing. Up close she had warm eyes and the bright alertness of someone who had noticed everything in the room at least twice.

“That obvious?” Allison said.

“Little bit.” She grinned. Not unkindly. “I’m Molly. My grandmother owns the place.” She tilted her head toward the counter, where an older woman moved with the unhurried certainty of someone who had been doing the same thing for forty years and saw no reason to rush it. “What can I get you?”

“Just coffee, please. Black.”

Molly wrote nothing down. “Coming right up.”

The coffee arrived in a wide ceramic mug, dark and steaming, and Allison wrapped both hands around it and took a sip.

She set the mug down.

She picked it up and took another sip, slower this time, because the first sip had tasted like something she couldn’t immediately identify, something warm and particular that had nothing to do with the coffee exactly, something underneath it that felt like the comfort of being inside when it was raining outside, of knowing that someone was coming home, of the exact moment a thing you’d been afraid of turned out to be fine.

She sat with the mug in her hands and the window beside her and the town going about its morning all around her, and she didn’t feel like a stranger.

She didn’t know why she didn’t feel like a stranger.

She was, technically, a stranger. She’d been here less than twenty-four hours. She knew nobody. She had a one-year contract and an unfamiliar bed and a rental cottage she hadn’t even seen yet and more reasons to feel uncertain than certain.

But the coffee was warm, and the town was going about its morning, and through the window she could see the sign on the hardware store, Est. 1958, and the maple tree thinking about turning, and Clearwater Lake at the end of the street catching the morning light, and something in her that had been braced for a long time was very quietly, very carefully, beginning to let go.

The older woman from behind the counter appeared beside the table without announcing herself.

“More coffee?” she asked.