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“Hey, Ava?” The ice cubes in Sam’s cup rattled as he swirled the liquid around.
“Hmm?”
“The heart shape you sewed on the front of the bear…”
A lump rose to my throat.
“It looked an awful lot like purple tweed to me.” He paused, then added softly, “Did you use your lucky blazer to make that patch?”
I glanced up at him. He was a little out of focus because my eyes were swimming in tears as I thought about a little girl in a large hospital undergoing big, scary surgery. “I just wanted to make sure she had all the luck in the world with her tomorrow.”
MAGGIE
I’d needed a minute.
Out of sight of everyone to just sit with my feelings.
I’d gone into the storeroom, closed the door, then slid down it to sit on the floor. I was quite sure Ava understood perfectly.
As I wrestled with my emotions, I propped my arms on my knees, then dropped my head on my arms. Maybe keeping the coffee shop wasn’t meant to be. It was Mama’s, after all, and never meant to be mine. Maybe Daddy had been right. Maybe it was time to let go.
Maybe, maybe, maybe.
I wrapped my arms tightly around my legs. This place had been Mama’s dream. What would my dream have been if I hadn’t always had the coffee shop in my life?
I racked my brain. I had my curiosities, of course, and while they gave me purpose and joy, they weren’t a way to make a living. I didn’t have my dad’s passion for vintage or quirky finds. I only bought what literally moved me, giving me that little shove. I liked crafting. Could I make a living selling custom T-shirts and the like? I winced. That didn’t feel right, either.
The only thing that felt right was doing exactly what I’d been doing.
Running Magpie’s.
How was I ever going to let it go?
And how would I ever get over letting everyone down? Everyone who loved this place as much as I did. Especially Rose. And all my regulars. And even Ava, who seemed happy working here.
I wiped my eyes, sniffled.
Directly in front of me sat the bins and box my father and Ava had brought over the other day. On the bin nearest to me, I suddenly noticed a label I hadn’t seen before. It simply readPENNY.
My mama.
Curious, I scooted over to the plastic tub and pried off the top. Oddly, it held only one item.
A plain black sketchbook, its cover frayed along the edges.
I took it out and carefully opened it. The first page was full of doodles: swirls and swashes and flowers and vines surrounding the wordsPenny’s Whims.
My breath caught. This book had belonged to my mother. Why hadn’t I ever seen it before? How had it survived the hurricane damage? Where had it been all these years?
I turned the pages. There were more doodles, a sketch—quite a good one—of a pier. One page had a scribbled grocery list—eggs, milk, bread. There was a page of baby names, both boys’ and girls’, and I smiled at the fact that neither Magdalena nor Maggie was on it. According to family lore, my name had been a source of contention between my parents. My father had his heart set on naming me Maggie Mae, after the Beatles’ take on an old Liverpool folk song. My mama flat-out refused on account of the song being, in her words,unseemly.So they’d compromised somewhat.
Toward the middle of the sketchbook, the magpie logo first appeared, a simple line drawing. With each subsequent page, the drawings evolved, with more details added. The wordMagpie’swas written out many times in different fonts. The pink barrette soon appeared.
Quite a few pages held sketches of shop fronts. Wide windows, uneven bricks, frilly awnings. One shop was a pet shop. There was a candle store, a quilt shop, a bookshop, a bakery, a gift store, a coffeehouse, a pizza place, and a card shop. Each rendering took up two pages and included a floorplan and a short pro-and-con list.
I smiled at the list for the pizza place—pro: pizza; con: smell like pizza all day. The card shop’s pro was that everyone needed cards. The con: bo-ring. For the coffeehouse, the pro was that it didn’t need a lot of remodeling (which had three checkmarks next to it). The con: dislike coffee. The pages after that were blank. Her decision had been made. A low budget won out over all else.
I closed the book and hugged it to my chest, thinking about what I’d just seen, processing it.
