Page 16 of Brewbies
It paired beautifully with the melancholy classical music filling the seemingly unoccupied space.
Unoccupied, unless you counted the proliferation of unfortunate-looking taxidermy creatures. A ragtag crew of silent spectators, they held their glassy-eyed assembly from the many shelves and tables crowded into the cluttered but cozy sitting area. To the right of the entrance, a beautiful old credenza bearing an ornate antique rotary phone, an iPad on a swivel stand, a small but very new Apple monitor, and several other assorted register-related items sat completely unattended.
A month into her Townsend Harbor residency, and this kind of thing still shocked Darby.
The benign supervisory neglect. The blind small-town trust.
In Boston, if she’d have left her closet of a coffee shop long enough to blow her nose, she’d have come back to a puddle of piss in the entryway and counter stripped of every last cruller.
She drifted over to the large moat of polished wood, as much out of a need to set down her plate of guilt-laden goodies as a compulsive habit to put herself between it and the unlocked door.
Leaning in to examine the glowing golden dial of the beautiful old rotary phone, Darby leapt a full foot when it rang.
“Coming!” Cady’s voice sang from the back of the shop. As if the phone itself or the person on the other line could hear her.
Darby quickly grabbed her plate and took a step back into the entryway, attempting to look like she’d only just stepped through the door that very moment.
The squeaking of the building’s old floorboards drew closer, and Cady swung into view. As she spotted Darby, her rosebud of a mouth broke into a broad smile.
“Oh my God, hi!” she said, hurrying toward the credenza as she wiped her hands on the apron knotted behind her rounded hips. “I’ll just be a minute.”
“Take your time.”
“Nevermore Bookstore, this is Cady,” she rapped out with expert brightness. Darby watched Cady’s face light up, her smile deepening into a slow, seductive grin as she listened to the voice on the other end. “Well hello there,” she purred. “How was your week?”
Fawkes.
Had to be. Darby was certain of it, even though her asking about his week didn’t make one lick of sense.
She’d seen that kind of smile before.
Darby had caught herself wearing one just like it in the bathroom mirror of the hotel room where Ethan Townsend had made her forget her own name.
Heat crept up the back of Darby’s neck. Before it could reach her cheeks, she busied herself studying the three-legged armadillo standing in as a bookend for an impressive collection of Nancy Drew mysteries.
Seeing the ghost of a tire tread on his dented shell, Darby felt a pang of sympathy. Since the lumpectomy that had turned her entire world upside eight years ago, her left breast had shot the double-barrel bird at any kind of mammary symmetry.
Me too, little buddy,she thought, giving the scaly shell a pat.Me too.
“Is there anything else you’d like in this week’sshipment?” Cady asked, her voice dripping with suggestion.
The obvious euphemism made Darby smile in spite of the growing ache in her chest.
She remembered this phase. The heady, neurochemical speedball. When everything was new. When you still believed.
When your soon-to-be-ex-fiancé hadn’t yet cheated with a rival dancer at the upscale Manhattan cabaret while you were backstage trying to make your custom pasties cover the radiation tattoo on your newly dented breast.
Darby chased the thought out of her head and razed its trail with a mental flamethrower.
She hadn’t put an entire country between her and Aidan just so he could slink back into her skull like the oily shit-stain he was.
“Oh, I’ll stack them so hard.” Cady giggled as she leaned against the counter, her back turned to Darby and her pinky twirling in the phone cord’s coil.
The sweetness of their exchange seemed to saturate the air, making it harder to draw air into Darby’s lungs. She was having desperate thoughts of inventing an emergency that would allow her to beat a hasty retreat when the shop door swung open.
Gemma McKendrick swept in, her presence as welcome as the rain-scented gust that cooled Darby’s flushed skin.
If Cady was a dreamy, doe-eyed Rapunzel, her best friend was a sassier Snow White. Milky Irish skin, dark, glossy, shoulder-blade-length hair, and bright, intelligent eyes of olive green.
