After Hours at Dooryard Books

Beverly gives Nathaniel a twenty-four-hour heads up before the first article goes to print, and so of course he doesn’t get a wink of sleep that night.

But in the morning, the world is precisely as it was the day before, with the addition of one front page article.

He reads it at the newsstand on a chilly December morning, the dog tugging impatiently at his leash, then goes home with the paper tucked under his arm and gives it to Patrick in exchange for a cup of coffee.

“There are other sources,” Patrick says a few minutes later. “And the byline is Beverly but also some man I’ve never heard of.”