Chapter 1
Chapter One
Sybil Morgan was not a chitchatter by nature. There was too much to do, and she was of the opinion that most people were as shallow as a bird bath. She enjoyed a good conversation with her small handful of friends, but that was about it. Almost everyone got the hint that she wasn’t interested in talking to them outside of the amount of time it took them to order a cup of coffee from her by her monosyllabic answers.
Then there was Arthur Green.
Being impervious to her unresponsiveness must be genetic; his son was exactly the same.
Sybil wasn’t sure exactly what a movie producer did, but if Arthur was anything to go on, it involved a lot of coffee in the morning and tea in the afternoon. Occasionally she saw him take a phone call or use his laptop to supposedly answer some emails, all on her Wi-Fi. It wasn’t like he didn’t have somewhere to go. The movie people had rented out the Crane Hotel, and the hotel had excellent Wi-Fi. Graham Thatcher, the owner and her best friend’s husband, had made sure of that, and since in his previous life he’d been the founder and CEO of a tech company, Sybil assumed he knew what he was doing .
Not that she would ever, ever tell him that.
Despite having a room at the hotel and access to their excellent Wi-Fi, Arthur Green had chosen to spend his first two weeks in Crane Cove sitting in her coffee shop, using her mid-level Wi-Fi, and drinking enough cups of her coffee to give a man half his age heart trouble, talking to her and anyone else who made the mistake of entering his orbit.
Before she’d known exactly who he was, Sybil had thought that Arthur reminded her of Peter. They had the same easy way of talking to strangers so they became friends within minutes. Hell, if he wasn’t a British citizen, Arthur could have run for mayor of Crane Cove after his first week in town and won. The residents of her sleepy coastal town probably would have ignored the glaring legalities if his name should magically appear on the ballot in November.
Because of who his son was, she was determined not to like him. The fact that she did like him made her feel like an abject failure.
“Another cup, dear,” Arthur said, putting his ceramic cup on the counter. It was a beautiful iridescent blue-green glaze that he’d purchased from the shop next door during its going-out-of-business sale.
Sybil picked up his mug. “If you have a heart attack, I’m not reviving you,” she warned as she headed for the urns of brewed coffee.
He snorted. “It’ll take more than a little coffee to do me in. I’m made of stronger stuff than that.”
“I’m switching you to decaf.”
She glanced over her shoulder in time to see Arthur clutch his chest with a wounded expression on his face.
“You wouldn’t do that to me.”
“It’s for your own good.” Sybil filled half the mug with decaf, and the other half with regular. “You have more coffee in your veins than blood.”
“It’s like petrol. Keeps me going.”
It was Sybil’s turn to pretend to be offended. “Did you just compare my coffee to gasoline?”
“Never.” Arthur accepted his mug back. “Maybe the high-grade petrol they use in Formula One cars.”
The mischievous sparkle in his blue eyes made her heart twist painfully in her chest. Arthur was a tall, slender man whose limbs had retained the gangly quality of boyhood. By American standards he wasn’t so much handsome as “interesting.” Peter had gotten his unearthly good looks from his movie star-turned-director mother. But his eyes and his smile he’d gotten from his father. Every time she made Arthur grin, she wondered if she was looking into a future she’d only see from afar.
“Don’t insult your dealer,” Sybil warned.
“Wouldn’t dream of it.” Arthur winked at her and went back to the same little table he sat at every day. She might as well order a brass nameplate for the spot.
Stardust Coffee, the coffee shop she owned and ran, was empty except for Arthur. Fall was in full swing in Crane Cove, and with it came the low season for tourism. Locals stopped in at predictable intervals, but her profit margins were considerably narrower outside of long school breaks and the summer months. So, despite the disruption to local life, this movie came at a great time for the community. The movie people would spend their money at local businesses. The Crane Hotel was fully booked for the duration of the film shoot. And maybe the notoriety of having a movie directed by Charlotte Parker would attract more tourism, particularly in the off-season.
The front door flung open and the bell overhead clanged instead of jingled. Like merely thinking about her could summon her, Peter’s mother Charlotte stormed inside with murder written on her face.
“That mother fucker, ” she bellowed, fighting with the zipper on her coat before yanking the expensive blue raincoat off and throwing it on the floor. “That fucking motherfucker promised me those tweets were a one-time, Ambien-induced anomaly. His agent promised me. His manager promised me. Everyone but his mother promised me it would never happen again. So what did I do? Against my better judgment, against my gut feeling this was a bad idea, I caved to the studio and approved his casting. And how does that motherfucker repay me?”
There were a million tasks Sybil could be doing in the back, from inventory and ordering to preparing her quarterly taxes, but instead she picked up a bottle of sanitizer and a rag and went to work wiping down her counter.
Arthur seemed unfazed despite all the shouting and a record number of “motherfuckers.” He sipped his coffee and asked, “What did he do this time?”
“In the middle of the night he got on his stupid fucking phone”—Charlotte mimed typing on a smartphone—“and managed to insult and offend just about every protected class in the country.”
“Was he really that thorough?” Arthur asked, and whatever look his wife gave him prompted him to say, “What do you want to do about it, my love?”
“I want to fire his ass. I want you to tell me that legal will approve me livestreaming the burning of his contract. I want to tap-dance on his grave.”
“You know I support all of your endeavors,” Arthur began in a diplomatic fashion that made Sybil want to duck for cover. She’d tear someone’s head off if they used that tone with her. “But there are a lot of factors to consider before you go scorched-earth, darling. The first being that your actors are due to arrive tomorrow to begin their read-throughs and rehearse. Not only do we have to find someone available on such short notice, we need to find a name big enough that the studio will be willing to take it in the teeth when he sues. Plus there’s the money we’ll have to pay him even if we fire— when we fire him—and then whatever astronomical amount someone’s agent is going to bend us over the barrel for because they know we’re desperate.”
“We’re not desperate ,” Charlotte said, the obvious lie laced into every syllable. “ Someone has to have time in their schedule. Projects fall through. People think they want family vacations and they’re wrong. Someone has to be sitting at home, twiddling their thumbs, wondering why the damn phone doesn’t ring anymore.”
“Yes, but we’d need to be very careful about why no one is ringing them, love,” Arthur pointed out. “Don’t want to end up in this spot again.”
Charlotte groaned and pushed her hands through her gray hair, knocking her rain-specked reading glasses off her head. She looked at the floor in surprise and cursed, stooping to pick them up.
“I’ve been looking for these for an hour.” She tried to dry them on the hem of her sweater. “Can you think of anyone off the top of your head who’s got star power, a good to excellent public image, is fucking competent, and available?”
Arthur picked up his coffee cup and blew the steam off the top. “I can, but you’re not going to like it.”He sipped his coffee, then said, “Peter.”
“No.”
It wasn’t until Arthur and Charlotte looked at her that Sybil realized she’d said the thought out loud in unison with Charlotte. Mortification burned her face, and she searched for a quick lie to cover her tracks.
“I, uh, forgot to order milk,” she said, turning quickly and knocking over a stack of cups she needed to stock. Luckily they were still in their plastic sleeve.
“I won’t hire Peter,” she heard Charlotte say as she hid in the backroom, listening at the door.
“He fits the brief. Competent, excellent public image, and he’s meant to be headed this way on holiday.”
“Isn’t that convenient?” Charlotte retorted. “Did you two plan this?”
“I’m going to ignore that because you’re under stress.”
“I meant—” Charlotte let out a frustrated groan. “You know I never wanted this for him.”
“I know, love,” Arthur said gently. “But it’s what he wanted. At some point you do have to accept that this is his career.”
Charlotte sighed heavily. “Pretend to be a producer for the day and round me up a list of potentials by four o’clock. If I hate all of the options, we can call Peter.”
Sybil exited the backroom as casually as she could, though she felt like she had the subtlety of a Mardi Gras parade float. She came out in time to see Charlotte give her husband a tender peck on the lips and wrestle herself back into her coat.
“Did you walk or drive?” Arthur asked.
“I walked. I don’t need another speeding ticket from the Barney Fife wannabe they’ve got in this town,” Charlotte said bitterly. “Plus, the walk calmed me down.”
“That was you calm?” he teased. “Do you want a ride back to the hotel?”
“No. I think another walk and I should be back to my standard level of ghastly.”
“Be safe. Don’t walk into the ocean,” Arthur said as Charlotte exited, holding up her middle finger over her shoulder. He chuckled, then said to Sybil, “There goes the love of my life.”
“The movie isn’t going to be cancelled, is it?” she asked, the cost of the extra supplies she’d ordered in anticipation of increased business hovering in the back of her mind like a vengeful ghost.
“No, it’s not,” he assured her, and Sybil let hearing those words in his accent soothe her. There was something incredibly comforting about a British accent. Everything sounded better. “My son is a wonderful actor, and he’s been trying to be part of one of Charlotte’s projects for years.”
Except for that.
At eight p.m., Sybil turned the sign in her door from open to closed and locked the door from the inside.
Another fourteen-hour workday in the books.
“Sadie, I’m going to count the till in the back. Don’t worry about doing refills, just do the cleaning list,” she said to her seventeen-year-old employee, who gave her a mock salute. “You can have the tip jar. Thanks for showing up tonight.”
Normally she had two closers, in addition to herself, but a last-minute callout left them shorthanded. If Sybil got home before ten, she’d be happy.
It didn’t matter if a sales day was good or bad, doing the books gave her heartburn. The day had been middling, almost exactly what Eloise’s magical spreadsheet had predicted, down to the penny. Sybil didn’t know how her friend did it, or why she liked doing it.
She needed to call Eloise. Or show up at her door with a bottle of wine and, as casually as possible, ask her when the fuck she was going to divulge that Peter was coming to town for a vacation.
Sybil put down the stack of five-dollar bills she’d been counting because all she’d actually done was move the money from one hand to the other without a single number floating through her head.
Peter wasn’t even in town yet, and she was a fucking disaster.
If she’d known the first time Graham Thatcher had come into her business that his best friend was her ex, she’d have run him out of town. No thinly veiled protective hostility because Graham was involved with Eloise. Full-scale warfare. She would have made Graham thankful he’d left Crane Cove, and he would have told anyone who crossed his path to never, ever visit.
But because she’d been mildly pleasant to Graham, Peter had delivered a ballgown to her house, walked her down the aisle at Graham and Eloise’s wedding, and switched the place cards around at Thanksgiving so they were sitting next to each other.
And then there were the flowers.
Every week for the last year and a half, a floral arrangement had been delivered to Stardust Coffee. She didn’t know how he did it, but they always arrived when she wasn’t there or had stepped into the backroom so she couldn’t refuse the delivery. But they were all so beautiful, she didn’t know if she’d have had the heart to refuse them, even if they left her with complicated feelings she thought were finally dead and buried.
This week’s arrangement was small enough to fit on her desk: orange, yellow, and red roses in a black, square vase. Perfect for the beginning of fall. That was almost what the note had said.
Happy you season. In my mind you’ll always be falling leaves, warm tea, and stolen sweaters. I miss the way your cheeks turned pink when you got cold and the way you cursed the rain that got into your boots. Yours, PAPG
The note, along with seventy-seven others, was hidden in the locked drawer in her desk. Another thing of Peter’s she couldn’t bear to throw away.
“Sybil! I’m heading out!” Sadie shouted from the front of the store.
Sybil startled, hastily swiped the tears that had formed in her eyes away before they had a chance to fall, and shouted back, “Have a good night! Be safe!”
How long had she been staring at those damn roses? She needed to learn to blink so her eyes wouldn’t water.
She finished the deposit and put it in the safe, then went out into the front of the store to finish the closing duties. It was tempting to call the job Sadie had done good enough, and the person opening could deal with the rest of it, but Sybil was the one opening in the morning, so one way or another it was one hundred percent her problem.
So she checked the perishable products to make sure nothing was about to expire, restocked the dairy fridge under the counter, got new bottles of syrup out and ready to replace the ones that were running low, and finished with the cups and lids.
Her never-ending day was over.
Almost.
The back door needed to be locked and the alarm set, because she’d always reasoned if anyone was going to break in, they’d break in through the back door. Not that Crane Cove was a hotbed of criminal activity. Most of the work the local police force did was writing speeding tickets to tourists and people passing through. But it made her feel better.
She turned the deadbolt, and curiosity tickled the back of her mind. Slowly, she unlocked the door and opened it just a crack. Over the summer she’d seen a stray cat near the dumpsters. For years she’d joked about getting a cat to complete her status as Crane Cove’s least eligible—or least desirable—bachelorette. The black-and-white cat would watch her, but never come to her, no matter what she did. So she put food near the back door of Stardust, hoping someday it would trust her.
The food dish was still full. Sybil knew there was a chance that the cat would move on or possibly die, but she hoped it was empty by the morning so she knew the cat was okay. Either that or she was going to unintentionally become Queen of the Raccoons.
The deadbolt relocked and the alarm set, Sybil turned off the lights and left through the front door, locking it behind her. Like most nights she stood in front of her business, trying to practice gratitude and pride for what she’d built on her own. She’d hustled, scrimped, saved, begged, and bullied to make Stardust Coffee a reality. But no matter what she accomplished, she found it hard to sit still in the warmth of her successes. There was always more to do, more to accomplish. She never reached a goal because she kept moving the goalpost further away. Sybil didn’t have time or money to spare for therapy, but she’d read books hoping to find the answer to why she just couldn’t be fucking happy. The books told her it was okay to be proud, grateful, and happy, but only half of her brain agreed. The other half said it was all a crock of shit and the advice only applied to other people.
Stardust was successful. She was proud of that. It supported her and about a dozen part-time employees. She was grateful for that. But she wanted more.
The storefront adjacent to hers was empty again. Originally she’d dreamed of Stardust being a coffee shop and bookstore, but the overhead was too high and the margins too thin to justify the leap of faith. Coffee was a safer bet than books. But the dream remained, always slightly out of reach.
Maybe it was for the best that she’d never been able to make the bookstore a reality. There were times over the last twelve years, especially the last seven, when she would have wanted to burn it to the ground to escape herself. The scent of groundwood paper was too strongly associated with unhurried kisses, effortless intimacy, and being young and in love with a golden-haired boy that could crack her heart open with a smile.
She needed to go home and go to bed. It had been a long day, which would be followed by another long day, and standing on the sidewalk drowning herself in memories wasn’t helpful. Whether she liked it or not, Peter was coming to Crane Cove, and if Arthur got his way, he’d be there for weeks . She couldn’t avoid him for weeks.
Was it too late to skip town?