Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
BLAIR
“Don’t I know you from somewhere?”
My stomach drops. Glancing up from my phone, I force a smile. “Nope. Must be thinking of someone else.”
The barista—a guy about my age with sleeve tattoos and gauged ears—squints at me like I’m a puzzle he’s determined to solve. “Nah, I’m good with faces. You’re definitely familiar. Anyway, what can I get you?”
“Vanilla latte with oat milk, please. Medium.” I tap my phone against the reader, hoping the transaction will end this conversation. It doesn’t.
“Seriously, it’s gonna bug me all day. You work around here?”
I shake my head. “Nope. Guess I just have one of those faces.”
A woman waiting at the pickup counter studies me then says, “Oh! Aren’t you that girl from the article? About, you know, the creepy kids’ app?”
Every muscle in my body tenses. The coffee shop suddenly feels too small, too warm, too full of people turning to stare at me.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I lie, but my voice comes out tight.
“I’m sure it was you,” the woman insists. Then, to the barista, “It was all over the news. That AI thing that was supposed to tell bedtime stories but ended up giving kids nightmares instead?”
It never even launched. No kids were harmed. The only casualty was me.
The barista snaps his fingers. “That’s it!” He shakes his head. “Man, what were you thinking?”
“Just the latte, please.” I paste on another smile, like if I’m nice enough, this will end.
It doesn’t.
“Touchy subject?” the barista asks.
The woman at the pickup counter waves a hand at me. “I’m telling you, it’s her. I’m sure of it.”
A guy at a nearby table glances over and whispers something to his friend, who looks over too.
There are low mumbles in the line behind me. The woman at the counter pulls out her phone. “Let me find that article again. I swear it’s her.”
Suddenly it’s like I’m on trial and the coffee shop is the jury. That’s when something inside me snaps.
“You don’t have to find the article!” My voice cracks across the shop, louder than I intended. “Yes, it’s me! Congratulations, mystery solved.”
The woman forgets all about her phone and stares at me open-mouthed. The barista blinks. Some guy goes quiet mid-whisper. But I’m rolling now, and my words spill out faster than I can catch them.
“You think I wanted to work on that stupid app? You think that’s why I went into children’s publishing?
No. I love books. Books! Always have. But my boss, he had this shiny new idea, and he wouldn’t shut up about how it was the future, how it’d look great on my résumé.
So suddenly I’m sitting in meetings with a bunch of developers I’ve never met, pretending I know what the hell they’re talking about.
Me. A book editor. With zero tech background.
“But even if I wasn’t an expert, I knew enough to know the damn thing wasn’t ready.
I begged my boss for more testing, more safeguards, but no!
He wanted buzz, he wanted headlines, and so journalists got a pre-release version.
One of them fed it some ridiculous gothic word salad, and bam !
A tale Stephen King would’ve been proud of. ”
My hands are shaking, and even as the words fly out, a horrified part of me knows I should shut up. But I can’t.
“Do the articles mention how the journalist set up the app to fail? Like, what kid asks for a story about ‘encounters with nocturnal phantasmagorical manifestations’? But no, there’s no mention of that, nor of my boss, who dreamed the whole thing up.
Instead, my face has been plastered everywhere like I’m the Wicked Witch of Bedtime Stories. ”
The coffee shop is silent now. Even the espresso machine’s hiss has given up.
“The app’s been scrapped. I’ve been fired. And I’ll never work in children’s publishing again. Not such a great addition to my résumé after all. But my boss? Threw me under the bus and walked away clean. Left me the villain of the story.”
A baby starts crying somewhere behind me, and the sound snaps me back to reality.
I look around at the stunned faces staring at me.
The barista, whose eyebrows look like they’re about to make a break for freedom right off his forehead.
The woman who recognised me, who’s practically radiating regret, like she knows she lit the match that set me off.
A businessman who pauses with his coffee halfway to his lips, as wide-eyed as if I’d just yelled, “Tax audit!”
Heat floods my cheeks. “I... I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have... You know what, forget the latte.”
I turn and hurry off, pushing through the door so fast I nearly collide with someone coming in. Muttering an apology, I stumble onto the sidewalk.
The harbour air is heavy and humid, salt and diesel tangling together with the smell of roasting nuts from a cart nearby.
I grab onto a streetlight like it’s a life raft, trying to catch my breath and wishing I could undo the last few minutes.
What the hell was that? I don’t explode at strangers.
I’m the girl who says “excuse me” when someone elbows me in the ribs on the subway, who tips twenty percent even when the service is terrible.
I don’t have public meltdowns in coffee shops full of strangers.
Except apparently, I do now.
I just wanted a coffee, one small taste of normal. Should’ve known that was too much to ask.
A deep horn bellows in the distance. Across the water, the Staten Island Ferry glides toward Manhattan—the same ferry I used to take every morning to work, back when I had a job to go to. Beyond it, the skyline gleams like a postcard, all possibility and promise.
But I know better now. I know how quickly it can all fall apart.
My chest tightens. I can’t keep doing this. Can’t keep pretending I’m okay in a city where even a coffee run can turn into a public execution.
I need to get away from here. At least until this whole mess blows over and people find something else to gossip about.
Twenty minutes later, I’m pulling into my parents’ driveway, tyres crunching over the same cracked concrete I learned to rollerblade on.
The pale blue clapboard house hasn’t changed since I was a kid.
White porch railings, Mom’s overgrown hydrangeas spilling over them, the gnome by the steps standing guard.
I moved back in with my parents after my ex and I crashed and burned. Just a temporary arrangement, of course, or so I assured them. That was seven months ago.
Yeah. Living the dream, right?
When I step inside, the cool blast of air conditioning hits me, carrying with it the smell of fresh-baked cookies and a hint of lemon cleaner.
“Blair? That you?” Mom calls from the kitchen.
“Yeah.” I close the door behind me and lean against it, suddenly drained.
“You okay?” She pokes her head out, apron dusted with flour, bangs sticking to her forehead.
“Fine,” I say automatically, then pause. “Actually, you know what? Not fine. Really, really not fine.”
“Oh, sweetheart. Hold on, let me get this apron off so I can hug you properly. Come through here.” She ushers me into the kitchen, where snickerdoodles cool on a rack. She tugs off her apron and gathers me close, holding on like she can squeeze the not-fine right out of me. “What happened?”
“Well—”
“Oh, hi, Blair.” Dad appears in the doorway, reading glasses perched on his nose, probably fresh from cross-checking some cousin twice removed in his family tree. He’s always elbow-deep in an obsession, and right now it’s genealogy. “Everything okay?”
I tell them about the barista who wouldn’t drop it, the woman who recognised me, my spectacular meltdown in front of an entire coffee shop. “And I left without even collecting my coffee,” I finish.
“Well, that I can fix,” Mom says. “One coffee coming right up. And a cookie.”
“And if you can set up a meeting with your old boss,” Dad says, “I’ll fix something else. By introducing his jaw to my fist.” He flexes his hand.
“Dad!” I scoff. Violence isn’t in his vocabulary, unless you count shouting at the Maple Leafs from our couch. Dad’s Canadian. Mom too. Me as well, technically, though we moved to New York when I was six months old.
A few minutes later we’re all at the kitchen table, each with coffee and a cookie. Mom leans in a little, offering a small, encouraging smile as if to say she’s right here if I need her. Dad peers at me over the rim of his mug, glasses sliding down his nose.
“I think... I need to get away for a while,” I admit, twisting one of my rings around and around my finger. “New York is just too much right now. I need to go somewhere no one’s heard of the app, or of me.”
Mom rests her hand on top of mine. She and Dad exchange a look, but neither speaks. Not yet. They’re giving me space.
“Before, I’d have gone to Toronto. Stayed with Granny and filled up on clootie dumpling and reruns of Bake Off until the world made sense again. But...” My throat tightens. “That’s not an option anymore.”
Mom’s face softens. “I know, sweetheart. I miss her too.”
I take a gulp of coffee. In less than a year, a breakup, a funeral, and a pink slip. My very own hat trick of heartbreaks. From years of editing children’s books, I know how often writers build things around threes. Trust me, it’s a lot less charming when you’re the one starring in the story.
“You know,” Dad says in his I’m-about-to-announce-something voice, “your grandmother was sixteen when she moved to Canada from Scotland. I don’t only dig into my own ancestors, you know.”
Mom turns to him. “Really, Michael? Our only child admits she feels she has to leave New York, and your response is a genealogy fun fact? Honestly, sometimes...” She throws her hands at the ceiling in frustration.
“Wait a second,” I deadpan. “Dad, are you telling me Granny was Scottish? Oh my God, that explains so much! Like her accent... and the clootie dumpling... and the fact I called her ‘Granny’ instead of ‘Grandma’.”
Dad chuckles. “Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit, Blair.”
“But the highest form of intelligence,” I shoot back, finishing the Oscar Wilde quote.
“Maybe,” he says, lips twitching. “But there was a point to me bringing up your grandmother’s birthplace. The Brits have this thing called an ancestry visa. If one of your grandparents was born in the UK, you can get a visa that lets you live and work there. For years, if you wish.”
I blink at him. “Why do you even know that?”
“Because your father’s head is stuffed with useless trivia,” Mom says, casting him a fond look. “Well, most of it is useless, but this time it might actually help. Blair, if you feel like you need to get away for a while, what about Scotland?”
Scotland. I turn the idea over in my mind. Land of Granny’s birth. Of rolling hills, ancient castles, and people who probably couldn’t care less about an AI storytelling app.
“Maybe. Maybe a few months in another country is exactly what I need.” Even as I say it, the idea grows on me. I’d wanted to get away from New York, but why not leave the US altogether? Hell, why not put an entire ocean between me and my very public firing?
“Yeah.” My voice is steadier now. “Mom, Dad... I’m going to Scotland.”