Chapter Five
Five
No amount of sleep could have prepared me for the day of the signing. The extra stress didn’t help matters much, because when I woke up in the morning, a breaker would trip off every time I entered a room, sending me into darkness.
It made things very frustrating in the shower and almost made me late.
I wanted to blame the wiring of the old house, but I knew better at this point. Something was up with my powers.
When I got to the Earl’s Study, it was bright and early, barely six thirty, and we didn’t open until eight. I unloaded the massive pitchers of tea, added the extra water, and put them in the fridge so they’d be nice and cold by the time the signing started at two that afternoon. With the planned chat and Q and A before and nibbles to follow, we expected it would last about three hours.
I hadn’t realized until I started unloading my car just how accustomed I was to having Bob with me all day when I worked. Several times I double-checked the door before entering or exiting to make sure he wasn’t underfoot trying to escape, and he wasn’t, because he was at home.
I was sure most cat owners were used to being away from their fur babies for hours at a time, and less than a year ago I hadn’t ever wanted to own a cat, so it had never occurred to me I might miss one as much as I missed Bob right now. His furry orange presence might be physically small, but it filled up the space around him.
I headed next door, leaving my umbrella in the shop, hoping Amy would be quick to answer. It would be impossible to carry boxes of pastries and my coffee and an umbrella. I was just going to have to get a little wet.
The continuing rain was putting a damper on my day already, because the big birding hike the next morning was going to be impossible if it was pouring. But even if it was clear tomorrow, it might have to be canceled just because of how steadily it had poured over the last week. No one wanted to be ankle deep in mud while they were hiking.
Thunder rumbled, letting me know this particular storm had no interest in letting up anytime soon. In spite of the literal dark cloud over my head, I decided to try being optimistic. For one, I’d recently learned that stress and negative thinking could seriously blow up in my face, and two, I really wanted to go on that birding hike tomorrow. I was even closing the store for the day so Daphne could come, since this whole thing was only happening because of her.
Amy answered the door almost as soon as I knocked, looking like her usual ray-of-sunshine self. Nothing seemed to get her down for long, and I tried to let her positivity wear off on me.
“We all set for later?” I asked, following her inside and up to the counter. The Sugarplum Fairy was what would happen if a six-year-old girl with a princess obsession were allowed to build her own bakery. Everything inside was soft baby pink with light wood fixtures. A hot-pink neon sign over the coffee bar was a new addition and read Sugar, Spice, and Everything Nice . Anything that wasn’t pink was white or gold, and the whole shop constantly smelled like cotton candy.
Little white Parisian tables invited you to sit and stay, not that the glass cases of pastries forming an L shape around the back and side of the store weren’t invitation enough.
Amy was already making my usual morning latte, and my two boxes of pastries for my own store were packaged up and waiting for me. Today she had drawn little bonbon candies on top in marker with a note that said Stay Sweet .
“I have everything ready to go for the signing, not to worry. The macarons are already packaged up, but I don’t think you’ve got enough room for them right now, so I’ll bring them by after your lunch rush ends. The cake looks stunning, if I do say so myself. Do you want to see?”
I nodded eagerly, and she lifted the panel that divided the staff area from the main shop. In the back, she opened a large cooler and held her hands out with a flourish to show me the custom cake within.
It was a two-tier cake that she had decked out impressively, with little fondant and sugar-paste birds all over the exterior as well as Sebastian’s distinctive Backyard Bird Man logo on the top in icing.
“Oh, Amy, you’ve really outdone yourself with this one. Those birds almost look real.”
The attention to detail really was flawless. You could practically see feathers on the birds, they were so beautifully painted.
“This was fun for me. We don’t get a lot of orders like this—it’s usually birthday or wedding cakes—so this was outside the box. I had a great time.”
She closed the fridge, and we went back out front. “You feeling ready? I know this is your first big event; you’ve been so nervous the last few days.”
“It’s that obvious?”
Amy laughed. “If you were more highly strung, you’d be a kite, hon. I know this guy is some sort of big deal online, but in the immortal words of my gran, Man’s a man . Don’t let him get you all twisted up like this. You ladies run a tight ship at that store, and I know you’re going to have a flawless event today. So take a deep breath, drink your latte, and tell yourself everything is going to be okay. Okay?”
I smiled at her, hugging the latte cup to my heart. “Amy, what would I do without you?”
“You’d probably weigh about five pounds less, but you’d definitely be more miserable, so it’s a fair trade-off in my books.” She winked at me. “I’ll call you in a couple hours just to borrow a pair of hands getting this cake next door.”
Back in the shop, I went about my morning routine of baking our signature Earl Grey shortbread and getting the sourdough in the oven. Since we didn’t typically have a lunch rush on Saturday, I baked fewer loaves, today opting for the fan favorites of chocolate cherry and rosemary with black pepper. They were so frequently asked for that I could make them without looking at a recipe.
For someone who’d spent much of her former life as an office drone, living off takeout and using her oven to store dishes, it amazed me sometimes how different things looked now. I had found immense peace in the process of kneading bread dough and playing with new recipes, a meditative calm I had never dreamed possible before.
It was all-hands-on-deck today, with Imogen arriving for her usual morning shift around ten, and Daphne would be in at noon just to help do some final work on getting the store set up and ready.
Amy was right, we knew what we were doing, even though the draw for this event was going to be much larger than anything we—or at least I—had ever done before.
Moments after Imogen arrived, the door tinkled again, admitting a familiar wizened face.
“Good morning, Mr. Loughery,” I called, turning the kettle on to get his usual cup of Irish Breakfast started.
Norman Loughery was, without question, our most consistent customer. He came in almost every single day, rain or shine, and he would sit in one of the cozy armchairs by the fireplace and read whatever dollar-bin thriller had his attention at the moment. He’d just finished reading all the Sue Grafton books and was now on a John Grisham kick.
He tipped his newsboy cap at us and shuffled over to his usual spot. While he was in his mideighties at least, he still had a youthful spark about him, though his body definitely wasn’t on the same page as his personality some days. I suspected the constant rain was probably giving him some aches and pains. Eudora used to complain about the weather in the Pacific Northwest being a real bear on old joints.
As Mr. Loughery dropped into his chair, a copy of The Pelican Brief tucked under his arm, he cast a long glance at the empty chair beside him. I watched as he scanned the entire store, peeking under chairs, craning his neck to see the front window.
I smiled to myself.
“Bob’s at home today, Norman.”
He expression visibly darkened with disappointment, and he took his hand out of his coat pocket where I knew he kept treats at all times, despite a little framed sign I’d placed on the fireplace that said No Matter What the Cat Tells You, He Doesn’t Need Treats . I let it go for Mr. Loughery, because he and Bob had the most delightful little bond, and I knew it mattered to the older man to spoil my silly cat.
Mr. Loughery had been the one to suggest I name the new cat adoption program after Bob, since it was spending time with the orange tabby that had convinced him he might like a cat of his own. That was how Norman had unofficially become the program’s first adopter when I found Frodo, an older tuxedo cat I thought would be a perfect fit for him.
“How’s Frodo?” I asked.
Mr. Loughery clucked his tongue. “He has discovered if he sits on the back of the couch, he can pounce at the window and give the birds at the feeder outside a little fright. Naughty boy.” But the smile on his face told me he loved every minute of it. I had seen about a thousand blurry photos of Frodo on Mr. Loughery’s ancient flip phone in the few months they’d been together, so I knew they were loving their mutual companionship. “You make sure to tell Bob I said hello, though.”
“I will.”
Mr. Loughery knew all about the signing and that we might need to rearrange the furniture at some point. Daphne arrived just before noon, her light-blonde hair a curly massy of frizzy flyaways. She looked for all the world as if she had just stuck her finger in a light socket, but that was just kind of Daphne’s vibe. She was a pretty girl who just happened to look a bit like a mad scientist.
Today she was sporting a shirt that said bird nerd on the front with little squares meant to resemble the periodic table, except instead of Na or Cl , the boxes read Ro for Robin or Ha for Hawk . It was cute.
“I didn’t realize you were so into this whole birding thing,” I commented, giving her shirt the nod.
She laughed. “You know, I wasn’t either until I started coming across all these bird feeder videos online, and it was just so relaxing to watch birds come and go. So now I’ve started keeping these YouTube channels on while I study. I think they’re actually meant for cat owners—they just have birds flying around and ambient background noise. They’re great. The most embarrassing thing—I’ve started watching tutorials on how to befriend crows. Did you know they recognize people, so if you’ve been mean or nice to a crow, it will remember and treat you accordingly? Apparently, if you feed them, they sometimes start bringing you gifts.”
“I’m sure your mother will be thrilled when her entire yard is filled with crows leaving you dirty paper clips and old pennies,” Imogen said, though it was clear she was only teasing good-naturedly.
“She was wondering why I bought a whole bag of puppy food,” Daphne admitted. “I can’t decide if she was more relieved or more concerned when I explained I didn’t want a dog, I just wanted crow friends.”
I shook my head. I liked sitting on my porch and watching birds at my feeder as much as the next elder millennial, but I’d have to draw the line at befriending corvids. I could be the crazy cat lady in town, but I couldn’t be the crazy cat and crow lady. That might just push me too much into very obviously a witch territory. I needed to maintain at least a little plausible deniability.
Before I knew it, lunch was over and a queue was forming outside the door for the signing. Sebastian and his crew hadn’t arrived yet, but there was still an hour to go before things started. I’d let in as many people as I could ahead of the reading and signing, but there were still at least a dozen people huddled under umbrellas waiting outside.
Daphne went out to suggest they bide their time at Sugarplum Fairy before things got started, and a few took the cue, but some refused to budge. I might have severely underestimated the appeal of a handsome bird expert.
Thankfully for us, and for the people outside, the rain was starting to lighten somewhat, and by the time it was quarter to two, it was only a light mist outside. I had suggested to Sebastian and his group that they come through the back entrance just to avoid too much commotion out front, so when I heard a knock at the back door, I hustled over to let them in.
Melody was positively drenched, primarily, it seemed, because she had insisted on holding an umbrella for Sebastian but hadn’t put it over both of them. She shivered visibly.
The group with Sebastian was the same three people who had come the previous morning: Melody, the kid with glasses, and a man in a suit who I hadn’t been introduced to at the time. As I showed them all into the store, Melody gave me a quick introduction to the people whose names I didn’t know.
“Phoebe, this is Connor Reeves.” She gestured at the kid with glasses in a vague way, without looking at him. “He’s Sebastian’s social media assistant.”
Connor jerked up his chin in greeting. “Yo.”
Next, Melody pointed to the man in the suit, but I noticed that when she shook out her umbrella, she did it in his general direction. Whether intentional or not, it told me a lot about how she felt toward both these men. “This is Travis McClaren; he’s with Sebastian’s publisher. They’re just trying to gauge how this kind of event is attended to see how many more they want to do.”
I offered to shake Connor’s hand, but he missed it, or else he ignored it on purpose to head into the main part of the bookstore, his phone already out and either recording something or live streaming. I pivoted and extended my hand to Travis, who was at least gracious enough to give it a firm squeeze. “Nice to meet you, Phoebe. I knew your aunt, at least in passing. The store has done some nice business for our house in the past, and I’m really looking forward to seeing what you’ve put together here today.”
Melody was already on her phone, water dripping from her hair onto the screen as she typed furiously. There was a deep divot in the skin between her eyebrows, and I suspected she spent a good chunk of her day scowling at her phone, or her laptop, or at whatever poor soul happened to be standing in front of her.
“Melody, would you like to use my office? It’s nothing fancy, I’m afraid, but you could at least sit down.”
I wanted to offer her a towel, but I didn’t have one. I briefly considered texting Rich Lofting, who lived right upstairs, but then I imagined how it might look to text the guy I might be dating to ask him to bring me a towel. No matter how innocent the request, that would just look weird.
“Oh.” Melody blinked at me, seemingly just realizing I was present. “No, no. That’s not necessary. Are we just about ready to go here?” She pushed past me without waiting for me to answer, taking a look around the store.
It was hard to read her expression, but it wasn’t disgusted, so I took that as a minor win. We’d converted the small seating area in the tea shop into a buffet where people could grab the finger food Melody had ordered as well as our custom iced teas and the desserts we had brought in for the event. When Melody looked at Amy’s cake for one brief moment, I saw her smile, and for the first time in a week I felt myself exhale. Okay, so this wasn’t going to be a total disaster.
The minute I let my guard down, the front door opened and a young man with damp, dark hair came through the door.
When Melody laid eyes on him, her cheeks flushed red.
“What do you think you’re doing here?”