1. Lina
Lina
"If you give Mr. Henderson one more free almond croissant, I am going to audit your books myself," Maya says, slamming a stack of historical romance novels onto the counter.
I don’t look up from the espresso machine.
I’m busy coaxing a double shot of espresso out of a temperamental portafilter that has been dripping at a slant all morning.
"He’s eighty-two, Maya. And his wife died last month.
If he wants to pretend he forgot his wallet so he can eat a pastry and talk to me about the weather for ten minutes, I’m not going to be the one who calls him out. "
"He didn't forget his wallet," she says, leaning her elbows on the polished dark wood of the counter. She peers at me over her oversized tortoise-shell sunglasses. "He had a twenty-dollar bill sticking out of his shirt pocket. I saw it. You saw it. The entire lending library section saw it."
"It’s called dignity," I mutter, wiping steam off the metal wand with a damp cloth. "Look it up. It’s in the dictionary under 'none of your business.'"
"Dignity doesn’t pay your landlord, Lina. And it definitely doesn't pay for the repairman to look at that dinosaur you call an espresso machine."
I pat the side of the chrome-and-steel machine defensively. It’s an old Italian model, covered in tiny scratches and minor dings, but it pulls the richest cream in a fifty-mile radius. It’s not a dinosaur. It has character. "She’s a classic. She just needs a little patience."
Besides, Maya is exaggerating. The Mug it is finding a mechanic in this isolated harbor town who actually know how to source parts for a vintage Italian boiler without charging me an extortionate transit fee.
"She needs a priest to give her her last rites," Maya counters.
She reaches over and snatches a chocolate chip cookie from the display jar before I can slap her hand away.
She takes a bite, pointing the half-eaten cookie at me.
"Seriously, though. You’ve been here since five this morning.
When was the last time you actually went out?
Like, walked down to the pier, looked at a man who wasn't eighty-two, or wore something that didn't smell like roasted coffee beans? "
"I went to the grocery store on Tuesday," I say, pouring the steamed milk into a ceramic mug, tracing a slightly lopsided leaf pattern in the foam. "And I don't smell like coffee. I smell like... hazelnut."
"You smell like a walking breakfast menu." Maya sighs, but her eyes soften. She slides her sunglasses down her nose, looking at me with that protective, older-sister look she’s had since we were teenagers. She runs the boutique two doors down, and she spends at least half her day occupying my counter space. "I’m just saying. You’re twenty-three.
You run this beautiful little corner of the world, you read three books a week, and your social life is entirely fictional. Don't you ever want something... more?"
What? No, my social life is just right!
I want to bite back but of course I don’t, everyone knows how untrue it is.
"More what?" I say instead as I hand the mug to a waiting regular, giving Mrs. Gable a warm smile as she slips a five-dollar bill into the tip jar. "Thanks, Mrs. Gable. Have a good shift at the clinic." I turn back to Maya, wiping the counter down. "I like my life. It’s quiet. It’s safe. I know exactly what’s going to happen every single day, and honestly? After everything, that’s exactly how I want it. "
Maya’s mouth thins into a small line. She knows what "after everything" means.
Everyone in this town does, at least the cliffnotes version.
They know my mother and I showed up here when I was five with nothing but a couple of suitcases and a fierce, quiet determination to blend into the background.
They know she worked three jobs to buy this building, and they know she died of a sudden, brutal sickness when I was thirteen, leaving me to be raised by a series of well-meaning neighbors and my own stubborn will.
"I know," Maya says softly, her hand reaching out to squeeze my wrist. "I just don't want you hiding in here forever."
"I'm not hiding," I say, pulling my hand back to adjust the stack of napkins.
Maybe I am. But the dark corners of this shop are warm, and the outside world is loud and unpredictable.
"I'm working. There's a difference. Now, are you going to help me shelve these returns, or are you just here to eat my inventory and judge my life choices? "
"Oh, I'm definitely here for both," she says, but she takes the stack of romance novels anyway. "But only because I love you. And because the guy who checked this one out left a very spicy bookmark on page one hundred and forty."
"Maya, don't look at people's bookmarks!"
"I have to," she calls over her shoulder, already wandering into the back section of the shop where the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves are packed with paperbacks. "It's a public service."
I shake my head, a small laugh bubbling up in my chest.
The Mug & Page is my sanctuary. It’s a narrow brick building with exposed wooden beams, mismatched velvet armchairs, and a wood-burning stove in the corner that keeps the damp autumn air at bay.
The front half is the café, always smelling of fresh cinnamon and espresso, and the back half is the lending library, a trust-system bookshelf where people can take a book, leave a book, or just sit for hours without buying a thing.
It’s exactly the kind of place my mother wanted for me.
I can still hear her voice sometimes, soft, echoing from the edges of my memory. An ordinary life, Lina. Just be sweet, be quiet, and nobody will ever have a reason to look at you.
I don't remember much about the world we left behind.
My childhood before the age of five is a blurred, dreamlike smudge.
There is a protective fog over those early years—no names, no concrete dates, no clear maps of where we lived.
Sometimes, if I close my eyes in a quiet room, my mind holds onto the sensory fragments it couldn't shake. I can almost smell the thick, syrupy scent of yellow jasmine and hot stone, and picture myself playing in a sun-drenched courtyard with a boy who had fierce, serious dark eyes. I forgot his name long ago, but I never forgot the heavy weight of his hand holding mine, or the bleeding certainty of a promise he whispered right before the world tilted sideways. Whenever I try to reach deeper than those fractured images, they slip through my fingers like water. I used to think I’d made them up, fantasies of a lonely little girl who wanted a father and a home that didn't feel like a temporary pit stop.
My mother never talked about those years. Not once. If I asked about my father, her face would go completely gray, her eyes darting to the windows as if she expected someone to be standing there, watching us through the glass.
He's gone, Lina, she would say, her voice flat and final. He’s a bad man from a bad place, and we are free now. That's all you need to know.
And so, I stopped asking. I learned to love the quiet. I learned that safety was a physical thing, a locked door, a familiar street, a life where nothing unexpected ever happened.
"Lina, dear?"
I blink, pulling myself out of my head. Mr. Abernathy is standing at the register, holding a battered copy of a biography on Winston Churchill. He’s wearing his usual tweed flat cap, his cheeks pink from the chilly wind blowing off the bay.
"Hey, Mr. Abernathy," I say, my voice automatically sliding into its familiar, warm rhythm. "Did you finish the last volume already?"
"I did," he says, tapping the book with a gnarled finger. "A bit dry in the middle, but the transition into the war years was masterfully handled. Do you have anything else on the European theater? Something with a bit more focus on the intelligence operations?"
"I think we do," I say, coming out from behind the counter. "Let’s go look. I think someone donated a book on the Bletchley Park codebreakers last week. I kept it in the back for you."
"Oh, you are an angel," he beams, his chest puffing out slightly. "My wife always said I had a mind for secrets. Though, between you and me, I can't even remember where I put my reading glasses half the time."
"Well, lucky for you, I have a mind for remembering where you put them," I tease, leading him toward the history section in the far corner.
As I search the shelves, my hand brushes against a heavy, leather-bound volume that someone left out of place.
It’s an old, unmarked journal with a lock that has been broken off.
I pause, my fingers tracing the cracked leather.
For a split second, a weird, sharp feeling shoots through my chest, a sudden, irrational spike of anxiety, like the feeling you get when you step off a curb you didn't see.
Get a grip, Lina. It’s just an old book.
"Here we go," I say, pulling the Bletchley Park book from the shelf and handing it to him. "This should keep you busy until the weekend."
"Perfect," he says, taking it with a smile. "Thank you, my dear. Tell that friend of yours in the back to stop laughing so loudly. I can hear her all the way from the biographies."
"I'll try," I laugh. "But once Maya starts reading a romance novel, there’s really no stopping her."