She hadn't asked for references. Hadn't asked why I'd come back to West Valley Springs after all these years, or why I flinched every time the door opened too fast, or why I used my mother's maiden name on the application instead of my own. She just handed me an apron and said, "Coffee's in the back, training starts now."
I owed her more than I could ever repay. So I showed up early, stayed late, and pretended I was fine.
"Morning, Lucy." Joanna looked up from the register as I came through the back door, her reading glasses perched on her nose and her graying hair already escaping its bun. "You're early. Again."
"Couldn't sleep."
She made a sound that meant she didn't believe me but wasn't going to push. Not yet, anyway. Joanna had a way of waiting people out, letting silence do the work until you filled it with truths you hadn't meant to tell.
I tied on my apron and started the opening routine: chairs down, tables wiped, coffee brewing. The motions were automatic now, muscle memory carrying me through while my mind stayed somewhere far away.
By six, the first regulars started trickling in.
Harold Brennan, eighty-two years old, same booth every morning since his wife died. Black coffee, two sugars, and twenty minutes of telling me about his grandkids in Denver. I listened, nodded, asked questions about little Emma's soccer games and whether Tyler had decided on a college yet. Harold's face lit up the way it always did when someone remembered the details.
It cost me nothing to remember. And it meant everything to him.
Carla and Diane from the bookshop down the street, sharing a blueberry muffin and gossip abouttourists. I refilled their coffees without being asked, smiled at their jokes about the woman who'd tried to return a book she'd clearly read cover to cover. "Loved the ending," Carla mimicked, "but I'd like my money back." Diane snorted into her latte.
Father Miguel, who never ordered anything but hot water for his own tea bag, and who always left a five-dollar tip anyway. "For your patience," he'd said once, and I hadn't known how to tell him that patience was just another word for not having anywhere else to be.
The morning rush built and crested and faded. By nine, the café had settled into its mid-morning lull: a few laptop workers nursing cold drinks, a mom with a toddler destroying a scone, Harold still reading his newspaper in the corner booth.
I was restocking the pastry case when Joanna appeared at my elbow.
"The fifteenth," she said quietly. Not a question.
My hands stilled on the tray of croissants.
"Your mom," Joanna continued. "One year. That's coming up."
I'd forgotten. Not the date, never the date, but that Joanna knew. I'd mentioned it once, months ago, in a moment of weakness I still regretted. She'd caught me crying in the stockroom and I'd mumbled something about anniversaries, and because Joanna was Joanna, she'd remembered.
"I'm fine." The words came out automatic, smooth. I'd said them so many times they didn't even feel like lies anymore.
"Lucy."
"Really." I made myself look at her, made myself smile. "I'm okay. Just another day, right?"
Joanna's eyes were too knowing. She'd been married for thirty years, raised four kids, buried both her parents and a sister. She knew what grief looked like from the inside out.
But she also knew when to push and when to wait.
"If you need the day off?—"
"I don't." The last thing I wanted was time alone with my thoughts. "I'd rather work. Keeps me busy."
She nodded slowly. Didn't believe me, but let it go.
I turned back to the pastry case, arranging croissants I'd already arranged, and felt her watching me for a long moment before she walked away.
The lull stretched into afternoon. I cleaned things that didn't need cleaning, refilled salt shakers, reorganized the shelf of travel mugs we kept by the register. Anything to keep my hands moving, my mind empty.
But Joanna found me in the back during my break, sitting on an overturned milk crate with a cup of coffee I wasn't drinking.
"You've picked up four extra shifts this week." She leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed. "And you look like you haven't slept in a month."
"Business has been good. You needed the help."
