She carried her tea to the counter and opened the register. The letter sat in her cardigan pocket like a coal — warm, present, inescapable.I heard you recommend it last Tuesday.
She thought about the bookshop on a Tuesday afternoon. The regulars she could name without trying — Dot with her cozy mysteries, Oliver stopping in on his way between farm calls, the retired teachers who treated the armchairs as a subscriptionservice. But there were others, too. Walk-ins. People she'd served without cataloguing. A mom group who'd browsed the romance section while she was talking and she'd never looked up to see.
Through the glass, the navy cart sat square and sure in its usual spot, the GALLAGHER lettering visible from where she stood. On the board, Freddie had written in big, blocky letters the day's specials. Maple Bourbon Latte. Toasted Hazelnut Cortado. Dark Roast + Cardamom — limited.
Freddie had been nearby on Tuesday. Close enough to hear. But the lettering was all wrong. And he barely glanced at her during all six weeks of the shop being opened. And he didn't present himself as a read man, not when he barely spoke.
Whoever her secret admirer was — this man who wrote to her in a hand that came undone at the feelings, who quoted films she loved and noticed details she hadn't known anyone was watching, who had stood somewhere in this shop or near it last Tuesday afternoon and listened to her talk about a book with the careful attention of someone who was really, truly paying attention — whoever he was, he was real. He was specific. He was someone she could find.
The bell above the door chimed, and Mrs. Petersen came in from the cold, unwrapping a scarf and announcing that she needed something for a rainy weekend.
"I have exactly the right thing," she said, and got down to work.
