The plot of grass surrounding the fountain, still flowing strong, looked lush and green. To the left, the Printed Letter Bookshop, J. Barlow Antiques, Winsome Bank, Olive and Eve Designs. Even Jameson Sports, where every high school team purchased their gear at a 15 percent discount, stood in its usual place.
Then an incongruence caught her attention. She pressed a fist to her stomach. The Daily Brew’s hand-painted sign with its red poppy border had been replaced with burnished wood and black lettering. Andante.
Alyssa slowed and found a parking spot. She got out, stretched, and glanced toward the bookshop. Her mom still worked there, and Alyssa wasn’t ready to see her. But coffee? That she needed.
She pushed open the glass door and stalled. The interior knocked her off balance. Gone was the kitschy, comfortable world of the Daily Brew. The sights, smells, sounds, and even the tastes of honey and walnuts from Mrs. Pavlis’s baklava that filled the air and enveloped you upon entering had been scrubbed away by orange-scented cleaning oil. She wondered how Winsome was handling a coffee shop that rivaled any in San Francisco—and one without a pillow in sight. She wondered how she would handle it.
She let her eyes trail from the scored cement floor to the exposed beam ceiling and back again, hovering midway. Gone were the family photos and the big bulletin board where Mrs. Pavlis pinned Polaroids of customers. When the shop was packed and no one waited at the counter, she would weave her way through the tables, camera in hand. Customers clustered and grinned, then pored over themselves, laughing, as they stood in line ordering their coffees the next day.
Now the walls stood bare, except for a series of several small portraits near the front plate-glass window. Their broad strokes and abstract design gave just enough definition to hint at character and physicality, but not identity. They reminded Alyssa of Picasso’s Cubism works and her favorite class in college.
She tilted her head, staring at one with the sense that if she gazed hard enough, long enough, she’d recognize the subject.
“May I help you?”
Alyssa startled to find herself at the front of the line. “A medium drip coffee, please.”
She tipped her head back, noting how odd the motion felt. At five eleven, she rarely needed a full head tilt to see eye to eye with anyone.
“I’ve got the San Roque from Colombia or the Yirgz from Ethiopia. Which would you like?” The man’s voice was all eager friendliness, which somehow pulled Alyssa’s already frayed nerves.
“Your house favorite.”
While a valid question in San Francisco or Palo Alto, where coffee was bathed in unicorn tears and roasted on coals from Pompeii, it didn’t fit in Winsome. Alyssa let her tone tell him that.
“The house doesn’t have a favorite.” The man batted the tone back with a stiff smile. “Do you prefer clementines and cherry cola or lemon zest and vanilla?”
“You’re teasing.” Alyssa floated a quick smile to smooth his ruffled feathers.
He didn’t accept her smile, and his disappeared. “Not today.”
“Lemon zest.”
“Yirgz it is. Grab a seat and I’ll bring it over.”
“To go, please.”
Alyssa slid her card in the reader resting in front of her, then perched against the side counter to wait. There was now a fireplace! Although part of her wanted to scoff, she had to admit, even in June, the effect was appealing. It almost made her want to run three stores down and buy a book to curl up with. Almost.
The man set her coffee on the high wood counter next to her.
“This is nothing like what I remember.”
“I bought it a few months back, closed it for renovations, and reopened two days ago.” He lifted his gaze across the shop. “The style is a little different, but I hope it still feels welcoming.”
Alyssa noted how his voice lifted. Everything in her that chafed before melted in empathy. Not sympathy, as if she understood or pitied him, but true empathy—she identified with him. To try to make a home in the world, a spot that’s truly yours, yet still yearn for approval and acceptance, was tough stuff.
Yet his home had changed hers—and left her unsettled.
“It’s Winsome. You hardly needed to go to this much effort. You could pour swill and this town would come running, because there aren’t other options.”
He studied her, eyes widening.
“No, I mean . . . I grew up here, and this place was always packed, despite the fact that Mrs. Pavlis’s coffee wasn’t— Never mind.” She glanced around. Andante was decidedly not packed. “It may just take time.”
Embarrassed to linger longer, she grabbed her cup and fled the shop. She’d been rude—beyond rude. But she’d been surprised too. Sure, there were a few obstacles to a summer of relaxed bliss—no money, no job, and who knew what her dad would say when she landed on his doorstep? But even with all that, she had convinced herself she could make it. She could find sanctuary here.
But something about Andante had undone her carefully fabricated lie.
Chapter 4
Dropping back into her car, Alyssa watched customers come and go at the Printed Letter Bookshop. Her dad had taken her and her brother, Chase, there almost every Saturday when they were young to buy a book from Mrs. Carter, the owner.
Charlotte’s Web. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Pippi Longstocking. The Phantom Tollbooth . . . She grinned, remembering them all, especially The Phantom Tollbooth and Milo. The literature of math, she thought with a sigh as she started her car.
At North and Chestnut she turned west, away from town and away from the lake. A Pilates studio still stood next to Winsome Realty, and a new yoga place resided two storefronts away, beside the hardware store. After another right turn at the Presbyterian Church and a row of Craftsman-style houses, Alyssa pulled into the parking lot of a large redbrick apartment building.
There was no buzzer, no lock, just two quick flights of stairs opening from the lobby. Within minutes she stood outside 3E. She knocked. She waited. She knocked again before the door opened.
“Hello?!” Seth Harrison’s voice lifted and arced as he stared at his daughter. It was 10:00 a.m. on a Sunday morning and he looked as if he’d already run, read the paper, and probably cleaned his small apartment. He also looked as if caught between an exclamation and a question, but something in her eyes must have stopped him from saying more.
He stood silent for a beat, then lifted his hand. “Honey?” he whispered.
Alyssa bit her lip. She’d been wrong. The tears weren’t all gone. She stepped into his arms and got out only one word as they started again.
“Dad.”
“You can’t stay here.”
Of all the words Alyssa thought her dad might say, after hearing about all she’d been through, those four never occurred to her.
Seth Harrison had hugged his daughter, welcomed her inside, poured her another cup of coffee, and then settled into his one armchair to face her as she curled into the corner of his couch and relaxed for the first time in months.
“It wasn’t supposed to be like this.” She tucked a foot beneath her.
“Nothing ever turns out quite like we anticipate.”
Alyssa expected her dad’s voice to carry the same sad derision she’d heard for three years. She expected to find a fellow soul wallowing at the bottom, had imagined the two of them spending the summer commiserating over old-fashioneds, ice cream, and Cubs games. But something in his voice told her that reality was as altered as the Daily Brew to Andante. There was a resilience and an energy, a note of excited anticipation that, for the second time that morning, left her both surprised and unsettled.