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He stood on the sidewalk in front of the Merrybrook Market, Rick Brennan visible through the glass, moving between shelves with the focused energy of a man who took inventory personally, and thought about this.

He had walked out of The Brook without his coffee. He had walked out of The Brook, which he went to every morning at seven forty-five, which was the first and most nonnegotiable part of his day, without the coffee he had gone there specifically to get. He had left his travel mug, the one he’d had for eleven years, the one Roy had given him the last Christmas before he passed, the dented steel one that Molly filled without asking, sitting on the counter.

Because a woman with paint on her hand had walked into him.

He stood on the sidewalk for another moment.

He went back.

* * *

The Brook was still doing its morning when he pushed the door open, the bell, the warmth, the smell of coffee and Joseph’s cinnamon rolls, and Molly looked up from the register and said nothing, which was pointed.

His travel mug was on the counter where he’d left it.

Next to it, wrapped in parchment paper, was a cinnamon roll.

He looked at the cinnamon roll. He looked at Molly.

Molly was looking at the register with the focused attention of a woman doing crucial work that could not be interrupted.

He picked up the travel mug. He looked at the parchment wrapped roll for another moment. Joseph’s, obviously, the smell alone was unmistakable, warm and sweet and the kind of thing that made the next hour feel manageable before you’d even taken a bite. He picked it up.

“How much?” he said.

“Already covered,” Molly said, to the register.

He stood there.

“Molly.”

“Mm.”

“Who...”

“Have a good morning, Shane.”

He looked at her. She looked at the register. The morning went on around them, completely indifferent.

He picked up both and walked to the door.

He paused with one hand on it, the same door, the same pause, the second time this morning, and looked back at the counter, at the spot where the travel mug had been sitting. At Molly, who was still looking at the register with extraordinary concentration.

He didn’t ask again.

He went out into the morning.

* * *

The walk back to the hardware store was four minutes. He did it with his travel mug in one hand and the plate in the other and the cool morning air on the back of his neck and considerably more to think about than he’d had on the way over.

The art teacher. The whole town had been telling him about her for three days. Molly twice, Rory for fifteen minutes about survey maps, Margaret Finley with a picture hook she hadn’t needed. He’d heard enough to form a general impression: new, warm, the kind of person the town liked immediately, which Merrybrook did sometimes with certain people, just decided on someone before they’d had a chance to earn it.

He’d thought, in the abstract, that he’d introduce himself eventually. When it was natural. When there was a reason.

Instead she had walked into him and put coffee on his shirt and apologized nine times and left a cinnamon roll next to his forgotten travel mug without leaving her name.

He counted the apologies because he’d had nothing else to do while standing there. Nine was a lot of apologies for one incident. It suggested a person who meant them.