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Quinn looked a little shocked or surprised, maybe, and Abby wanted to ask her to define that facial expression. She found herself wanting to knowallof Quinn’s expressions, but just asking for something like that seemed a little personal for knowing the woman for about a minute and a half.

“Uh… You wantthat?”

“Yes, I do,” she said. “How much is it?” Abby turned the picture over. “Only a quarter? Haven’t seen anything for a quarter in a long time. I don’t have any cash on me, though, and I don’t imagine you want to run a credit card for twenty-five cents.”

“You can just take it, if you want,” Quinn replied.

“No, I want to buy it.”

“It’s not worth me ringing it up.”

“Can I buy–”

The phone rang when Abby was about to ask if she could buy something else to make it worth Quinn ringing her up, which would’ve given them another few minutes of conversation, at least.

“Sorry, I’m the only one here. I need to take that,” Quinn told her. “But you can take it if you come back and maybe tell me why you wanted it.” She held her hand over the phone, letting it hover there as if waiting for Abby to answer before picking it up.

“Um… Okay. Yeah, I can do that,” she replied.

“Great. I’ll… see you then, yeah?”

“Yeah,” she confirmed.

Having heard her response, Quinn went to pick up the ringing phone and said, “Jordan Antiques.”

Abby looked down at the photo in her hand once more, met Quinn’s eyes right after, gave her a smile, got a sweet one back, and turned to go. While she very much wanted to stay, shop a little more, and wait for Quinn to get off that phone, she needed to get home quickly because the idea was coming to her, and if she didn’t get it written down soon, she’d lose the thread.

CHAPTER 3

For the second time now, Quinn had accidentally put the wrong shipping label on the box. She grunted at herself and printed another label from her label printer before she smacked it atop the incorrect label and checked the other three she’d already processed to ensure that she hadn’t messed them up, too.

“The candle holder goes to Nebraska. Check,” she said.

She found that talking to herself helped with the loneliness of working in the shop all day by herself. There were days when she had no customers at all, days when she had a couple of people come in to look around and maybe leave with a purchase, and then some weekend days, especially, when she’d get a rush of people flocking to the main street in town for their errands. Those were her favorite days because she usually made a little more money and sometimes made a big furniture sale, and the time went by faster because she was busier.

She’d have to consider today to be somewhat busy, with the guy from that morning dropping off the box and the whole one customer she’d had where she’d given something away instead of making an actual sale. Quinn had had the chance to make a few bucks because she was certain that Abby had been about to suggest buying something else to go with that photo, but instead,idiotQuinn had told her to just take it because the phone had been ringing, and if there had been a potential customer on that phone who wanted information about the shop, she hadn’t wanted to miss that call. Of course, it had turned out to be some disembodied robot voice asking her about her non-existent extended car warranty.

“Let me repeat this to any of your human overlords, voice recording: Ido not needan extended car warranty or anything else you might try to sell me,” she’d said before hanging up the phone.

She’d looked up just in time to see Abigail Foster Brennonleaving her shop and walking down the street, probably toward her car. Quinn had thought about walking out after her, but she couldn’t do that without first locking up the shop. Her keys had been in the back, though, behind the mountain of items in the way, so by the time she would’ve finally made it down the street, the woman would be gone anyway. Also, a stranger following Abby to her car might have gotten Quinn arrested or, at the very least, made Abby think that she was a creep.

After fixing the packages, Quinn stacked them over by the counter for the driver to pick up later. That, sometimes, was the only other time she spoke with a person in a day: when the driver came to pick up the shipment. And he was always in a rush because that was his job. He chatted with her while he scanned and put the boxes on his cart, sure, but she knew it was a pity conversation because the moment he was done, he was out the door, just smiling and nodding at Quinn as she was still saying something.

With nothing else left to pack or label, she sat behind the counter, staring at her laptop screen. She’d heard the name Abigail Brennon around town before, but for the life of her, she could not place where or why. So, she did a quick search, trying to see if that would jog her memory.

“Abigail Brennon… Best-selling author?” she asked herself.

Clicking on the first link she saw, she landed on an article about a debut novel that was, apparently, so good, it had been onThe New York Times Bestsellerlist for several weeks. Quickly, she went to her Amazon account, found the title in question, and purchased the e-book before picking up her phone to download it there so that she could read it when she got home. Then, she read more about Abigail Brennon, who was, it turned out, from this very town. According to the third article she pulled up, Abby, as she’d called herself in the shop earlier, had moved away for college and then to Los Angeles, so that left Quinn wondering if she was just in town visiting family.

“God, I hope not,” she said.

When Quinn had seen her on the shop’s camera, she’d felt some kind of force take over her body. She hadn’t doubted it when her feet just moved on their own; even when those same feet had tripped twice, once on the chair and another time on a box, which had been why it had taken her so long to get up front and talk to her. Abby was beautiful. Long brown hair, which she’d had pulled back in the shop, but on the pictures that Quinn had found online, she’d had her hair down. Both ways looked amazing to Quinn. Abby’s big brown eyes had looked soulful in the shop, but online, with the smile or contemplative look she had in her headshots, they looked a little… lost, if Quinn had to put a word to it. Either way, the woman was beautiful, and Quinn still couldn’t believe she’d given her a silly photo from a box and hadn’t just let the phone ring.

“You could’ve talked to her more, dumbass,” she scolded herself as she walked over to the box of pictures. “Which one did she even take?”

She hadn’t noticed because she’d been too busy staring at Abby and not the photo. Quinn figured it was one of the new ones she’d just got in because those had all been labeled with twenty-five cents, and Abby had mentioned that price, but there had been several photos, and it could’ve been any of them.

“Oh,” she let out.