The waves towered over him and he knew. He knew he wasn’t getting out of this. No, he was going to die here alone on the ocean, away from everything and everyone he loved. He wanted his mother so badly it hurt. He wanted her to tell him everything would be alright. And as the […]

Against her better judgment, Iris was back at Town Hall. No matter what she heard from Vivien or the ghost she’d seen last time, she had to go check the basement. If the papers were underground, then maybe they were in the basement of the most obvious place they could be. And if Iris skipped […]

“It’s one leak, how hard could it be to find?” Noah muttered to himself as he lay on his back underneath the enormous three basin sink in the back of the Limerick. “Oh yeah, I’ll be done in twenty minutes.” It had been an hour and a half by this point and he wasn’t sure […]

Cleo had always been a practical songwriter. She’d never really relied on “the muses” or divine inspiration to get what she needed. But right now, all of her usual methods were failing her. She needed an album to go with “Pull You Back,” and it had to be written around the song itself. Alright, this […]

Andrew hummed softly along to the radio as he stocked the shelves at Forest Charms. It was a quiet morning and he was here alone, though Iris was on her way back soon. Luckily, there hadn’t been too many customers today and nearly all of those orders were going through the mail. The Christmas rush […]

The next morning, Iris was back at the Countess. She hadn’t looked through their collection for the missing pages yet, focusing all of her attention on the likely locations in town. But she couldn’t get back into Town Hall to sneak into the basement yet, Andrew had the store for the next two hours, and […]

Despite the fact that the internet in Iris’s shop was better than pretty much anywhere else in New Winslow that wasn’t directly downtown, it still dragged sometimes. But it was strong enough that after a sputtering start, the video chat program opened and she could see Roman’s face come into view. “Roman!” she exclaimed, as […]

The automatic doors slid open, causing Roman to jump backward in the empty doorway. Celine looked at him and he tried not to let himself feel embarrassed. It was an automatic door. There had been automatic doors in grocery stores twenty years ago, right? Of course there were, they’d been around for nearly a century. […]

“Mia, sweetheart, no. Stay away from that.” Olivia was alone at the Limerick. Well, except for Mia, who she’d had to bring with her again. There was too much to do for her to skip today, even with opening day still weeks out. When to open had been the subject of a bit of heated […]

Last time Iris had attempted to speak to Rosalind Alderidge, it had gone horribly wrong. Which was exactly why she wasn’t telling Andrew what she was doing tonight. Not that he’d asked. He was a little distracted this week, with so much in the works to reopen the cafe in the Limerick Building. Andrew owned […]