“Starting a new project today?”

Trudy’s answer was a nod, her eyes not lifting from the fishing line she threaded through a string of shells. Sometimes Violet didn’t understand why her sister didn’t just buy a fresh spool of fishing line. It’d be so much easier to attach the shells and baubles together if she didn’t have to untangle the line first, but Trudy was adamant about using cast-off materials—items others had discarded along with left-behind shells and bits of broken wood. Forgotten, abandoned things. Trudy calmed them down and put them together and made them beautiful again.

Violet made her way through the shop, bringing it to life. She powered up the computer, filled the electric teakettle and flipped it on, then set the music to low and twisted the rod to open the window blinds. Mismatched chairs set up at round tables under the large bay window waited for the day’s customers. As the water in the kettle began to bubble, Violet propped open the front door to catch the last of the morning’s breeze before it turned too hot, Ella Fitzgerald crooned “East of the Sun,” and the shop was ready for the day.

Sugar Bend wasn’t exactly a tourist town—there were no outlet malls, high-end boutiques, or five-star restaurants—but it was known for its quaintness, its beauty, its winding roads draped with cool shade and Spanish moss, and its annual art festival held at the end of every summer. Vacationers from nearby Orange Beach, Gulf Shores, and Pensacola often made their way up the highway—usually well into their weeklong vacations when their skin needed a break from the sun—in search of the hidden turns and overlooked signs that took them to Sugar Bend, population 1,923. It wasn’t by accident that the roads were hard to find and the signs occasionally went missing.

Still, some made it in, and when they did, they faced two types of locals. One type bemoaned the out-of-towners who came for a dose of small-town charm to take back to their regular lives. They barked at the cars that went the wrong way down one-way streets, rolled their eyes at college spring breakers who had the nerve to order a half-caff, sugar-free, “could you add a double shot of espresso” mochaccinos at Joe’s Coffee on Cedar Street, and pretended to be cash-only when people pulled out their debit cards. Then there were those who welcomed strangers in with open arms, who were willing to share Sugar Bend’s beauty and magic with outsiders, who gave directions and let them pay however they liked.

For the most part Trudy and Violet fell into the second camp—after all, if someone wanted to take a piece of Sugar Bend with them when they left, why shouldn’t that be a hand-painted oyster shell with gold-leaf edges or a whimsical sculpture made from driftwood, sea glass, and coquina shells? Violet would wave good-bye as the visitors walked out of Two Sisters, content in the knowledge that while they might be taking home a small piece of Sugar Bend, the true secrets of the town—and of the river that flowed through it—were known only to the real locals. Those, like Trudy and Violet, who’d loved and lost in this place, who’d wept here, who’d been broken and fastened back together all along these shores and roads and under these shade trees.