“All right, you lot, glasses and mugs back to the café please, and it’s the last call for books if you insist on purchasing them tonight.” Valerie is shouting from the first floor. Wally joins in with a chorus of barking. “Round up the upstairs stragglers, won’t you, Alexander? And for the love of all, Walter, you are in enough trouble today without causing that racket!”

I make my way downstairs, letting one or two patrons on my heels step around me. When I reach the first floor, Valerie is arguing with the remaining book club members.

“Aww, come on, Val,” the plaid man is saying. “We’ve only just started our discussion.” He says “discussion” like dees-cussion, with phony importance that I think is meant to mock Valerie’s imperial air.

“John, this group has been reading the same book for two months because you can’t get past the wine to talk about the plot. Out!”

As the group moves toward the back of the store with much good-natured grumbling, Valerie turns to me and opens her mouth to speak, but Alex interrupts her as he steps off the stairs.

“You’re still here?” He’s a breath shy of polite, and there’s something buried in his tone that I can’t decipher.

“Alexander! Where are your manners?”

Without the counter or piano blocking her, I can see Valerie is dressed in a long skirt and a frilly shirt that glimmers with layers of draped necklaces. Her ears glitter with two very large diamonds that match the sizable wedding ring on her left hand. She looks like she might be off to a gala or a movie premiere. She reeks of sophistication and grace, and I immediately feel underdressed and overwhelmed in my shirt and jeans.

“Mom, she—”

“I don’t care if she’s the White Witch or Moriarty. You do not speak to guests that way, Alexander, do you hear me?”

“But—”

“Butts are for sitting and cigarettes,” Valerie cuts him off. “Apologize.”

Alex rolls his eyes before turning to me. “Look, I’m sorry. But if you’re still here about the book thing, I’ve already told you: it didn’t come from here.”

“And which ‘book thing’ would this be, Alexander?” She rolls out his name like a song: Al-ex-an-der.

This conversation is a spinning top that is going to topple over at any moment, but my sluggish brain is slowly putting context clues together. Alex definitely knows something about the 101st copy that he’s not telling me, and he doesn’t want his mom to know about it.

“It’s nothing,” he tells Valerie, and then turns to me. “I’m really sorry about Wally earlier … and that we didn’t send the book.”

Exhausted from traveling and afraid to ask him more in front of Valerie, I shake my head to stop the brain fog from settling in.