“Unlocking the doors now,” Jefferson announced. He wore a heavy black-and-green plaid wool shirt, despite the fact that it was the first week in September and seventy-five degrees outside. His long, bushy brown beard looked like it would make a nice home for a family of squirrels.

An excited murmuring throng waited outside on the sidewalk. Jefferson unlocked the glass door and held it open to let them in.

Roy and Wendy had moved to Cobble Hill, the charming brownstone Brooklyn neighborhood just south of Brooklyn Heights, from London almost three weeks ago. People from the neighborhood had actually stood around with their children and dogs and watched the movers moving in their furniture and boxes of possessions with great interest. Wendy wasn’t bothered. She was too busy unpacking boxes and giving orders. Roy watched the neighbors watching them. It was his first inkling that they hadn’t moved to the big city at all, but to a very small village where nothing went unnoticed.

Jefferson’s neat rows of folding chairs filled up fast. There was a lot of hugging. Everyone in the audience seemed to know one another. Roy didn’t know anyone. His agent and editor were both based in London. He hadn’t even told them about the event. Wendy was his agent for this one, bless her.

Roy sat stiffly on his stool in a state of faux alertness. Voices faded in and out. Someone touched his elbow. A copy of Orange, his most popular novel—the novel that had been adapted into an acclaimed HBO series starring Frances McDormand, Drew Barrymore, Kristen Stewart, Kevin Dillon, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, and Hugh Grant and had aired for four seasons—was placed across his stool-braced knees. He blinked and clasped the book between his hands. He would read the part about the firemen. It was recognizable from the TV show, a bit racy, and always made him laugh. His agent, a bright twenty-eight-year-old who had inherited the post when Roy’s longtime agent died, said it was “endearing” that his own writing still made him laugh. He thought it best to endear himself to his new neighborhood if he could.

A shadow passed in front of him.

“Thank you, friends and neighbors. Welcome to your new bookstore, Smith Corner Books. It’s been a lifelong dream of mine to open a bookstore and I’m thrilled so many of you are here this evening,” Jefferson began.

Roy shifted on his stool. It was almost time.