Sherri’s father, Lane, had been a confirmed bachelor until he met Muriel. He was much older than her friends’ fathers, and he was also quieter and slower. Unlike the sturdy German and Eastern European farmers in the area, he was small and balding, with bushy white eyebrows and an Adam’s apple that pointed out of his neck like an elbow. He’d been better suited for intricate machines and the steady beat of time than the erratic natures of people. Sherri used to love working by his side while the chorus of clocks hanging on pegboard walls dinged and chimed behind them. He didn’t talk much, but he did love to read poems out loud to Sherri, especially the ones that made him sad, as if sadness were a form of pleasure for him. Rilke was his favorite: “Everything is far and long gone by,” he would say at the end of the day, and “harry the last few drops of sweetness through the wine.” By the time Sherri was twelve, she could dismantle, clean, and reassemble the whole movement on a watch and recite the first section of The Sonnets to Orpheus from memory.

The shop had been silent since his death. Between the slits in the shades, she could see the empty cash register yawning open, and boxes of yellowed paperwork and his remaining inventory of crowns, gaskets, rotors, hands, and wristbands gathering dust. The Chamber of Commerce was always after her mother to wash the porous cream city bricks and rent out the neglected storefront space, fearing it made the town of East Troy appear less prosperous—what a joke. They finally hung a FOR LEASE sign in the window and hadn’t had a single bite in over a year.

Sherri’s mother had suggested she open a “this and that” store in the space, selling stationery, pinecone wreaths, painted pots, and other useless stuff she referred to brightly as “bric-a-brac.” “People will come from all over,” she’d said, but Sherri had no desire to hawk useless junk, because she had other plans—plans that hinged on Roberta’s arrival.