“Good morning,” she whispers. “Mr. Writer is still asleep.”

I smile and nod and we quietly get out of the house and head over to the café.

“You’re quiet,” she says when we’re making the first coffee pots and about to open.

“I am?” I ask.

I’m dying to tell her. Dying. I hate lying to Celine because I’ve come to like her in the short time since I started working here. I remember Alisa’s words and calm down. I can’t just tell her what’s going on. It’s too risky. I have to think things through.

I wonder when I’ll be seeing Ethan again. Tonight? I hope he’s not so uncomfortable with me in the house that he decides to move out or something. If I don’t have access to him, this will be much harder. And it’s already hard.

Our morning regulars come in and I spend a few minutes talking to Gaby. Gabrielle is her actual name. In her early forties, she recently went through a trial separation that turned into a divorce. Every morning she seems to be on the verge of either crying or having a meltdown and yelling at us. Both instances happened in the last two days. After each outburst, she apologized profusely to both Celine and me, and told us she’s under a lot of pressure. Her soon-to-be ex-husband is trying to take their daughter away, accusing Gaby of working too much and not being a good mother, and she might also lose the apartment. The apartment she paid for and made a home for the three of them.

“He cheated on me. He cheated on me and he still finds a way to make me feel guilty about everything,” she complains when I ask how things are going. “Hit me up,” she says as she props herself up on the counter and I know it’s time for a triple espresso with ice and lots of sugar. “Nothing to eat today?” I ask, still trying to convince her to have something. She looks like a ghost, skinny, with dark circles under her eyes. “I’m not hungry, thanks, Maya.” Gaby is a smart, educated, well-traveled woman with a good job and a lot of bad luck. Celine told me this will be her third divorce and if it wasn’t for the child, she doesn’t think Gaby would take it so bad. The house, the money, she’ll recover. But now she has a three-year-old daughter and things are different than they used to be.

“She loves that little girl and dotes on her,” said Celine to me. “Her name is Annalise and she’s adorable and so well behaved. I have no doubt her husband is a leech who married her for money and now he’s using the child as leverage to get as much as possible of it.”

“That’s so sad,” I say.

Celine nods. “Gaby owns a couple of fashion stores in the Bay Area and is doing excellently. She just makes bad decisions when it comes to her love life.”