Rinn knew she was technically still on register duty. She was supposed to stay there and not move. She was supposed to deal with any questions from customers by sending them around to whoever was floating on the store floor. She was supposed to stay put.

Rinn had not stayed put.

She was wandering around the first floor, trying to make the most of the bright summer light as it flooded through the windows. She had gotten an excellent repeating, looped video of the roller girl, just swaying lightly from where she dangled from the ceiling.

Rinn looked back over all the content that she’d made in the past hour—largely just rows and rows of books. Some of it she’d have to edit at home. But most of it would be perfect to post with just a few tweaks that she could manage on her phone.

Rinn scanned the first floor of the store with her gaze. She could see most of it from her vantage point. Over in the literary fiction section was that French lady with the big, dark hair who was obsessed with Zora Neale Hurston and Rabih Alameddine. Rinn could capture a photograph without getting the woman’s face in the frame, though, so she snapped it quickly.

Rinn tried not to take identifying pictures of people without asking them first. The backs of their heads were, in her mind, fair game. But faces and eyes and even a tattoo—she wouldn’t take a photo including those without permission.

In the children’s section was a mother in her twenties that Rinn regularly noticed reading and flipping through books on running a small business while her son read picture books. But Rinn was even more cautious about taking photographs of children, so she went up to the woman, despite never having spoken to her before.

“Excuse me,” asked Rinn, once she reached the seated woman and her child.

The woman startled, nearly jumping off the child-size stool that she sat on. She was holding not a business book this time but The World Atlas of Whisky. “Oh, I’m sorry. Do I need to put this back? I don’t have to read it here. It’s just, he’s reading and I thought—”

But Rinn cut her off before the woman could finish. “No, no. Go ahead. I was just wondering if I could take your picture for some bookstore promo material. I didn’t want to get you and your son in it without your permission. I mean, I should probably ask everyone, but I’m so used to being on camera that sometimes I forget. I won’t put his face in it. He’s just tucked into that book and so were you—tucked into your book, I mean—and it was just a really beautiful moment.”