By now the bulletin board, which he’d heard about—everyone in Willard Park had heard about the bulletin board—was outside behind Lucy’s. She’d apparently replaced the small one on the porch with a big one and nailed it to a couple of two-by-fours. She’d also brought some tables and patio heaters out back. The tables were all full, and a number of other people were standing by the board, studying it. No one said hello to him as he passed by; a few people glared. Was there something about him up there? He wouldn’t dignify it by stopping to look. He went around front and up the porch steps. The three tables up there were all empty, with neither heater to warm nor bulletin board to titillate.

Nick tied Rex to the railing. He patted Rex’s head. “Good boy.” Nick didn’t like to leave him outside alone, but it was the law, a discriminatory one, he thought—why were dogs less deserving of the respite of a café than humans? “You’re a good, good boy,” he said and turned toward the café door without a backward glance, not wanting to see Rex’s mournful eyes and low, sad tail. Inside it was warm and there was music, something Dylan-like but not Dylan; it wasn’t loud enough to cover up Rex’s cries for help.

“Cold day,” Nick said to Lucy when he made it to the front of the line.

She looked at him as though he had just walked into her house without knocking.

WTF? Wasn’t he being a good neighbor, supporting a local business by coming here? Try as he might, he didn’t get this town. He stifled an urge to give her the finger and walk back out, and instead ordered the biggest hot chocolate on the menu—a White Elephant–size Mexican, because it was pricier, not to mention spicier—along with a lemon poppy seed muffin, lemon bars for the kids, and a beautiful frosted dog biscuit shaped like a house. Kill ’em with kindness—wasn’t that a thing?

“Do you have a mug?” Lucy said.

“A mug?”

“A mug.” She flicked a finger at the mugs on hooks, maybe a hundred of them, of varying shapes and sizes.

The answer was no. No, he didn’t have a mug. Was he supposed to bring it with him? In his experience, cafés provided not only food and drink, but dishes. That was kind of the point, he thought. “No. Can I buy one? Do you sell them?”

“Do you think you can buy everything, Cox? That everything is for sale?” Lucy snapped. The kid washing dishes snickered.