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Sheffield was the backbone of the bookstore.
    Kitsy had bought Driftwood Cottage from the Logan family twelve years ago. She had seen the opportunity not only to buy her favorite cottage on the beach and open a bookstore, but also to present her pregnant, unwed daughter with a chance to live her own life. During the first days after the news of Riley’s pregnancy had settled into the marrow of the Sheffield home, the long and tearful conversations at the kitchen table had ended in Kitsy’s offering her personal dream of owning a small coastal bookstore. Kitsy’s aspiration became Riley’s refuge.
    A few months after Brayden’s birth, the transformation from Logan family home to fully equipped bookstore had been completed. Driftwood Cottage Bookstore had opened its doors to the town of Palmetto Beach.
    Riley and her baby had moved into the upstairs apartment. She and her mother struck a deal in which Kitsy paid for the renovations and the down payment, but Riley must rely on income from the store to pay the mortgage and her own living expenses. In her worst moments, Riley wondered if the arrangement reflected her manipulative mother’s bizarre attempt to keep control over her eldest daughter.
    Kitsy came to the store every day before noon, dressed as though she were arriving at the luncheon of the year. She flitted from customer to customer, checking on book club picks and reviewing book orders. Her favorite customers—the woman who only read books with blue covers; the man who only read nonfiction with dogs in the story; the mother who read only books without curse words—were the customers who waited for Kitsy. They didn’t take advice from Riley or Ethel.
    The only nonnegotiable demand Kitsy made was that she must be present when the sales reps from each publishing house made their pitches for the next season’s books. Riley had bristled and fought this request until she realized that her mama had a gift for knowing and understanding the needs and wants of her customers. Mama would find an obscure book in the Penguin catalog, know her clientele would like it, and a hundred copies would be sold within the first month of the book’s release.
    Yet Kitsy wasn’t around when it came time to pay the bills. Through the years, they had added up, and each month brought an exacting of blood from Riley’s heart—fear that this would be the month when she could no longer pay enough bills to keep afloat, and her mama would sell the store. They both hoped the week of anniversary festivities would bring in enough revenue to tide them over for at least the next year. Now Riley had a new and more urgent reason to make this week a success—Mama’s ill health.
    Riley leaned down next to the stairs, which led to the bookstore below, and straightened a stack of fallen books she had meant to take back downstairs. After she yanked her long, unruly hair into a ponytail, she opened her son’s bedroom door and stared at his sleeping form. He had kicked off his covers and was curled in a ball with his T-shirt and gym shorts scrunched around his body. When Gamma had given him tractor jammies for Christmas this past year, he’d informed Riley “no more jammies.”
    His alarm clock screeched, yet he didn’t stir. This boy knew how to sleep hard and long, and Riley imagined that he grew with every passing hour, even while unconscious. She turned off his alarm clock, kissed his warm cheek. “Time to get up, buddy. Only one day left of school . . . You can do it.”
    He groaned without opening his eyes. The shadowed forms of baseball trophies, schoolbooks and fishing poles seemed to capture his boyhood. Riley’s heart filled with gratitude.
    “Mom, call me in sick.”
    “No way. Get up.” She shook the bed and resisted the urge to kiss him one more time. She flicked on his overhead and bedside lights. “Now.”
    “I hate school.”
    “Oh, well. Last day.” She headed to the kitchen to make his favorite: scrambled eggs and bacon