As usual, Edison was struck by the way the town council had managed to keep the ornate gravity of the Van Deever’s mansion—all dark, heavy wood and stained glass and ornate tilework where it wasn’t needed—with the utility of the services provided there. He waved to the local postmistress, Judith Kim, a short, sturdy Korean-American woman whose unflappable manner and carefully styled salt-and-pepper bob intimidated Edison on several levels. She stood behind the mail counter, sorting the town’s limited post into small piles. The post office was just off the dining room, in the former butler’s pantry, with the locking silver closet used as storage for locals’ packages. The former dining room held a bank of shiny new post office boxes.
As a partial federal facility, it was barely grandfathered in under historical consideration, but someday, Postmistress Kim had told Edison, the town would have to build something new. He could see it in the resigned way she waved back, like she knew her time in the cozy, quirky cubby, just under the public works office (housed upstairs in the former guest wing) was limited. Edison wondered if Judith resented that the library never suffered the same uncertainty.
If anything, the library stood to expand if the post office relocated. Unlike some small towns, which were seeing a decline in library use, the Starfall Point Public Library saw a bustling business. There was only one bookstore on the island, and it focused more on tourist interests like local history. Ebooks and streaming services hadn’t quite taken off for the aging part of the island’s population, who favored “something they could hold.”
As difficult as it was to work in this hodgepodge of spaces that didn’t quite suit their purpose, this building certainly fit Starfall Point, a place that was like no other. Edison had barely invested any thought into moving here when the opportunity presented itself. He realized now the online posting had only been made public because the law required that outside applicants be considered. He’d needed the solace he could find here, craved it desperately when he’d stumbled off the ferry under a haze of anti-anxiety meds. And he could do the work he loved here, the work his family barely understood.
As Edison emerged into the bright light of a dwindling afternoon, he took a deep breath, imagining that he could smell the lilacs that were soon to come. Springs in Michigan were enough to make you forget the brutal snow. And the light here felt cleaner somehow, washed by the proximity to water he pretended didn’t exist.
It would get more crowded, the closer they crept to Memorial Day, and he would have to adjust to the thunder of thousands of feet on these charming but worn cobblestone streets. He tried not to resent the annual intrusion of tourists onto this little rock. He knew the money they brought to the island was an important part of keeping them all afloat throughout the rest of the year. But like most locals, by the time Labor Day rolled around, he was ready for the rentals to empty, the streets to quiet and life to get back to normal. But he supposed as he took in the scene of blooming green life and quaint chocolate box houses, he couldn’t blame people for wanting to take a little piece of this place to tuck into their pockets and take home.
He moved past the multitude of souvenir shops where those crowds could do just that and decided against buying flowers at Starfall Point Blooms. He’d learned very little from his father, having largely avoided anything to do with the Held family business empire. But he knew that offering too much to someone you were trying to approach for a deal automatically put you at a disadvantage. So he simply crossed towards Lilac Street, ironically bloomless, trying to assemble something like an opening gambit for this unnamed niece.
A few steps later, he thought maybe he saw Ilsa Lundgren glaring at him from the patio of Starfall Grounds. Frowning, he craned his neck around, his steps slowing. Ilsa was one of the founding members of the ladies’ reading circle. She had been the one to motion for his rehiring the previous year at the library board meeting. He had to be imagining things.
He raised a hand to greet Betty Cortez, who ran Starfall Point Pages, the history-focused bookshop. She raised a sable brow and turned on her heel without returning the greeting.
Well, that was weird. Usually, he was one of Betty’s favorite customers. Even when he didn’t find something to take home with him, she’d find some title he hadn’t thought of reading yet. But today, she’d just turned away. Maybe she hadn’t recognized him? That seemed unlikely. Living amongst a constantly changing crowd, locals eventually developed an aptitude for lightning-fast facial recognition. It had gotten Edison out of (and sometimes into) a lot of awkward situations over the years.
Normally, his interactions with the older ladies went more along the lines of his working relationship with Margaret—friendly, purpose-driven, occasionally snarky. The only lady he hadn’t shared that dynamic with had been Nora Denton. She could keep him on his toes when it came to verbal sparring, and he’d respected that. But she’d always held him at a not-quite-polite distance, even farther than she’d held everybody else around her. Now, it seemed like Nora’s sour attitude towards him was spreading.
Maybe Edison was imagining things.
With one foot off the curb, he turned back toward Starfall Point Pages to see if maybe Betty had come back out—maybe she’d realized she’d accidentally snubbed him? And with that one moment of inattention, Edison damn near got run over by what was essentially a thirteen-person tandem bike.
“Jeez!” he shouted, stumbling back onto the sidewalk. Mitt Sherzinger, the burly bike tour captain who boasted the thickest thighs in town, lumbered by with three rows of fairly fit tourists helping him move the behemoth that was Mitt’s Mega-PedalCart, patent pending. Because Mitt had basically welded the thing together with no plan and a lot of ambition. Edison had no idea how the man steered the thing. It probably had something to do with his thigh muscles.
“Folks, one of the pleasures of living in such a small community is how often you run into your neighbors,” Mitt announced over the little bike helmet-mounted mic, which he funneled banter into constantly over the course of his ninety-minute island tour. Mitt was known for his plethora of “dad jokes” to keep his customers entertained during this limited money-making window. At least, Mitt liked to believe that, and no one had the heart to tell him otherwise.
“Good thing our esteemed librarian Edison here is so light on his feet,” Mitt added, giving a jaunty wave over his shoulder. “Sorry about that, Edison!”
Edison waved him off, a frozen grin pasted on his face, to avoid offending the tourist bystanders. Starfall Point had leaned into its walkable nature with a decades-old ban on cars in the more historic parts of town. And as a result, the lack of traffic and pollution became part of the island’s charming tourist draw.
Owning a car on the island was honestly too troublesome to be worth driving the short distances. Many islanders sustained themselves with bicycle power alone. Trips that couldn’t be accomplished on foot were done with the help of pedicabs, which meant Mitt’s services were always in high demand.
What had Edison been thinking of before he was almost mowed down by Mitt and his oversized thigh muscles?
Right, how to approach Nora Denton’s (most likely) halfway-to-elderly and (even more likely) embittered niece. He supposed that Hi, I tried over and over to get your aunt to let me into the Shaddows’ family home, but she takes her responsibilities far too seriously and now I’m hoping you’ll help me find a way into the house, maybe behind her back would also be tipping his hand.