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clock store, the hardware store, and the rare book shop run by the mysterious Nathan Keane—Nathan Keane was a century old, and he had long, unkempt hair, kept strange hours, and nursed a story of love gone wrong. 
    Echo had all the quaint white angles you’d expect in any American town older than most. It looked clean and sweet and timeless, especially in the bright yellow sun. And while I spent a good deal of time dreaming about leaving, sometimes I kind of liked my town. 
    The café was owned by the same Italian family who ran the pizza joint, so it was the genuine thing. On nice days, you could sit outside at one of the round black tables, and drink Italian joe, and stare at beautiful Gianni as he steamed milk, and feel like you were a little bit civilized. 
    I’d been drinking coffee at the café since I was twelve. The summer Freddie died, I spent almost every day going back and forth between the library and the coffee shop, and could often be seen, I supposed, holding an espresso cup in one hand and a Brontë sister in the other. Adults would sometimes walk by and give me a look. But my parents wouldn’t have cared that I drank coffee so young,even if they’d noticed,which they hadn’t. Freddie wouldn’t have let me, but my parents . . . my parents didn’t like to intrude. It was one of the things about them. They didn’t believe in rules. Not if those rules interfered with what they considered to be my own private matter—like the private matter of me drinking a height-stunting caramel-brown beverage if I wanted to. 
    Are they coming back? I asked, as I often did. Freddie, are they ever coming back?  
    Yes, came the answer. Yes, yes, yes. You just hang on, Vi.  
    We ordered lattes to go from Maddy, even though we just had coffee at the guesthouse. I smiled at her, but she was looking at Luke. She had round cheeks and long eyelashes and glossy black eyes,and I’m guessing she thought she was in love, or something close enough to it that she didn’t care. 
    Luke pointed at her and smirked. “You staying out of trouble?” 
    She laughed. “No.” 
    “That’s my girl.”And then Maddy smiled at him like he was the sun coming out on a cloudy day. 
    “You can do better,” I said, but not loud enough for her to hear. Freddie told me that a person has to pick and choose her battles. And this wasn’t mine, I guess. 
    River and I took our joe back outside and I sipped at mine and mused about how nice it was to drink coffee with a person you like. And I liked River. I looked at him from the corner of my eye, standing in his linen pants on the sidewalk, graceful and long and looking like he owned the town. In a good way. I liked how he narrowed his eyes before he sipped his espresso,as if he didn’t know what to expect. 
    So I drank my coffee and looked around Echo’s pretty town square,River at my side,until a gaunt man with thin gray hair appeared from around the corner and stumbled onto the green grass. He stood there, looking up, glaring at the sky as if the sun had insulted him. It was Daniel Leap, wearing the brown wool suit he always wore. He was drunk. He was always drunk. Usually I tried to feel sorry for him. But at that moment he was a dark splotch on the otherwise lovely view of my town, and so I hated him, suddenly, with the fast anger you get at a spill on a beautiful dress or a drowned fly in a perfect, cool glass of lemonade. 
    “Daniel Leap has ruined our view,” I said. 
    “Who?” River asked. 
    “Daniel Leap. He’d be the town eccentric, except we already have Nathan Keane, the heartbroken man who runs the bookstore. So Daniel Leap is the town drunk.” 
    “I like town eccentrics,” River replied. 
    I smiled at that. 
    Daniel caught sight of me then. “Violet White,” he shouted across the square.He didn’t come over; just stood on the grass, swaying and pointing, his words slurring until they ran together like paint colors dripping down a canvas. 
    “Violet