Wind Chime Café (A Wind Chime Novel) by Sophie Moss Read Free Book Online Page B

shooting, and Taylor hadn’t spoken a word since it happened. She’d been curled up on the sofa in their tiny D.C. apartment with this same box in her lap, picking out the bells and making a pile on the cushion beside her.
    All Annie had been able to think about in the days following the shooting was getting Taylor out of D.C. and taking her somewhere safe and far away from that school and those memories. When she’d made the initial offer on the building on Heron Island, her co-workers had sat her down and told her she was overreacting. They’d told her to give it time.
    But she’d already made up her mind.
    Between the small amount she’d put away from each paycheck, and selling off the rest of her mother’s paintings after she’d passed away last year, Annie had had just enough for the down payment. But she didn’t have anything to fall back on now. Every future payment was going to have to come from income that she earned.
    Annie ran her fingers over the ginkgo leaves in her lap. Chase Townsend had made it perfectly clear on the phone earlier that the bank had made a gamble based on the assumption that Will would sell his grandparents’ property to the resort company and tourism would pick up on the island. If that wasn’t going to happen, neither was Annie’s dream restaurant.
    “Taylor,” she said slowly. “I’ve been thinking…”
    Taylor glanced up.
    Annie took a deep breath. “I’ve been thinking that maybe we should open a café instead of a French restaurant.”
    “Why?”
    “Well,” Annie said, reaching into the box for a piece of purple ribbon, “if we opened a café, I’d be free at night. We’d be able to hang out together.”
    Taylor’s eyes lit up. “Cafés are only open during the day?”
    “This one would be,” Annie said. “We could keep the downstairs basically as it is now. We’d have to find some fun things to decorate the walls and maybe pick up a few more tables and chairs, but we wouldn’t have to live through months of messy renovations.”
    “Can we keep the walls pink?” Taylor asked.
    Annie sat back, surprised. “You want to keep the walls pink?”
    Taylor nodded.
    Annie wasn’t in love with the color pink, but if it made Taylor happy, they could always repaint later. “I guess we could try it.”
    Annie’s gaze shifted to the window, where the leaves of the giant oak tree were beginning to change from green to orange. She didn’t know the first thing about opening a café, but she did like the idea of being home for Taylor at night. It was possible, if they worked fast, that they could open in two weeks.
    They just needed to come up with an irresistible menu, a cute name, charming décor, and a fantastic chef.
    “What should we name it?” Taylor asked.
    “I don’t know,” Annie said. “It’s got to be something cute and catchy.”
    Taylor held up her strand of yarn. The charm bracelet, three reindeer bells, and a silver whistle dangled from the yarn. They twirled in the wind blowing through the window, making a soft sweet sound as they knocked into each other. “How about Wind Chime Café?
    A fishing boat cruised up the channel. Annie looked back out the window. Over the churn of the motor, she could hear a faint tinkling…but not from the chimes Taylor held. It was as if they were coming from outside. As if they were right under the window, hanging from the roof of the porch.
    But she knew there weren’t any wind chimes down there.
    “We can decorate the porch with them,” Taylor said.
    Outside, the wind chimes sang louder. Annie turned back to her daughter. “Wind Chime Café it is.”

 

     
     
    W ill strolled into Rusty’s a little after five o’clock. The bar was already packed. Men in sun-bleached jeans and T-shirts sat on the barstools, drinking Budweiser and Miller Lite. Families with young children were tucked into the booths facing the windows and a group of women sat outside on the deck, sipping wine and watching the sailboats