It rained, almost always, in Bristlecone. It was not one of the things that had drawn Jules here—she wasn't naturally inclined to have strong feelings about any weather, but she'd definitely begun with a mild preference for dryness—but a year and a half into her new life it comforted her in a way. Sometimes she would go into the city to run errands or have a sniping argument with her parents, and all the unpredictability or, as the case may be, the painful predictability would wear her down, and when she came back Bristlecone would be damp and dreary and the same as always, welcoming her back into its chilly gray arms.
Today it was raining a lot harder, though. Wind rattled the shutters. She frowned into the mug she was cleaning and wondered if she ought to close up early.
The Cafe du Livre sat not quite in the center of Bristlecone, and at this stage it was split about evenly between bookstore and cafe. When Jules had first taken this job it had leaned heavily in favor of the bookstore, courtesy of the owner's predilection for hoarding weird old science books and burning eggs. Jules was not a professional chef by any means, except she guessed by the means that she was now paid to cook things, but she could handle breakfast food okay and she was an excellent baker, and now half the shop was populated by matching tables and chairs and neat little vases of flowers, and she watched with an eagle eye to make sure nobody was taking rare books near the food without paying for them first.
Business was usually slow in the middle of the week. Bristlecone was technically a village, though not quite small enough for Jules to think of it as one, because, as she would herself admit, she had no sense of scale, but in any case most of her customers were regulars and there weren't enough of those to fill up her day even on a regular Wednesday afternoon. On this particular day, the weather being what it was, the shop was completely empty except for her, the light oddly stark and white against the thunderclouds outside the windows, the silence and stillness making the place feel almost timeless.
Roman, the owner, had disappeared into a back room probably an hour ago, and Jules hadn't heard a peep out of him since. Maybe he'd slipped out the back and gone home early in case the storm got worse. She was not actually sure where he lived, and it was plausibly far enough to warrant such a thing, although she didn't think he had a car so it couldn't be that far. But surely he would have said something to her in that case, and probably told her to go home early too. He insisted on worrying about her for reasons beyond her comprehension.
The mug squeaked under her sponge as she battled a stubborn coffee stain, thunder boomed, windows shook, and, improbably, the bell rang to indicate a customer entering the store.