“We can work out the details some other day when my brain is actually… you know… functioning.” Cassie finished off the rest of her soda.
The doorbell jingled again when a customer walked in. Rhonda smiled a greeting. Returning her attention to her visitor, she asked, “Are you going to stay in your dorm for a while?”
Cassie put her soda on the counter and slumped back in her chair. “No, I actually made a decision about that. For now, I’m going to move into Sybil’s place. Take a few months and then decide if I want to go back to school in the fall.”
“I suppose you need a timeout.” Rhonda’s voice sounded worried, but she made no other comment.
Changing the topic abruptly, Cassie asked, “How did you know you wanted to be an antique dealer?”
“How did I what?” Rhonda wasn’t prepared for the shift.
“I mean were you always sure about what you wanted to be?”
“Oh, I see.” Rhonda smiled knowingly. “I guess you must be feeling a little lost about where you’re headed.”
“Something like that.”
“Well, I suppose it was just destiny.”
“What?” Cassie sat bolt upright in her chair. There was that word again.
Rhonda registered surprise at the girl’s reaction. “Everybody has a destiny, Cass.”
“I don’t,” the girl said dismissively. “I haven’t even picked a major yet.”
“Sure, you do. You just don’t know what it is. The destiny, I mean.”
“How did you know?” Cassie urged.
Rhonda turned away for a moment to see what her prospective customer was up to. The woman was circling a Chippendale armchair. The shopkeeper turned her attention back to the conversation. “I had a summer job all through college in an antique store. I discovered that I liked it. After I graduated, the owner asked me to stay on full time.”
“Sounds to me as if you fell into the business by chance and just stayed,” Cassie observed.
“It might seem that way, but the arrangement always suited me just fine. I suppose if I’d been unhappy I would have tried something else, but I never wanted to. That’s why I said it was destiny.”
Cassie furrowed her brow, not following.
“I think it’s like paddling a canoe,” Rhonda explained. “If you’re traveling with the current, it all feels easy and fun, and that’s what following your destiny is like. If you decide to fight your destiny, it’s like trying to paddle upstream against the current which is going to make you miserable.”
Cassie felt exasperated. Rhonda was no help at all. “You think God decided ahead of time that you were supposed to own a store, and you decided it was easier to go with the flow than to fight it? Is that what you’re telling me?”
The older woman shook her head. “I never said God had anything to do with it. Destiny isn’t something unappealing forced on you by somebody else. It isn’t brussels sprouts. It’s a combination of your own interest and aptitude. It just so happens that I love what I do, and I’m very, very good at it.”
The girl persisted. “But how did you know when you first started out that you were headed in the right direction?”
The customer was walking toward the counter with a Spode teapot. Rhonda got out of her chair to assist her. “In a nutshell, it just felt right.”
“Meaning you trusted your instincts,” Cassie observed cautiously.
Rhonda nodded. “Yes, that’s a good way to put it. I trusted my instincts.” She went to the cash register to ring up the sale.
“Hmmm…” Cassie said to herself.
Chapter 14 – Latte Questions
Faye carefully backed her late model station wagon into a parallel parking space. She’d almost forgotten how to do that. It was a skill that wasn’t needed much in the outlying area where she lived. This day, she had ventured into one of the northern suburbs of the city. It had been devoured so long ago by the metropolis that one couldn’t tell them apart. The suburb had a different name than the city proper, but it looked the same—congested streets blanketed with a thick layer of air pollution.
The old woman stepped to the curb and fed the parking meter. She was dressed in her Sunday best today—a floral cotton frock with pearl buttons down the front. Since the weather was still mild, she topped the dress with a light pink cardigan. Faye believed that one should always wear a hat in public. She had chosen a straw brimmed cloche with a green silk band around the middle.
Toddling down the street for half a block, she arrived at her destination. A shop with the unusual name of Buzz ‘n Books. It was a two-story vintage bookstore that served coffee. Unlike its chain store rivals, however, this one seemed to have a personality. The building in which it was housed was about a century old. The brick exterior was in need of tuckpointing. The front door was glass and painted wood, but the wood was so warped that the door stuck when one tried to pull the brass handle. To Faye, this was a sign that only serious readers should venture inside. She proceeded to do so.
The interior was dark and smelled of espresso and old paper. It was a good smell. One that was oddly comforting. The coffee bar was to her left as she entered. The back half of the shop consisted of floor to ceiling bookcases lined up in rows. At the front of the store, near the plate glass windows were several tables occupied by people with computers. They were probably “surfing the net” as the saying went.
She looked around. He wasn’t here. Her eyes focused on an open stairway leading to a loft. Faye sighed. Oh well, she would get her exercise today. She hobbled up the stairs to the second floor. There were more bookcases on the back wall, more tables in the center of the room and a solitary figure
