Vivienne Sterling's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Vivienne Sterling pressed her palm to the shop's wall and felt the damp seep through. She had crossed three towns to reach Upaswood and sign the lease on this narrow storefront. She wanted one thing: the coziest bookshop-café in town, a place where people lingered over coffee and pages. But the wall was wet, the ceiling stained, and the first crates of her books waited outside in the rain. She knelt and touched the floorboards. They gave a little, soft with rot. If she stocked the shelves now, the pages would swell and buckle before a single reader walked in. She counted her savings in her head. There was enough to fix the leak or enough to buy the fixtures, not both. She went out back to think. A weeping willow grew there, its long branches sweeping the ground beside the cottage she had rented, its stone walls thick with ivy. Under the tree sat a black iron bistro table and two chairs, left by the last tenant. She sat, rain dripping through the leaves, and stared at the shop's back wall. Then she saw it. The stain climbed from one corner only, where a broken gutter dumped water straight down the brick. Not the whole roof. One pipe. Vivienne fetched her ladder. She climbed the slick rungs and found the gutter split at a rusted seam, spilling water against the wall with every gust. She could not replace it today. But she could redirect it. She wedged a length of board under the split and angled it away from the brick. The water ran off into the garden instead of the wall. Inside, she cracked the windows and dragged the bistro set indoors to prop the door open. Air moved through for the first time in months. She spread her coat on the floorboards and worked a rag along the baseboards, drying what she could reach. By dusk the wall no longer glistened. She carried the first crate in and set it on the driest shelf. The books stayed flat. She had bought herself time. But the board was a patch, not a repair. The gutter would fail again in the next hard rain, and rot had already softened three boards near the corner. Those needed replacing, and she could not do that alone. Vivienne locked up and stood under the willow, her clothes soaked, her hands raw. She had saved the books tonight. Tomorrow she needed a carpenter, and she knew no one in Upaswood at all.