Amelia did not investigate the tapping that night. Instead, she hunkered down in her pile of blankets, squeezing her eyes shut and trying to tell herself that there was a reasonable explanation for all of it. But even if there was one, she was scared enough to have no impulse to get up and see what that explanation was. Likely, because she feared that it wasn’t something reasonable. Not in the slightest.

  She wasn’t going to provoke whatever was tapping beneath the floor. Every horror movie she’d ever seen had told her that was a one-way ticket to murdertown. And Amelia had to get to work in the morning. She had bills to pay, and whatever was doing the tapping wasn’t going to pay them for her. If the best revenge was living well, as the inspirational breakup memes on social media said, Amelia needed to live long enough for her luck to turn around.

  But the tapping lasted all night, robbing Amelia of sleep. Finally, by 3 a.m., Amelia opened her phone and started taking notes for the business plan she had started for The Bluebell. She reasoned that she might as well do something productive if she wasn’t going to sleep. She ignored the tapping as best as she could, though it never quite escaped her notice as she worked on the business plan. Still, she managed to make some decent progress, considering the circumstances.

  So, although Amelia had been looking forward to her first shift at the Bluebell, it came much too early in the morning. But this job, with the meager part time hours, was all she had . And she wasn’t about to fuck it up. She slapped some concealer beneath her eyes to cover the dark circles and dressed in a black top and dark jeans, telling herself to make the best of the day, even if she did feel like the living dead.

  Bell gave Amelia an approving-if-slightly-stiff grin as she saw the younger woman enter the cafe fifteen minutes before the official start of her shift.

  “You can put your things in my office in back,” Bell called out from the back of the counter. “I keep it locked when I’m not in there.”

  Amelia placed a drawstring bag in Bell’s office. The room was sparce, like the rest of the cafe, except for a little shelf above the old-fashioned metal desk. On the shelf was a clear glass vase filled with artificial bluebell flowers and a single framed photo. The photo showed a much-younger version of Bell with an older man’s arm around her. Since Bell appeared to be a teenager in the photo, Amelia assumed that was Bell’s dad next to her. Both people wore wide grins. In the background was The Bluebell, looking just as spartan in style but with a fresher coat of paint, with Grand Opening on a sign in the background.

  Amelia frowned, looking at the picture. She hadn’t known Bell for long, but from what she’d known of her in this short time, she couldn't even imagine the woman smiling like she was in that old photo.

  Amelia had also had a carefree smile like that once. The last time she remembered having it was the day she closed on the Watermill Valley house. That day, it seemed that the world was full of possibilities and that everything was going her way.

  Perhaps she and Bell could bring their smiles back someday.

  This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

  As she made lattes and wiped down tables that morning, her mind kept returning to the puzzle of the incessant tapping sound that had seemed to come from under the floor. It was easier to think objectively now that she was in the daylight, amongst others, and away from the oppressive atmosphere of the house.

  For one, she knew the house had a crawlspace. That much had been established by the presence of a plain black door on the bottom side of the house where you could crawl in to check things out if you needed to. Maybe some kind of animal had gotten under there and was tap-tapping at night.

  Thinking of that crawlspace door made Amelia's jaw clench. She would never go in there if she could help it.

  Her alternative theory was that there was an issue with the pipes that was causing one or many of them to thud against each other. Amelia had a memory of the old pipes in her dorm room sometimes knocking around when someone took a shower while the common room sink was running. Perhaps the tapping was something like that? But Amelia hadn’t left the water running when it happened.

  Still, she couldn't discount any theory yet. Houses were mysterious, even if they weren’t filled with foreboding feelings and strange women that haunted your dreams. Who knew what weird quirks hid behind the walls and under the floor, even if they were just benign little construction errors or things eroding over time? Every house had its secrets. Amelia just hadn’t learned her house’s yet.

  Better to hire a contractor, even if she had to take out a loan for it, if there was a need to deal with an animal or the pipes. She had no idea herself about how to fix either thing. And, speaking of loans, she was still far enough away from her next meager paycheck that she needed another way to make ends meet. She was getting her car back from the shop today, and she already had a profile on a meal delivery service app that she’d used to rack up spending money. She could try to get whatever deliveries done she could in the next two weeks, but the first of the month would be upon her before she knew it, and even if she paid the mortgage, she wouldn’t have enough left to feed herself.

  By the time she had finished placing the foam on the last latte of the morning, she decided to get a credit card, just to span the gap between pay periods. She knew it wasn’t the smartest financial choice, but her options were few and far between.

  Before she left for the bank, she pitched her first business idea to Bell, the one that required the least effort and least upfront financial obligation. The idea that she hoped could present the least risk and gain Bell’s trust if it worked.

  “Punch cards?” Bell said, twisting her mouth into a frown. “For free coffee? I’m already losing money here. I don’t like the sound of that at all.”

  “That’s the thing,” Amelia said. “I know it seems like you’d be losing money. But if you can make your customers feel like members of a club, coming here feels like a part of their identity. And the card gives them an incentive to come back. Humans want to complete things. If I’m two lattes away from a free latte, I might come in to get more coffee just to get closer to my freebie. I’ll end up spending more money than I intended. And the card, and the free coffee, will have paid for themselves before the punch card is even finished. The consumer feels like their winning, and they are a little bit, but you are winning overall. Here, look at this model.”

  Amelia had used a scratchpad app to write calculations showing the cost versus profit, including a very modest forecast of increased purchases. Showing that even if only one out of every five customers purchased an extra coffee once a week because of the punch cards, the Bluebell would still come out ahead.

  Bell cleared her throat, studying the calculations.

  “Where did you say you were from again?” She lifted her eyes to Amelia, seeming to evaluate her in a new light.