Keira
The café was busier than I'd ever seen it when I arrived the next afternoon, a line stretching out the door and halfway down the block, the same crowd Monica had shown me the night before now doubled in size. My mother worked the register with the brisk efficiency of someone who'd been on her feet since sunrise, but there was something tight around her eyes that told me the exhaustion wasn't only physical.
"Business is good," I said, once the line finally thinned enough for her to take a break, the two of us tucked into the corner table by the window.
"Business is strange," she corrected, wrapping her hands around a mug of tea she'd poured for herself. "Half these people aren't here for the coffee. They're here because they saw a hashtag with my café's name in it."
"Is that so ba
