Aunt Mel's Coffee House wasn't exactly the type of venue typically associated with Seamus Kelly. No green room with top-shelf liquor. No security detail scanning the crowd for overzealous fans. No elaborate sound check or roadies tuning guitars to precise specifications.
Just a cozy space that smelled of espresso and cinnamon, with mismatched chairs arranged in semicircles facing a small raised platform that generously qualified as a stage. A lone microphone stand. A battered amp that had seen better decades. And strings of fairy lights that gave the whole place the ambiance of a college dorm room trying very hard to be sophisticated.
Jim arrived an hour early with Hector, his stomach performing gymnastics that rivaled the Olympic-level movements of Rory's unborn child. He'd been on stag
