Hannah was my best friend, and I had spent many hours sitting with her in the back of Pemberley Books. I met her shortly after I moved to town. She was a few years younger than me, very shy and quiet with most people, but I had worn her down by stopping by her bookstore on a weekly basis and asking her to track down several hard-to-find books on antique jewelry. I was not a rich lady, and I had been saving my ass off for years to buy the restaurant, but I had one teeny tiny indulgence—antique jewelry, specifically from the early nineteen hundreds.
I exhaled through my nose and the pang of frustration hit me in the gut again. I couldn’t believe how naive I’d been this morning at the bank. I figured that because I had worked hard and saved, didn’t have any debt, and had always been responsi
