The rain started as a gentle mist when I left the house that Thursday afternoon, but by the time I reached Murphy’s Market, it had transformed into the kind of steady downpour that makes you question whether you really needed coffee badly enough to venture out. I pulled my jacket tighter around my shoulders and hurried through the automatic doors, shaking droplets from my hair and trying to remember if I’d grabbed an umbrella from the car.

At fifty-two, I’d learned to appreciate the simple ritual of my afternoon coffee run. It was one of those small routines that had become more precious since my divorce three years ago—a moment of normalcy in a life that had been turned upside down and was still finding its new rhythm. I lived alone now in a small apartment across town from the house I’d shared with Earl for eighteen years, and these daily errands had become my connection to the outside world.