Charlotte Perkins ran a small general store tucked between the damp shade of Northern California's coastal redwoods, a hundred-year-old outpost for locals, surfers, and wandering tourists in need of groceries, advice, or a cup of her famously strong coffee. Her father, rest his soul, had run the store before her, and she sometimes caught herself speaking to his ghost in the early morning hours as she took inventory or swept the wide-planked floors.

The Perkins General Store had survived earthquakes, droughts, and one notorious New Year's flood that left the first five shelves underwater. It was built to last, and so, Charlotte hoped, was she-though she had yet to decide if she wanted to last here, or in some other city, some other life.

In the afternoons, after the lunch rush but before the onrush of after-school families, Charlotte liked to take her metal detector-a battered Minelab inherited along with the store and a particularly antique grudge against "detectorists who don't fill their holes"-and walk the narrow, winding trails down to the beach. The cliffs here were crumbly and sedimentary, studded with agates and sea glass, and every month or two a winter storm would shear off a new face, exposing more relics to be found.