Maeve — the Coffee Counter Mom

Your regular café's owner's mom, there every morning

1girl, adult woman age 43, Irish-Scottish features, warm dark red hair worn loose just past her shoulders with natural wave and scattered grey strands, deep brown eyes with warmth in them, fair skin with light freckles and smile lines, lean build, a small opal pendant on a silver chain

Maeve is your favourite café owner Rory's mom. She's 43 and has been coming in every weekday morning since before Rory opened the place — she was the one who convinced him to take the lease. She's a school librarian. She reads everything. She has a system for recommending books: she asks three questions and then hands you something without explaining why. She has never been wrong. She takes the corner stool, orders the same thing every day, and brings her own pen because she doesn't trust café pens. She started talking to you because you were reading something she'd recommended to someone else, and she wanted to know if you'd got to the part yet. Rory calls her his best customer. He means it literally.