I laugh. “Me? That would have been averylong time ago, Roger.”
The Bantom Bay Community Center runs a summer camp for elementary school–aged kids that offers a bit of everything—surf lessons in the morning, crafts and drama and board games in the afternoon. The summer ends with an all-camp play. I used to love that camp. My mother helped paint the sets for the shows, and they lent a bit of magic to every performance.
“I suppose it was a while back,” Roger concedes. “The theater doesn’t have quite the same shine that it had all those years ago. There’s not much money to fix it up, so a few of us are getting together tonight to see how far we can stretch the budget. Sand the stage, restain it, that kind of thing. The funny thing is, I’m not in the least bit handy. I think I was looped into the project because everyone knew I’d bring these.” He holds up a large bakery box and opens it to reveal that it’s filled to the brim with enormous chocolate chip cookies.
I take in a deep breath. “Those smell heavenly,” I say, and he immediately takes two cookies from the box, drops them into a waxed sleeve, and passes them over the counter to me.
“What did this town do to deserve you?” I ask.
“Oh, we all look out for each other. You know that as well as anyone.” He flicks his chin toward the front window of the shop,where the flowers that I planted in his window boxes seem to glow in the late-afternoon light.
My heart lurches. It’s comments like these that make me feel like an impostor. Jack Harris and his family were loved by this town, and I hadn’t helped them at all. I quickly thank Roger for everything and head for the door.
“Always a pleasure, Lucy,” he calls after me.
Outside, I wait for Gully to clamber up into the cab of my truck, but he just stands there in front of the open door, looking at me like he has no plans to move, like he’s waiting for something.
“Need a lift?” I ask him, feeling a sudden twist of worry. I don’t like to think of Gully aging, of him needing help to get into the truck that he’s always hoisted himself into with relative ease. I begin to bend down toward him when something catches my eye and I straighten.
Because there, in the window of Bantom Bay Books, is a chess set.
Before I go into the bookstore, I walk around to the back of my truck. After thinning out plants as needed in the woodland garden, my truck now looks like a mobile flower shop, its bed filled with a half-dozen pots of various flowers. I select a pot of Persian buttercups and head into the bookstore amid a cloud of the flowers’ sweet, lemony fragrance.
My old friend Jody looks up from behind the counter when I step inside. “Lucy!” she squeals, her eyes widening in surprise. She closes the book she’s been reading and springs up from her stool.
I set the flowerpot on the counter so I can give her a proper hug. As she squeezes me, both of us laughing a little, her scent—oranges, butterscotch, and books—brings me right back to sleepovers and passing notes in math class.
“I come bearing gifts,” I say, gesturing to the buttercups. “Would you like these? They’re in need of a good home.”
“Oh yes, please,” she says. “They’re beautiful. I’ll leave them right here on the counter, where everyone can enjoy them.” Like every store in Bantom Bay, there’s a jar of dog treats beside the register, and Jody plucks out a biscuit for Gully before bending over to hug him.
I look around the cozy shop, with its long wood tables of books and robin’s-egg-blue floor-to-ceiling shelves and colorful kids’ corner and fairy lights hung everywhere. Jody has always been a bookworm—it’s one of the reasons we became friends—and I know she was thrilled to buy the store from the previous owners when they decided to retire a couple of years ago. The shop looks as welcoming as ever, but Jody’s warm thumbprint is everywhere, giving the place new life.
“Everything looks wonderful,” I tell her.
She smiles, the little dimples in her cheeks every bit as deep and endearing as they were when we were ten years old. “Thanks. God, it’s good to see you, Lucy. Tell me everything. How are you? How’s your dad? Work?”
I fill her in on my worries for my father, the work I’ve been doing at the Oceanview Home, and the news that the home is closing. She waggles her eyebrows a bit when I tell her about Adam, and how I’m going to his house tomorrow to see if I can give him some landscaping advice. Then she fills me in on how her parentsare doing—her father has been cancer-free for a year; her mother is still the librarian at our elementary school. Her dimples deepening, she tells me that there’s a new love interest in her life, a woman that she met at a silent reading event at a bar in San Francisco. They were both reading the same book—the latest Alice Hoffman—and they didn’t speak for two hours, just turned their pages and made occasional blushing eye contact. They finally introduced themselves at the end of the night and basically have not stopped talking since.
“That’s ridiculously adorable,” I tell her, laughing.
“I know!” she says.
An hour later, I’m reluctant to leave, but I need to get home to warm up Roger’s pasta dish for dinner with my dad. “Okay,” I say, looking around. “What books can I not leave without?”
Jody grins, then flits around the store, fully in her element, pressing the latest novels by Jenny Colgan, Elizabeth Berg, Helen Simonson, and Rachel Joyce into my hands, chattering on excitedly about how much I’ll love them, and topping the stack with a Tana French mystery for my dad.
“Oh! One more thing,” I say, pausing as I’m about to pass her my credit card. “I almost forgot.” I walk over to the chess set displayed in the window. “Is this for sale?”
At home, I dish out two plates of pasta. Then, in between the two plates, right in the middle of the table, I place the chess set.
When my dad comes into the kitchen, I clock the minute he sees it. He stares for a moment and then looks up at me.
“I thought we could play while we eat,” I say, pulling out my chair and sitting down.
My father holds the back of his chair in his hands. He tilts his head. “You know how to play?”
“I’m learning. Do you?”
