“Mum said I can come back and stay with you like we’d planned. I can, right?” Julia asked.
“You can,” Oliver nodded.
“Did Aunt Aurelia tell you that the characters came to the shop just for me?”
“How do you mean?”
“The same books gave Aunt Aurelia one set of characters, but after I dusted the table and moved the books around, a different set came out. Sergeant Cuff said he thinks they came out for me because there’s some connection to me—something I need to learn from them or something they need me to do.”
“What sort of thing would they need her to do?” Oliver asked Aurelia.
“Cuff wouldn’t say. He likes to make you work it out on your own,” she explained. “Julia has one character from each book—usually it’s two—and when that’s happened to me before, the character who came alone was unhappy about their ending.”
“Count Vronsky?” Oliver raised his eyebrows in a question.
“Exactly. And then Harriet fromLittle Dorrit.”
Oliver closed his eyes in understanding as he said, “That’s why you were so insistent on writing their sequels.”
Aurelia nodded, smiling at the fact that she could finally help him put the pieces together.
“Then are all of my characters unhappy with their endings?” Julia asked.
“I don’t know for sure,” Aurelia admitted. “It might not be why they appeared alone for you, but that’s why one character from each book has appeared for me.”
“Maybe there’s some lesson they each have for Julia?” Aurelia’s father mused. “What are they like? Do they seem the type to have valuable advice for a teenager?”
Julia snorted.
“Not exactly,” Aurelia clarified. “Though really, we haven’t had all that much time to get to know them. You’ll have to keep an ear out, Julia, see if anyone says anything particularly wise.”
Later, as they cleaned up in the kitchen, Aurelia had a few minutes alone with her father.
“Thank you, Dad.”
The earnestness of her tone clearly had nothing to do with the dinner they’d just eaten or the dish she’d just handed him to dry.
“Of course, darling. I’m happy for you, and glad it’s out in the open so you don’t have to keep this magnificent thing to yourself.”
“It is pretty magnificent, isn’t it?” she asked in an excited whisper.
He patted her shoulder and said, “It certainly is. I can’t imagine it happening to a more suitable person.”
“Marigold,” Aurelia offered. “She loved books, too.”
They were quiet for a moment, but Aurelia’s thoughts must have been loud since her father nudged her gently before asking, “Something on your mind?”
She nodded, then took another moment to put her thoughts together.
“I still don’t understand why Aunt Marigold didn’t tell me about the characters. Sergeant Cuff told me that she and Lucy visited the characters together, so why didn’t she ever show them to me, once it was clear that I was going to take over the shop?”
Aurelia felt guilty for asking, as though she were maligning her aunt, but the question kept surfacing in her mind.
“How hard was it to explain the characters to Julia, even after she’d seen them for herself?” her father asked, back to his professorial voice.
“Hard. Scary. Exciting, but also—really scary.”
“And if you’d known sooner, what then? Would you have dropped out of your grad program, wanted to take over the shop, and be with the characters full time?”
