Page 59 of Paper Ghosts

His text last night had read:

Hey Cinderella. Theo here. I didn’t get to give you something before you left. Meet me at the shop tomorrow?

Bailey hadn’t answered last night. She wasn’t going to meet him again. What was the point? But after she left Tasha, thinking about finding a good version of herself, she texted him back and said she’d meet him there in about ten minutes.

When she walked into Mother Hen’s, Theo was taking some chicken puff pastries from a bag that had the Java Chicken logo on it. “I got us some coffee,” he said, gesturing to the lidded cups on the table. “And I wasn’t sure if you’d had breakfast or not.”

“Thanks,” she said, taking a seat. “You didn’t have to do this.”

“You wouldn’t let me pay you for your help.”

“It was the least I could do. This shop brought me a lot of joy when I was a kid. Tea ice cream every day was what I thought my life was going to look like as an adult.”

“This is what I wanted to give you.” He slid a folded apron across the table. “I thought you might like to have one. I found some old employee aprons while cleaning out Ruby’s house. People around here apparently still call it the old Sanderson farm.”

Bailey laughed at the pink and green tie-dye monstrosity. “Thank you.”

“They were in boxes stored in the chicken coop. It doesn’t look like Ruby ever had chickens, yet she had a chicken coop.”

“The Sandersons kept chickens, before they left town. As the story goes, Mrs. Sanderson gossiped about my grandmother in church, something about her lack of moral standards or something. If you ever met my grandmother, you would understand how hard that is to believe. The very next day, Mr. Sanderson left Mrs. Sanderson for their mail carrier. Mrs. Sanderson was floored. She said it was like her husband was under a spell.”

“Your grandmother put a spell on him?” Theo bit into a pastry and crust shattered into his lap.

“And just like that,” she snapped her fingers, “you’ve been pulled into my grandmother’s world-building. She’s very good at controlling the narrative.”

“Your grandmother sounds like quite a character.”

“Oh, she is. People call her the Witch of Wester House.”

“So tell me more about her. And this town. And you.”

She immediately regretted the Sanderson story. She reached for her coffee cup and took a sip. “I don’t know what else to say.”

He tilted his head. “I get the feeling you didn’t like living here.”

“I did, actually. But I didn’t know any better,” she said. “My grandmother wasn’t a benevolent ruler, and because I wanted to be like her, I wasn’t one, either. That whole display last night at the fair was deserved.”

“Was it?”

Theo clearly carried the beta studiousness of his youth in his round face, so he couldn’t have gotten through his youth unscathed. There were students like the Feathers in every high school. “No one ever bullied you?”

He shrugged. “His name was Heath.”

“And you wouldn’t take some pleasure in seeing that he wasn’t as powerful now?”

“If the bullied becomes the bully, isn’t that just the same story told a different way?” She considered him with a smile. “What?”

“I was just thinking that you’re charming.”

“That’s me. Prince Charming. Go on. Tell me more. I want to know everything.”

“No,” she said seriously, “you don’t.”

“Everything but the secrets. You keep those.”

She tensed slightly at that. “What makes you think I have secrets?”

“Every unread book is a secret. I majored in lit and have the student loans to show for it, so I know.” He took another bite of the pastry. “Do you like to read?”