Page 20 of Christmas By The Book

Jorja slumped down on to the counter as soon as he was gone, and I could feel her shaking beneath my hand.

“Hey, it’s okay,” I soothed her, but she shook her head.

“I don’t know what I was thinking, going up against him like this,” she confessed. She took off her glasses, pinching the bridge of her nose and taking a long, shaky breath.

“He’s going to take everything from me,” she continued. “He’s going to take the store, the house, all of it, I don’t... I don’t know what we can do.”

“No, he’s not,” I reminded her. “You’re doing the book fair, remember? And that’s going to bring in all the money you need to keep this place. And the house. You’re not going to lose anything.”

“If we can bring in enough money,” she muttered.

“We will,” I promised her. The way she was talking, it was like she saw this as the two of us against the world. I liked that. And I didn’t intend, for a second, to let her down as she struggled through all of this.

But then, a sound cut through the quiet between us—the weather report was finally on.

“...the blizzard of the decade!”

Both of us turned, and I saw her face pale in horror as she took in what was being announced.

She took a step toward the laptop and picked it up, staring down at the screen, as though she was willing it with every bit of strength in her not to be true.

But it was.

On Wednesday night, the night before the fair, they were predicting the blizzard of the decade. A blizzard that would shut down everything. Nobody would be leaving their houses, nobody would be out Christmas shopping, and nobody sure as hell would be attending a little outdoor book fair to save the shop.

My heart sank. This last attempt to rescue the store had fallen apart and I didn’t know if there was anything else we could do to save it from Wharton’s grasp.

Chapter Twelve

Jorja

NORMALLY, THE QUIET in the bookstore would have been comforting to me, but right now, it felt like a weight crushing my shoulders down.

I couldn’t believe it. This was going to be my last Christmas in the store. Not a single person had come in all day today. No, I guessed they were all busy battening down the hatches for the blizzard that was due in a couple of days’ time. I should have been doing the same thing, but I wanted to make the most of the time I had left here while I still could.

Because, I was sure, this was to be the end of an era.

There was no way we would be able to hold the book fair, and even if we did, nobody would come attend it. Wharton had gotten what he wanted. I wouldn’t be able to keep the store and my house. If I had just agreed to give him what he had asked for in the first place, maybe I wouldn’t have been in this mess, but I had turned him down, and now, I was sure he was going to make me pay for it.

I made my way around the store, peering down at the sweet little Christmas village that was still sitting there in the window. In that Christmas village, I was sure, shady businessmen didn’t try to steal away beautiful little bookstores. Down there, nobody had to worry about paying the bills, or blizzards, or... any of it, really.

I would have to clear the place out, move as much as I could back to the house. I had always complained that it was too big for just me, so I guessed I would have to fill it out with all the books here. I couldn’t stand the thought of giving them all away, though I knew I likely should have. I needed to stop being so emotional about all of this. I had to think logically, even though it was so clouded by the pain of losing everything my grandmother had worked so hard for.

This felt like the last tie I had to my family, too. Losing it would be letting that slip through my fingers, and I didn’t know if I could live with that. My parents had passed when I was so young, I hardly had any memories of them, but my grandmother, at least, had left me this place, somewhere I would always feel connected to her. What would she have thought if she had seen what was happening to it now?

I could remember, one Christmas, where it had been blizzarding. When I was young, maybe six or seven, and the snow had piled up outside the window. She had paced back and forth in the living room, so worried that something was going to happen to the store. She had tried her best to hide her worry from me, but I had been able to tell. She loved this place. She was proud of it. And I was about to let it slip through my fingers. Ugh, I couldn’t have hated this more...

I picked up her music box and turned the handle, and the soft, slow rendition of “Silent Night” filled the air around me. Instead of comforting me, like it usually did, it sent a pang along my chest. This might be the last time I got to hear this song in this place. Everything I did felt like it had more significance now, knowing that there might not be a chance to do it again.

The door opened, and I glanced up to see Seth stepping inside, dusting snow off his shoulders. I couldn’t help but smile. No matter how much of a mess things were, having him in my life had made them a little easier to bear. I appreciated beyond words all his efforts to keep this place alive, and I didn’t know what I would have done without him.

“What’s that?” he asked, nodding to the music box in my hands as he made his way toward me.

“It’s just my grandmother’s music box,” I replied, replacing it on the windowsill. “Sorry. I know the music is kind of sad.”

“No, it’s beautiful,” he replied, flashing me a smile. He ran a hand over the wood carefully, his fingers eventually coming to rest on the small compartment that had been jammed all this time.

“What’s in here?”