Page 13 of Meet Me in Ivy Falls

At dinner one evening when I was seven, she supplied him with a business plan. As usual, he could not deny her. Less than a year later the P&P was up and running. Between the monthly book clubs, and the weekly children’s story hour, the bookstore cemented itself as a cornerstone of the Ivy Falls community. My dad may have been elected mayor, but it was my mom who was the town’s beating heart.

My sister peeked her head out from behind a bookshelf where she stocked non-fiction. ‘Hey, Tor,’ she said with that easy smile that had mercifully returned after months of pain. ‘Did you see my new sign for the contest?’

‘Yeah.’ I leaned back to get a look at the sign outside. ‘I don’t think If Art Doesn’t Make You Think, Question, Contemplate, Then It’s Not Doing Its Job is going to bring home that goofy trophy Dad has made every year.’

‘It’s the truth. That’s what matters.’ She shrugged like she could care less about the contest, but, as always, she’d do whatever she thought would make our dad happy.

When I reached the end of the aisle, Tessa was rearranging shelves. As she tucked back her long auburn braid, a sweep of grief rushed through me. Every day she looked more like our mother. Long, elegant nose. Full lips. High cheekbones. She was my opposite in every way and yet in the last year I’d never felt closer to my little sister.

‘You’re staring,’ she said while her focus remained on the shelf.

‘It’s okay if they aren’t perfectly straight, you know,’ I teased.

She huffed out a sigh and went back to making sure the covers were aligned. ‘It has to be neat. Easy for customers to find what they want.’

I was thrilled my mother willed the shop to Tessa. She’d worked here through most of her teen years and, just like me, she used the bookstore as a refuge from the world. Besides her girls, it was the only thing that kept her grounded after Billy, her slimy, worthless, piece-of-crap husband ran off almost two years ago with Trini, a waitress from the Pool and Brew.

‘How are you feeling today?’ I asked.

She pulled at the end of her braid, a nervous tic that said she didn’t want to answer.

‘Tess, on a scale of one to ten?’

This was our code for how we were feeling about our grief. We’d adopted it from our time in the hospital with Mom. Nurses would ask about her pain on a scale from one to ten. Now all we had to say was a number, one for deep in darkness, ten for actual happiness, and we’d know where we were at for the day. How often we needed to check in with each other.

‘Five,’ she whispered before moving to the end of the section and pulling a bunch of heavy tomes from the shelves that also looked a little sparse.

I moved in closer and set a hand on her shoulder. ‘I’m here, you know. We can talk about anything. The girls. How Barb’s hair is an interesting shade of lavender this week. Even how “Fixer Ferris” gave me a furious look at the auction today like I’d driven Sally Mae over the award-winning roses in his front yard.’

How the asshole who’d broken my heart, and done a ten-year disappearing act, was back in town.

She arched a brow at me. ‘That bad, huh?’

‘Yep. I’d say my number is hovering right around a four today.’

She straightened the shelf one last time before stretching out her arms and pulling me into a hug. She even smelled like our mother – hints of rose water wafting off her sweater. Every inch of me ached. I missed our mother so much it was like half my heart was missing.

‘You need to ignore all those people who can’t get over the video,’ she said gently.

I held on to her for another minute wanting to forget all of today’s horrors for just one more set of breaths.

Of all the people I hated to disappoint, it was Tessa. When her husband left, she’d gone into a deep depression. I’d moved in to help out with her girls. She still didn’t eat or sleep enough, but slowly she was blooming back to life. My problems were the last thing she needed to worry about right now.

‘Does your number also have something to do with Huckleberry Lane?’

‘I’m going to throttle Manny. Does he call you the second he leaves my side?’ I said, pulling away abruptly.

Manny and Tessa never moved in the same circles until she became a single parent which forged an ironclad bond between them. Which meant every time something happened with our business, Manny told Tessa before I could even dial the phone.

‘Don’t be mad. He’s worried about you. Said something about a stranger buying the house. That you were pretty upset about it.’

I shook my head, trying to rid my mind of how damn good Beck looked in that suit.

‘Tor, tell me what happened,’ she coaxed in her gentlest voice.

‘The stranger who bought the house was Beck Townsend.’

Her eyes went wide as I sank into a thick red chair and spilled the entire tale about the auction. How Beck’s sudden reappearance, and the way he outbid me for Huckleberry Lane, sat in my stomach like bad gas-station sushi.