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Lucy frowned. “He broke his hip,” she said. “He had surgery for a replacement. It went fine, but his blood pressure spiked today. He’ll be discharged tomorrow.”

“He needs to be careful at his age,” Andrew said. “How old is he? Ninety?”

“Eighty,” Lucy said, voice quiet.

“He really should be retiring,” Iffat added. And Lucy knew Iffat was thinking that retirement was all right for people like Charles, whose jobs were frivolous, anyway. “It’s a wonder he keeps that store up and running still. I’m sure he could easily find someone to pass the business off to.”

“Main Street pulls in a decent profit,” Andrew agreed. “Just this fall I’ve seen two new stores open up.”

Lucy listened, not saying anything. It was unnerving. At the store, all day she was talking: with strangers, with known customers, with Charles. But at home, it was like she had nothing to say. Even when she tried, she couldn’t think of anything.

It felt like her parents existed in a different plane than her; no, it felt like she lived in a storybook, while they lived in the real world. But even characters in books interacted with real people—though, she supposed, only when those people found the story worth reading.

Releasing a long breath, Lucy ate her food. Her parents’ brief conversation ended, and they all ate in silence. The only sound in their house was the scraping of spoons against plates, the setting down of a glass.

Lucy looked at her parents. She wondered how they’d fallen in love, how they came to marry. It was obvious they loved each other, from the way Andrew poured daal onto his wife’s plate, all over the rice rather than on the side, just how she liked it; from the way Iffat refilled his glass of water when it emptied; from the looks they exchanged, their eyes meeting and holding.

But they didn’t talk.

They communicated silently. Perhaps that was how they’d fallen in love: because they were exactly the same, and they spoke a language no one else knew. How joyous it must have been for them to find each other, to finally meet their match. She just wished they had taught her their language, too.

Lucy wondered if it had always been like this. It had been for as long as she could remember, but if she really thought hard, she could recall faint memories of her parents taking her to research lectures, showing her big science books, explaining basic neurology to her.

They had tried to teach her their language; she had just been unable to learn.

“What will you do during Charles’s recovery?” Andrew asked. “Hire new help?”

“Charles’s grandson is actually here,” Lucy replied, swallowing a sip of water. “He’ll be helping out.”

The image of Grayson flashed in her mind: the swoop of his blond hair, the bright blue of his eyes, his full mouth. But when she recalled all the things that mouth had said, her face scrunched in aggravation.

“That’s great!” Iffat said, smiling at Lucy. “He hasn’t visited in quite some time, has he? It’s been a few years?”

“He’s never visited,” Lucy said, voice flat.

“This is a great opportunity for you as well,” Andrew said. “Why don’t you leave the store to the grandson and get yourself a new job, finally? A real one, where you can deal with real things, solve real problems?”

Lucy set her spoon down, no longer hungry.

“I’ve been looking,” she lied. “But it’s hard to find something close by.”

“We’re hardly fifty miles from Manhattan!” Andrew said, confused. “You can’t say there’s no work.” He frowned. “Really, Lucy.”

“I don’t want to work in the city,” she mumbled. “It’s such a long commute.”

That part was true, at least. She didn’t want to spend four hours of her day on public transportation to a job she didn’t even want when she could drive ten minutes to a place she loved instead.

In college—not Columbia, or any Ivy, much to her parents’ chagrin—she had double majored: English and data science. The English had been for herself, while the data science had been so she could have an “appropriate” job when she graduated, and she did.

Two and a half years ago, right after receiving her bachelor’s, she had gotten a good job in data analytics. It was a solid nine to five, and the pay was good, but she hated it. The job was remote, which meant she was stuck at home all day, every day, and the only interaction she had with other people was via email, or an online Zoom meeting once a month. It was a relief to work part-time at Crawley Books on the weekends.

When her boss had to let her go six months later because of company cost cutting, she was overjoyed. She began working at the bookstore full-time while she looked for another job (looked being used quite liberally here).

Lucy was happy at Crawley Books. She didn’t want to leave, and she didn’t think she ever would.

“You’ve been searching for two years,” Iffat said. “You must be really picky to not have found something yet.”

“I spend a lot of time at the store,” Lucy said, voice defensive. “I don’t always have time to be researching jobs.”