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No one seems to even wonder what this line of questioning is doing to me. It’s like they’ve forgotten that I’m here, that I wasthere, as if I just blend into this town so completely that I don’t even exist. I sense that Harley keeps trying to pin me in his gaze, and I just keep moving. Taking the signed books and making a display, ringing out the customers, wrapping, wrapping, wrapping, bow.
And then the store is quiet again. Harley sits, tapping out something on his phone, and Van and Brett goof around in the kids’ section while they tidy up and restock. It’s dark outside and a half hour past closing. I poke my head out the door and see that the street is empty. I turn the lock.
“You do a brisk business,” Harley says. I stop moving for the first time today and meet his gaze. When I listen to his podcasts, I am soothed by the sound of his voice, its depth and empathy, a kind of nonjudgment. I feel that in his presence now.
“Word got around that you were stopping by.”
“I might have posted on Instagram,” says Van, peering around the YA shelf.
Harley gives him a thumbs up and Van blushes, disappearing again.
“So,” he says. “Is this a safe space for you?”
I bring him the rest of the stock and page out a copy, handing it to him. He signs and we repeat the action. Van wipes down shelves; Brett’s closing out the register.
“The safest,” I say.
It’s true. After high school, I took classes at a small private college in a neighboring town called Sacred Heart College, living at home with my father. Though he encouraged me to stay on campus, I couldn’t. I was wrecked by trauma, terrified of my own shadow. It’s a wonder I even made it through my degree in English Lit. Therapy helped. My years with Dr. Maggie Cooper, a therapist who practiced in The Hollows just a short ride from school, helped me navigate the ugly terrain of survivor’s guilt and PTSD. When I graduated with no idea what I would do, this bookstore—prosaically named Little Valley Used Books at the time—went on the market. Owned and operated by Mr. Wheeler, retired Little Valley High history teacher, the shop was just breaking even, poorly stocked, crowded with wrinkled paperbacks on metal shelves, frayed gray carpet, buzzing fluorescent lights.
With a little help from my mom and dad, I had enough for a down payment. My dad cosigned my small business loan, and Mr. Wheeler was just eager to move to South Carolina to be closer to his daughter and her children.
Everything here—the walls, the shelving, the white oak floors, the long display tables, the counter—my dad, Badger, Chet, and I did together. After the demo, we painted, constructed, and varnished, working around the clock for months. Badger did all the lighting and electrical. Chet built every shelf, laid the floor. When we were done, it was the bookstore of my dreams, simple, warm, a clean, well-lit place for books.
My dad got a little teary on the final day when the stock came in and we put the books on the shelves.
“This is your next chapter, kiddo,” he said.
Next Chapter Books. I remember that swelling feeling of pride and hope, the first time I could see life after Evan Handy.
“Then maybe,” says Harley now, “this would be a good place to talk.”
I give him a nod.
Van and Brett are shouldering on their coats in the backroom. Tomorrow is the Twenty-Third and they’ll be here all day.
“Don’t forget about our employee party after the store closes tomorrow,” I tell them as I escort them out. Kind of a joke because it will just be the three of us eating cookies. I’ll give them each a small Christmas bonus.
“Wouldn’t miss it,” says Brett.
Van gives me a worried frown at the door. “Are you okay? Should we stay?”
He glances back at Harley, who is wandering around the travel section. “I’m okay,” I tell him. “Have a good night.”
Van seems uneasy but then they’re gone, wandering together up the dark street. I close and lock the door.
By the time Evan was telling people he was having a party the weekend his mother went away, all the normal things in my life were frayed or fraying. Badger and I were hardly speaking. Sam and Ainsley were keeping their distance too, claiming that I had changed since I started seeing Evan. And Steph . . . well, she was just Steph. She was seeing someone older, a college kid out of town, and no she didn’t want to tell me about it because it wasn’t even legal, was it? And my dad was a cop. So, we were barely seeing each other outside of school.
Speaking of my dad, we were at war. He hated Evan and forbade me to see him. And for the first time in my life, I was lying and sneaking around behind my father’s back. My grades were tanking, because all I could think about was Evan and the new part of me that he had awakened. And my dad was threatening to send me off to live with my mom at her yoga commune or whatever it was.
And even so I was happier than I ever remembered being. Riding around on the back of Evan’s bike, cutting school to go into the city for lunch, sneaking out at night when my dad was sleeping or working late to be with Evan. I had, as Steph predicted, finally awakened sexually. And Evan was the able new guide to my body and all the different ways I could feel pleasure.
There was a carriage house on his property, one that was bigger than my own home. It had a stocked kitchen, a huge king bed, a nicely appointed bathroom. And this was our retreat—his mother often gone, or sleeping, or, according to Evan, hopped up on pills. He’d brought me home to meet her only once, and she seemed like a beautiful, vacant ghost—a willowy blonde with cold blue eyes, so thin that her collarbone was like a shelf and her cheekbones jutted.
“Welcome, Maddie,” she said vaguely. “Evan has told me how special you are. I’ve met your father. You have his eyes. Seeing.”
We had coffee with her in the gleaming kitchen that looked as if it was clipped from a magazine and never once used, and she talked about how she used to model until Evan ruined her figure, and now she’s just alady who lunches. And Evan’s father is so busy, too busy for her and Evan most of the time, the manager of a hedge fund.He’s a very important man. It was only after Evan led me out that I realized she never asked me a single thing about myself, and she barely looked at Evan.
“She’s out of it,” said Evan as we made our way down the path to the carriage house for the first time.
