Page 28 of The Summer We Started Over

“My sister, Barrett,” Eddie said, and as she said the words, she knew exactly what Dinah was going to say next.

“You have a dog and a sister. I wish I had a sister. I don’t think I’m ready to train a dog. If I came to stay with you for a few weeks, I would be safe, and my stalker would give up and go away.”

“Dinah—”

“I wouldn’t bother you. You’re working for me remotely now. You wouldn’t even have to talk to me. And…I could…I could walk your dog for you! I’d stay in my room, reading. You’ve told me about your house. You have lots of bedrooms.”

Eddie spoke firmly. “Dinah, it is going to be chaos here. We’re having bookshelves made in the barn and we’re going to move a lot of books from the house to make a used bookstore.”

“Oh,” Dinah cooed. “That’s so romantic!”

“Romantic?” Eddie echoed. “We’ve got a house crammed full ofbooks.” As soon as she spoke, she knew nothing else she could say would entice Dinah more. She quickly changed tack. “Dinah, what will happen when you marry someone or I get married? I can’t live with you forever.” She glanced out the window and saw a pickup truck pull in. “I have to go. Call Juliet. Hire a private detective. Speak with your doormen.”

“Eddie…”

“I’ll call you later.”

Eddie pocketed the phone and hurried outside. Barrett was by the fence, talking to Duchess. As she walked to the barn, the sweet smell of hay centered her.

“What are you doing?” Eddie asked Barrett.

“Waiting for everyone. Dad’s out front. I can’t believe Jeff agreed to build the bookshelves. He’s gotta be slammed with work.”

“Hey.”

Eddie turned. Jeff was walking toward them. He wore a clean T-shirt, canvas work pants, and a baseball cap.

“Hey,” Eddie said in reply. She almost reached up and kissed him. She wanted to.

“So, bookshelves, right?”

“Are we mad?” Eddie asked.

Jeff stepped closer to her. “Yes,you’remad. But I’ve always thought you look sexy in a bookshop.”

“You, too.” It was the most Eddie could think to say. She could feel the heat of his body. He smelled of Irish Spring soap.

Barrett said, “Here’s Dad.”

Their father strolled up to the barn, talking with another man.

“Good morning, everyone,” William said. “Girls, this is Grady, who works in construction, and plans to help us with this, um, enterprise.”

“Grady Manchester,” the man said, and nodded curtly. He was probably in his fifties, but he looked older than their father, with his sun-wrinkled face and slight limp.

The five of them walked around the barn. Grady grunted now and then and scribbled something in a notebook.

They walked out of the shadows to stand in the warm sunlight.

Grady said, “You’ve got a space here about sixty by ninety. I can’t see how you’d need sixty feet of shelving. A good thing: They’ve brought electricity into the barn so you don’t have to go through the nightmare of having a trench dug. How are you going to do the lighting? And you need to figure out how you want to insulate the space. Do you want to heat it or cool it? Do you want a toilet and sink? I think these walls will easily hold bookshelves. They’re old wide-board pine. You couldn’t get boards like this these days. This end of the barn has a decent floor, wide boards again. But they’re old and splintered so you might want something better. The bookshelves will be the last structure to worry about. Oh, and you should have a normal door built into one of the barn doors because you won’t want the big doors open all the time to the elements.”

When Grady paused, the Grant family stared at him as if they had to decide how to get a missile to Mars.

Jeff said, “Hang on. Wait a minute, Grady. We don’t know if this shop will draw any customers. Used books? Maybe a few bored people on a rainy day. Could we think about this on a much smaller scale? Have you seen the book bins in the children’s library in town? You know, like record stores used to have so people can sort of paw through them. Maybe we could build some of those and get some books out here before summer’s over and then see where we are. It may not be worth doing all the work that you’ve been so good to tell us about.”

“Well.” Grady rubbed his nose and looked around and said nothing.

Barrett perked up. “Jeff, I like your thinking. The floor here is good enough to walk on. We could have bins of books and advertise on Instagram and Facebook, and if we could get it done in time, we could open the shop in June and have two or three months to see how it goes.”

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