Page 13 of A Novel Love Story

“Well, I don’t know if the waterfall ismagic,” she replied, “but we are a small town in the Hudson Valley, true.”

This was a really elaborate joke, right?

It had to be.

Eloraton was a fictional town like Virgin River or Stars Hollow or the countless other made-up places manifested through someone’s imagination.

I must have paled a shade, because Lyssa asked, “Are you all right there, friend?”

“This isn’t funny,” I said, shaking my head. She even looked like I imagined. Freckles dotted across her cheeks, a heart-shaped face, a gap-toothed smile.

“I’m not sure what’s the joke?”

“This is a theme park, then? A—a roadside attraction?”

Her smile faltered. “I … don’t follow.”

If this wasn’t a joke, then she was Lyssa Greene, the botanist who opened a flower shop instead of joining the family business, who grew the most dazzling blooms with the greenest thumb in the state, whose laugh sounded like wind chimes, who’d kissed Maya Shah under the waterfall—

ThatLyssa Greene.

And if this was Lyssa, then …

She tilted her head. “Are you sure you’re all right? Can I get you some water?”

“No, yes, I’m sure I’m fine—I’m sorry.” I retreated out of the garden shop, almost knocking over a vase full of wildflowers. “Bye!”

She picked up her hand to wave, but I was already gone. I stumbled into the middle of the road, where people began to stare, but I wasn’t paying any attention to them. Not at first.

Because the first thing I noticed was the sign above the bar, which readTHE ROOST. Last night all I’d been able to see was theOO. The mural on the side was painted by Junie Bray herself, of a town overflowing with flowers and bees, the banner strung from one side of the painting to the other—WELCOME TO ELORATON! HOME OF THE FIGHTING BEES. Then in smaller letters:THREE-TIME SPELLING BEE CHAMPIONS. I spun around.

In the bright midday sun, I could see everything.

The one road in curved down from the hills, through the trees, and fed through the main thoroughfare of Eloraton, straight toward the town square, where a tall clock tower stood over the rest of the buildings like a sentry, its face grinning under mustached hands of time. I’d seen many idyllic towns on my road trips up here, old Main Streets and quaint villages nestled in the woods,but this place was different. In the storm, I hadn’t been able to tell, but contrasted against the blue sky and deep green woods—it was hard to miss. This town looked like every good part of every lovely town I’d ever seen, all jigsawed into one. Main Street burgeoned with life, buildings housingSWEETIES(advertising honey in the window), andDRUGS(just Drugs), and the corner grocer, and all the little eclectic shops that sold paper crafts and hardware and pet clothes and bath soaps. The streetlights were covered in crawling ivy, the brick faces of buildings cracked in that old yet well-loved way buildings got. Cars parked diagonally outside of various businesses, but most of them were in front of the Grumpy Possum Café.

And when I looked back at the bookstore, I noticed the name on the display window, too.

INEFFABLE BOOKS

If thiswasa joke, it was very elaborate, down to the people actually looking like the people I’d read about dozens upon dozens of times, until the spines cracked. I kept trying to see the flaws here, the man behind the emerald curtain, but all I saw were pages—pages and pages—of words and scenes and moments that Pru and I giggled over. The kiss in the rain at the corner of Bluebell and Main, the confession in the garden of the bed-and-breakfast, the breakup at the Grumpy Possum Café … it was all here.

Impossibly.

I was …

This was …

My heart knew the word long before my brain did. My heart said it with every beat as I walked down the only road in and out of this fictional town, passing business after business, person after person. It was all here—

Even the Daffodil Inn, standing quiet and vacant in the corner of the square.

I kept walking until I found the courtyard beneath the clock tower, and there I sank down on the bench donated by one Frank Greene of Frank’s Hotties, the premier hot sauce of Eloraton. The hot sauce without a label last night—Gail had said it was local. It was Frank’s. A soft breeze rustled the trees, and the smell of wildflowers and pine curled through the air.

It wasn’t a dream.

Or if it was, I was dead on the side of the road somewhere and this was heaven.

A droplet of rain splatted on my nose. Then another on the sidewalk in front of me.

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