Page 25 of A Novel Love Story

Everything—everything was real. Sweeties, the Roost, the Grumpy Possum Café, the Daffodil Inn, thebookstore. No wonder I slept so well last night. Because even though I hadn’t known where I was, my body knew.

I felt like I was home.

My face hurt from smiling so widely, but I couldn’t help myself. The taffy was sweet, and the afternoon was warm and clouds were beginning to roll in from a distance, thunder rumbling between the trees. An afternoon shower, like yesterday.

Anders studied me after we passed the art gallery. “You’re like a kid in a candy store.”

“Wedidjust come from a candy store,” I pointed out, and offered him a taffy.

He shook his head.

“Oh, right, you don’t like sweets.”

I unwrapped another one, and this piece was just as sweet and sticky as the first one. “Okay, so, I have a question for you.”

“Different than the hundreds of questions you already asked?”

“Smart-ass,” I muttered.

I stepped in front of him, bringing him to a sudden stop. “Who are you?”

“A small-town bookstore owner who desperately wants to get you on your way.”

“Yeah, I know, but I don’t remember you—and I remember everything from these books.”

“Ah”—and he put his hands into his neat knife-pleated trouser pockets—“everything?”

I frowned, studying him.

Ever since I was little, I was excellent at remembering what I read. I could pick up a book from ten years ago and recite the plot, almost chapter by chapter, though that might’ve been because I was a slow reader, and as a slow reader I just absorbed useless knowledge like a sponge. But in all the Quixotic Falls novels, I didn’t remember this man. The last I’d read, the owner of Ineffable Books had sold it, but to whom the author never said, and then that brought up more questions—where in the story were we? What book? It was after the fourth one, because all of the couples were together and neither Beatrice Everly or Garnet Rivers were anywhere to be found. So, Eloraton was drifting, unmoored, in the possibilities that Rachel Flowers left when she passed.

“Well,” I finally admitted, “I thought I knew the series. Clearly, I don’t, since I don’t remember you. And whydoyou know you’re in a book series but everyone else doesn’t. Are you related to Lily? Thomas’s brother? Maybe a cousin of Frank’s … ?”

He inclined his chin. “I’ll let you keep guessing.”

“Will you tell me if I get it right?”

“Yes,” he replied.

I wasn’t sure if I believed him, as I folded my taffy plastic into a neat square, and put it in my back pocket. I took a deep breath, closing my eyes. “I can’t believe that I’mhere. The taffy, the café, the inn, the bookstore …”

It was all here. Everything that I loved.

“I have to see the rest,” I decided. “The inn, the clock tower, that little jewelry store that’s only open when Mercury’s in retrograde, and—” My breath hitched as I realized. The most important part of the town. The place where everything started, where everything ends. I spun to him. “The waterfall! I have to go see the—”

“No,” he said decisively.

“Why?”

“It’s not magical, it’s the middle of the day, it’s hot, there’s a storm coming in, and you need to leave,” he said, picking at his fingernails, as if it was matter-of-fact.

“How do youknowit’s not magical?” I challenged.

He slid his gaze to me. It was sharp. Testy. “How do you know it is?”

“I don’t! Which is why I want to go.”

“To see if the magic’s real.”

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