Page 2 of Wish You Were Her
Hope it’s okay for me to email here. I called the shop but no one answered. Can I doublecheck the dates of your book festival? You don’t have a website and I can’t find it on socials.
Lots of love!
RE: Summer Book Festival
Dear Mysterious Reader who did not leave a name,
Apologies for our lack of technological advancement. Alas, I have implored George Brooks, my fearless leader, many times for a website but he is an adorable curmudgeon about such matters. The festival preparations have begun and it’s already taking years off my young life. We open on July 28, and the last night is August 23. Only two months to go.
Wish an overworked bookseller luck!
Warmest wishes,
Said Overworked Bookseller
Allegra smiled. It danced on her lips and then grew into something wide. She started to type a response.
Subject: Summer Book Festival
Dear Said Overworked Bookseller,
So sorry to have added more to your to-do list. For some reason, I thought Mr. Brooks was manning this email address but I should have known better. Consider me scolded.
Thank you for the festival dates, it’s gratefully received. The Twitter account only has this email address in its bio and no one has tweeted in this calendar year. Appreciate speediness of response via email.
Best,
Mysterious Reader
Allegra sent the email and switched both of her phones off, before sliding them into her clutch bag. It was a gift from an up-and-coming designer. She so rarely chose her own outfits anymore. She had become a canvas for other people’s art.
She found herself daydreaming for most of the luncheon. She knew so little of her father’s small town, Lake Pristine. Her mother had always spoken of it with great fondness and her father would send beautiful pictures of it at Christmas (physical Polaroids in the post because technology unnerved him). His bookshop was his pride and joy and Allegra could imagine it, in the sunny picturesque town where everyone was as friendlyand funny as the bookseller on the other end of their email exchange.
She had begged to visit as a child, imagining it to be a place of mermaids in lakes and fairies in the woods. But her father had always chosen to visit them in the city instead. The drive was too long for her, her parents would say, and as a child prone to travel sickness, she believed them. Now she wondered if it was just hard for the two of them to be there together—in the place where they had first fallen in love.
When Allegra’s acting career had taken off, her life had become one of trailers and hotels. No time for any kind of home.
Now Lake Pristine suddenly felt like an escape portal. The kind of world she wanted to fall into, even if only for a short spell.
“We need to discuss the summer,” Natalie finally murmured. “Have you decided what you’ll do with your time off? I can pull together a schedule if you want to keep working. You won’t be needed for press until August though.”
Allegra turned her personal phone back on.
She could feel Natalie watching her curiously. “You’re staring really hard at that thing. Not reading anymore trash opinions, I hope.”
“No,” Allegra said. “I—just emailing a friend.”
“A friend?”
“Don’t sound so surprised.”
