Page 46 of Will Bark for Pizza
Armed with an iced caramel coffee,I headed for the bookstore half an hour ahead of the time I agreed to meet Dad and the appraiser.
It didn’t matter that the sun was shining brightly this morning, or that Husker was happily zigzagging on the sidewalk in front of me, blissfully unaware of what this all meant. Dread filled every cell of my body.
I hated this so much.
Yesterday, I mostly hid in my bedroom and caught up on all the work I neglected over the past several weeks. I responded to reader comments and emails—avoiding the most popular question:When is Mateo’s story coming?I ran numbers, and reevaluated my budget. Lila was thrilled I gave her more ad money to play with to capitalize onForever Forbidden’sspike of success.
I also spent an embarrassing amount of time staring at the picture of Husker, with Beckett in the background, smiling right at the camera. Zooming in, and memorizingthe tattoos I could see. A unit crest. A panther. A moose skull? I had so many questions.
Though I’d never own up to it—Lila would never let me live it down if I did—I hoped he provided writing inspiration.
But any attempts to write and salvage Diana Davenport’s career were a complete flop. After two hours and several deleted sentences, the single page in my document sat empty.
That was it.
I was done writing.
And Mom’s bookstore was nearly done existing.
“This isn’t fair, Bubbies,” I said to Husker as thegoing out of business salesign came into view, causing my heart to sink clear into my toes. I hated that the store was closed because Dad didn’t even have the funds to staff it.
Husker looked at me, then at the door. He knew exactly where we were.
Despite knowing it was closed, I reached for the door handle and tugged. It was my final prayer that I’d been living a nightmare reality. That with one tug of the handle, the door would open, the familiar sounds of chatter and laughter would filter around me, and everything would be the way it should be the second I stepped across the threshold.
But the door didn’t open.
The nightmare was real.
Mom would be heartbroken to know her bookstore was closed on a Friday morning. It was one of the busiest of the week, and one of her favorite days. Friday mornings were for coffee drinkers, those who read thelocal newspaper from cover to cover, and her famous buy-one-get-one-half-off sale that tourists absolutely loved.
This was wrong.
I dug my key ring from my purse and inserted the key into the lock, relieved when it turned easily.
I needed a sliver of time to stroll leisurely down the aisles of books, before Dad showed up with the appraiser and shattered my nostalgia once and for all.
Husker tugged me inside, and the old book smell rushed me instantly. At leastone thingwas the same.
I pulled the door closed behind me and simply stood, taking it all in.
With the exception of the missing staff and customers, it looked exactly as it did last summer.
Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves along every wall, still full of books. Display tables set up for new releases, bestsellers, and fun monthly themes—Whodunnit for June. Though, upon closer examination, the display was . . . a little tacky.
Okay, so maybe notexactlythe same.
The puzzle corner where Mom collected the most unique jigsaw puzzles and brainteasers with a half-completed floral puzzle on the square table was a complete mess. I set to straightening it without forethought. But it didn’t take long before my attention was pulled away.
The children’s section toward the back, equipped with beanbags and stuffed animals from the classics, was in disarray. Books were strewn everywhere, as though someone left in a hurry. A couple of the covers were torn. The beanbags that once were vibrant and new looked to be on their death bed. Someone had stuffed aClifford dog in a kennel made of books on a lower level shelf.
“What the actualfuck?”
After freeing the stuffed animal, I kept moving about the store.
The old register Mom found at an estate sale and refused to get rid of, even when they upgraded the payment system to a digital one, was still here, and positioned on the front counter. At least Margene didn’t steal that. Probably because it was too damn heavy to carry out of the store.
The cushy, mismatched chairs stationed around the bookstore so people could hang out and enjoy their books and the coffee they picked up down the street were in decent shape, though they were certainly more worn than I remembered. Okay, maybe “worn” was being generous. Some were actually torn in places, with stuffing sticking out. One had a broken leg.
