Page 19 of The Story of Us
“We have to find a way to fight back,” she announced as she ran the feather duster over the top of the pink and gold piano in thePoetrycorner.
Lucy shoved a copy ofThe Love Letters of John Keatsinto place on its shelf. “Okay, but how?”
“I have exactly no idea. But we have got to come up with something.” Jamie stabbed at the air with her feather duster. “I mean, this place just means too much for them to cavalierly tear it down.”
She picked up a little wooden duck knickknack to clean beneath it, despite zero evidence of dust bunnies. Come to think of it, she might have already dusted the entire piano an hour ago. Ugh. She placed the duck back in front of the row of poetry books lined up on the piano’s lid, but her knuckles knocked into a wax embosser kit in the process. She reached for the knob of the wax seal stamp, but it toppled off the piano quicker than she could catch it, slipping into the narrow space between the instrument and the wall.
“Oops.” Crouching down while wearing a pencil skirt was never ideal, but Jamie managed. Her hand slid into the tiny crack, but as she reached for the stamp, her fingertips came into contact with something bigger and bulkier.
She squinted into the dark space and caught sight of whatever it was, then slid her arm as far as it would go to grab hold of it. Success! She pulled it forward, and out tumbled the wax seal stamp along with a pale pink volume withThe Story of Usprinted on the cover in swirling gold script.
“What is that?” Lucy said as Jamie straightened.
“It’s a book.” Jamie had never heard of it, though. She’d definitely never seen it in the store before, so she flipped it open to take a peek. But as the cover lifted, she realized it wasn’t a book at all. It was a box designed to resemble a book, and it was filled with colorful cards decorated with hearts and flowers, yellowed with age.
She gasped. “It’snota book. These are Valentines!”
Lucy peered over her shoulder, chose one of the cards from the box and opened it. “These are so cute.”
Jamie sifted through the Valentines. There must have been forty or fifty of them, at least. Most featured retro illustrations—a watercolor of a puppy carrying an envelope sealed with a heart, a tiny elfin girl eating candy from a frilly heart-shaped box. They were the sort of Valentines that pre-dated the cartoon cards children passed out at school nowadays. These were special. Precious…
But what were they doing tucked away in a box in a corner of her store?
She scanned the writing inside one of the cards and gasped. “These are Valentines from old True Love customers to True Love Books.”
“Awww.” Lucy pressed a Valentine to her heart. “This is ridiculously sweet.”
Lucy grabbed a stack from the box and carried it to the white Queen Anne sofa in the reading nook by the front window. “Ah, look! This one says it’s from 1965!”
Jamie lowered herself onto the sofa cushion beside her. “Mr. Ogilvy must have kept them.”
“‘Dear True Love,’” Lucy read. “‘Without you we wouldn’t have had our first Valentine’s Day coffee and found our own true loves. You’ll always have a place in our hearts. Love, Chris and Tara.’”
For the first time all day, Jamie’s sagging spirits lifted. She chose another card to read aloud. “‘A Valentine of appreciation to True Love Books & Cafe. You brought us together in theclassicsand helped us find our happily ever after. Forever grateful, Sam and Laurie.’”
Goosebumps cascaded over Jamie, head to toe. She’d always appreciated how important True Love was to Waterford, but she’d never seen such an outpouring of support for the store before. It was just what she needed, today of all days.
“We should put these out for the customers.” Lucy began lining the Valentines up on the coffee table in a neat row.
“Yes! And show how important True Love is to the community!” Jamie’s heart thumped as she was hit with a small epiphany. Her head snapped toward Lucy. “That’s it!”
A few nearby customers glanced over in curiosity.
“What’s it?” Lucy gave her blank stare.
Didn’t she see? This was the answer Jamie had been trying so hard to come up with all day. This box and its precious contents were exactly what she needed in order to prove that True Love was far more important than the awful industrial development that Ridley—andSawyer—wanted to put in its place. These Valentines could be the very thing that saved her store.
“That’s how we fight back!”
Chapter Six
Two hours and eight phonecalls later, Jamie finally managed to track down the Editor-in-Chief of theWaterford Chronicle. It wasn’t easy. She’d had to navigate her way through a complicated phone tree of various voice mail messages, assistants and department editors, all while waiting on customers, closing up shop for the night and changing into appropriate evening attire for Rick’s Valentine’s cooking class. But all the effort was worth it, because the top dog himself finally took her call just as she and Lucy approached the door to Rick’s Bistro & Trattoria.
She talked as quickly as she could, lest he grow bored with her story and end the call. Plus, Rick’s class was supposed to have started five minutes ago.
“Yes. Yes, that’s right—Valentine’s cards from old True Love customers, people who met there. Some of them date back to the middle of last century!” Jamie paused on the threshold of the bistro just long enough to take a breath and let Lucy open the door for her. Technically, she could have opened it herself, but one hand was holding her iPhone while the other was gesticulating wildly. If she’d been wearing a Fitbit, smoke would have probably been coming out of it.
The editor took advantage of her need for oxygen to ask about the rumor he’d heard that True Love was a popular Waterford hotspot for couples to get engaged.
