Page 10 of The Luck of Finding You
“That’s fine; I’m sure you can be back by the end of the week. I’ll have you all sign here.” Mr. Thorne slides a piece of paper and a pen in my direction.
“What if everything isn’t fine?” Tally’s jaw is clenched, and I wonder why she’s getting more and more tense about this. It’s not like she has to uproot her life; for her, pretty much everything stays the same. “What if I don’t want him working with me?” She jerks her head in my general direction. Annie laughs, then tries to cover it up with a cough. As if she even knew the half of it.
“Maybe Ms. Jones will be the one to come.” Mr. Thorne pushes the paper we need to sign closer toward me and Annie.
“I can’t.” Annie’s voice fills the room, but instead of calming me as it usually does, I have a rush of anger. No, not quite anger. Something else I can’t quite put my finger on. I clench my fist. I don’t want Tally to find out like this. I want to tell her, to talk to her about it, because with the facial expressions she’s been making this entire meeting, she’s less than thrilled about the news that just got dropped on all of our heads. “I just started a job. The most perfect job, so I can’t leave New York. Not yet. But Noah here”—Annie pats me on the arm with her freezing-cold hand—“he was saying just this morning how maybe he could use a change. I think this would be perfect, big brother.”
My sister and I have always gotten along fairly well. I’d even call us good friends. But in this moment, I kind of want to strangle her because of the way Tally’s looking at me right now.
On her face is a mix of hurt and annoyance. I want so badly to take her in my arms and do everything I can to bring her smile back, to help her feel okay about this. She needs to feel okay about this because this is happening.
I’m starting to wonder if thisisone of Grandma Marsha’s matchmaking schemes. She did love to brag about how she could always see two people who would work well together. Which is probably why she hated my dad so much; beyond the fact that he was just a garbage human being, she knew he wasn’t the right fit for Mom.
Tally’s clear voice pulls me out of my musings. We’ll never actually know what Grandma Marsha was thinking in doing all this. “I know the shop backward and forward. Plus, there’s no extra money for us to pay him. Marsha took a huge pay cut so that we could hire Olivia, the other woman who works there. We can’t fire her. She loves this job, and we need her. But there’s no other money.”
A red flag goes off in my head. Is The Book Shop in trouble? “I don’t need money.”
Tally’s eyes narrow at me. “How could you not need money? Everyone needs money. If this is what you’ll be doing for work, don’t you need to get paid?”
“Money isn’t an issue.” It would only take her a few seconds to Google me and find out exactly why I don’t need the money. Sure, it’ll hurt a bit if I don’t get paid at all for a year, but it also won’t be an issue.
“Fine.” Tally looks back at Mr. Thorne. “I still don’t want to work with him.”
For a second I think he’s going to say that all of this has been a misunderstanding and that we can just go on our way and sell the shop. Instead, he shrugs. “You don’t really have a choice if you want the thirty thousand. He or Ms. Jones has to work there for a year with you, and since Ms. Jones has declined, it looks like Mr. Jones will be your co-manager for the year. Then the three of you can discuss what you’d like to do with the shop, as it is yours and you’ll have the money also. Mr. Jones has quite the resume, so I’m sure he’ll be an excellent associate.”
Tally’s frown turns into a full-on scowl.
“Will that be a problem, Ms. Nelson?” Mr. Thorne asks her.
“I don’t even know the man.” Tally’s dismay is palpable. “And he hasn’t been to The Book Shop at all in the past two years, which I know because I’ve worked every single day it’s been open.”
I open my mouth to say that she does know me, at least she did and she could, but instead, I say, “Why didn’t Grandma give you time off?”
Fury fills Tally’s eyes as she looks at me. “Do you know how long your grandma was sick? Every day I watched her get weaker and weaker. She loved the shop, and it killed her not to be able to be there every day, especially at the end. I worked hard every single day because there was no one else who could do that, who would do that. Marsha and I, and now Olivia, have worked so hard to get the shop to where it is today.”
“Barely making money?” I don’t know whytheseare the first words out of my mouth. I want to take them back immediately as her cheeks turn pink in anger. They’ll haunt me until I die.
“We’re doing fine,” she snaps.
“Not enough for you to pay three employees?” I can’t explain why I’m arguing about this. I just told her that money wasn’t going to be an issue. But the shop can’t be doing well if money is such an issue.
“You don’t know anything about running a bookstore.” That, Tally is not wrong about.
“Well, sounds like you’re the right person to show Noah the ropes.” Mr. Thorne seems oblivious to the fact that Tally resents the idea. “If you’ll just sign here,” he repeats pushing the pen and paper so that it’s now right in front of me. My hand doesn’t shake as I sign, even though I should be worried based on the look that Tally is sending me. I pass the paper to Annie. She signs and pushes the paper toward Tally.
Mo whines under the table.
“Is that a dog under there?” Tally asks.
I give her a friendly smile. “He’s mine.”
“He’s not allowed in The Book Shop.” Tally stares down at the document in front of her, and I hold my breath until she lowers the pen and signs her name. “I’m only doing this for Marsha, and I’m serious about the dog.”
This comment is directed to me, and it lights something inside my chest. She may resent the fact that I have to be here, but she’s also still going through with it. Even if it is for Grandma Marsha, even if it is for the money at the end of this.
Hope pulses through my body. Maybe I can show her that even though I left before, I’m not going anywhere now, and this time I can show her exactly what I didn’t all those years ago.
That is, if I can get her to stop hating my guts.
