Sixteen
Sixteen
Book people are nice.
Ellie had forgotten this fact. All morning, she’s allowed herself to temporarily brush aside the absurdities of the last day and a half and just be swept along with the motions of this new space. Every few minutes, another customer wanders through the glass door wearing an obvious look of contentment on their face. They’re happy to be here. Unlike most other areas of retail, people don’t tend to find themselves at a bookshop because it’s a chore, just another item to cross off a never-ending to-do list. Rather, stepping inside here is a reprieve. Customers want to stay, slow down, take a break. No one is in a rush to leave.
Back in her real life, Ellie sometimes thought about returning to work here. Every few years, she’d tell herself this next chapter in motherhood would be easier, but it was never true. It’s a big misconception, the idea that as your child gets older, she’ll need you less. When Maggie entered her elementary years and Ellie believed she might have a few free mornings to take on part-time bookseller shifts, she learned that her daughter’s school relied on mothers like her to cover the front desk and to sign up as room parents and to organize fundraisers and to chaperone field trips. By middle school, Maggie’s cocurriculars and budding social life more or less required Ellie to become a chauffeur, and never at convenient hours. By high school—well, just forget it. Those four years were such a blur of prep courses and guidance meetings that Ellie often wondered if the other mothers had hired personal assistants to keep track of everything.
It was true Ellie’s own mother had worked part-time, though things were so different then. Life—parenthood, in particular—was not nearly as demanding. As a child, Ellie was a Girl Scout—a commitment that required her and Bunny to attend one event every month at a town park. By the time Maggie was in sixth grade, she was on three travel sports teams, which meant she (and, in turn, Ellie) had lengthy commitments to keep literally seven days per week all year long. It wasn’t that Maggie particularly loved any of the sports or thought she might become a professional athlete. It was just how things worked—it was just what you did .
“Why are you walking funny?” Gabby asks, her mermaid-esque hair wildly framing her face. She balances a stack of new fiction titles—a happy, literary rainbow—in her hands. She slides them, one by one, onto a shelf, an orderly arrangement of well-executed plotlines.
Ellie takes a seat on a comfortable chair—one of the few set up throughout the store. They’re like upholstered invitations for shoppers to sit and read. She tucks a piece of her straight, honey hair behind her ear, noticing her bare ring finger. “That little fender bender,” Ellie explains. Her back has been acting up ever since the crash. But today, thanks to all the new sights and sounds around her—this most unexpected setting—she’s almost briefly forgotten about it, or at least been able to ignore it for the time being. “I think I tweaked my back again,” she adds now, newly reminded of the pain.
“Again?” Gabby asks, her pink mouth twisted, as she turns away from the shelf. “What do you mean? What’d you do to it the first time?”
Right, Ellie thinks. Because here, in this cozy bookshop and in this current life, as far as Ellie understands, it is not a pain she ever would have mentioned, one that would not even exist.
Ellie waves an unbothered hand. “It’s—it’s nothing,” she explains, a lie.
The night Maggie was born—well, the whole twenty-four uncomfortable hours Ellie spent in the Labor and Delivery wing at the local hospital, all of which had ultimately led up to that most climactic of events—was the most emotional of Ellie’s entire life. She’d never been admitted to a hospital before—not for surgeries or to have her tonsils removed or for a broken bone. For thirty-odd years, she’d managed to bypass that whole side plot of one’s upbringing. She was terrified from the minute she entered the vast building. Although it sounded juvenile, she hadn’t even really known (other than the fictionalized knowledge she’d gained from movies) what the inside of a hospital actually looked like.
Jonah sat in a chair in the corner of Ellie’s delivery room, putting on his best calm face, although she knew he was all jumping beans inside. For the first few hours of labor, the pain had been uncomfortable but manageable enough for the two of them to laugh a few times about the terrible reruns they were forced to watch on the hospital TV. Ellie wasn’t allowed to eat anything, which felt like a form of torture right then, even though she knew she was fine and hooked up to an IV. Even so, every half hour, Jonah walked down to the nurses’ station and got her a lemon Italian ice, the only thing she was permitted to consume—a small, sugary, paper-wrapped luxury that, for a few minutes once per hour, made her feel a little bit like herself again.
For as slow as her labor was, the actual birth came shockingly fast. The nurses—who’d been so sweet a little while earlier, fluffing Ellie’s pillows and making jokes when they came to check her vitals, anything to make her forget the contractions—instantly turned into aggressive sports coaches who shouted a barrage of demands. Push! Harder! Now! Breathe! Ellie’s lower body was paralyzed by drugs—if she couldn’t physically see them, she might honestly have thought she’d lost her legs. Terrified of screwing up and damaging this perfect human she and Jonah had created, she did as they said, every single muscle in her body tense and in full use and shaking.
Less than forty-eight hours later, the three of them were discharged, which in and of itself felt insane—the fact that Ellie and Jonah, who had absolutely zero real training, were just sent home with the task of caring for another human for the rest of their living days. But it was fine, just as it often is for people—not always, but usually—the two of them quickly figuring out a new rhythm for their shared life, like learning the steps of a dance and then working to perfect it a little more each day. It wasn’t until a week later, once the drugs and the adrenaline and a little thing called sleep had fully worn off, that Ellie first noticed the pain. In the months that followed, she visited multiple doctors, though none of them could find anything definably wrong.
“This is just motherhood,” one of the physicians had said, gaslighting her. “Sometimes, it’s simply the price we pay,” he explained, even though he had never given birth, and thus had paid nothing.
As time passed, Ellie often thought of that terrible doctor, not wanting to admit it, though privately acknowledging that part of what he’d said had been right. That is motherhood in some ways, isn’t it? The invisible pain mothers carry. The aches inside their bodies and their hearts that can never be explained or pinpointed or healed.
“So, where’d you get into an accident?” Gabby moves back behind the shop’s pretty white counter. She taps her fingers across the computer keyboard like a pianist. “I thought you planned to stay home watching bad rom-coms and eating pints of ice cream.”
“The corner of Elm and South,” Ellie explains and then watches as a young mother and her toddler daughter push open the glass door.
The bells jingle. The little girl, dressed in Velcro sneakers and a polka-dot dress, runs across the store—clearly familiar with the space—and heads right over to the children’s section—all pint-size shelves and pastel-colored beanbag chairs—in the back.
“Elm and South?” Gabby lifts a purple fingernail to her mouth, nibbles her cuticle. “Didn’t you get into an accident at that intersection years ago?” She lowers her hand and tilts her head at Ellie, who looks at her blankly, hoping this topic will— Abracadabra! —magically go away. “Remember?” Gabby nudges. “With that cute guy. It was the day you and Jack broke up.”
Her jaw clenching, Ellie breathes through her teeth. “Jack?” she repeats, playing dumb, as if she did not just run into him in the emergency room yesterday. Or as if she has not been replaying that original accident over and over in her head on a perpetual loop for the last day. “Remind me what happened with him?”
Gabby is smiling, but in a scandalous way. “You can’t possibly still be burned by that one,” she says as a customer approaches the counter. She exchanges pleasantries, then continues the conversation with Ellie. “I mean, yes, he was a total fool for what he did,” she explains as she drops the customer’s purchase—some recent popular beach read—into a small brown shopping bag. “And, yes, it was probably a mistake that, after our conversation in our apartment, you totally went against my advice, talked to him again the next day, and then proceeded to date him for another six months. But, I mean—”
“Another six months?” Ellie questions and notes the way Gabby looks at her, as if she’s suddenly begun to speak in a different, never-before-heard-of language. “I ... did?”
Gabby laughs out loud. “Guess you decided to mentally block that one out?” She sends the customer on her way. “I don’t blame you.” She smiles. As she talks, Ellie feels herself taking copious mental notes, like a stenographer has moved into her brain. “Anyway, when you came back to our apartment after your little car crash that day and sobbed to me for hours—” She stops herself. “Wait a minute.” Some light bulb clicks on inside her head. “Come to think of it, that whole breakup—well, the first time around, at least—is sort of the reason you and I finally became friends, isn’t it?”
“Right,” Ellie agrees, even though she hasn’t the slightest clue if this is true. Her gaze begins to shift away from Gabby—too much eye contact makes it feel impossible to lie—and lands on the little girl. She is now sprawled out on an area rug as she flips through a book Ellie recognizes—one she once read to Maggie—about a magical kingdom. “That’s how we finally became friends,” she adds, her voice somber. “Because I just came home.”
One choice, Ellie thinks to herself. One small choice and you changed everything.
“You feeling all right, Ellie?” Gabby grabs a stack of books from near the register and carries them to a shelf. “You’re sort of, like, staring off into space.”
“Um, yeah,” Ellie acknowledges. “I’m fine. I was just thinking about how weird it is.”
“What’s that?” Gabby asks as she begins to display the new titles.
“Just—I mean—I don’t know,” Ellie says. “Imagine if I’d gone someplace else that day. Like if I’d stopped off somewhere with the guy who crashed into me or something.”
Gabby’s big blue eyes widen. “Oh, that would have made for a fun twist!” She sets down the rest of her books, then places a hand on her slender hip. “What was his name? Do you remember?” Behind them, the bells on the door chime again. “I feel like you talked about him for a few days after that.”
“Who can remember?” Ellie fibs, her eyes still set toward the picture-book section. “It was so long ago.” She shakes her head, as if nonchalantly dismissing an unimportant set of memories. Finally, she turns back to Gabby. “It feels like something from another life, right?”
“I’m going to get a coffee,” Ellie announces a little while later. This whole afternoon has been lovely, like watching an enjoyable theatrical production, but she knows it’s not real. She needs to refocus and remember the task at hand.
What exactly , she thinks, is that again?
Gabby—who’s trying to talk a customer out of purchasing a terrible, though somehow bestselling, novel written (probably ghostwritten) by an “it” celebrity—gives Ellie a wave as she slides on her book bag straps and walks to the glass door. The bells jingle as she steps back outside and into the warm spring sunlight.
Rather than go immediately across the street, Ellie spends the next few minutes walking. She needs time to think. Her hands shoved in her pockets, Ellie moves up the block, all lined with pink and white dogwood trees. Out here, the world looks exactly the same. Here is the café where she’s dined dozens of times and its blooming window boxes. Here is the sweet little flower shop where she’s sometimes popped in for fresh bouquets. Here is the artisanal olive oil store that is pretty but never seems to sell a thing (Ellie hasn’t a clue how it survives). In the near distance, she hears the distinct whistle of the commuter train pulling into the local station, some people coming home, and others traveling away.
Ellie has lived here in this town for nearly her entire life. She’s never jetted across oceans, the way Maggie soon plans to do. She’s never headed out west the way Jonah did for college, just to see for a few years what a life of constant sunshine and citrus is all about. Other than those trips back and forth between Newark and Orlando, she’s never really gone anywhere too distant. And yet, while she walks alone today as Ellie Adams—not Ellie Baker or anyone else—on this stretch of pavement that in all reality she’s likely traversed more than a thousand times in her life, she’s never felt someplace more foreign or far away.
What is she supposed to do? What is the solution? Does she try to fix this life—the goal she set for herself only yesterday—even though she has no idea how? Does she try to sleep it off, like a bad hangover? Or does she just go with it, like picking up a book you’re not sure you’ll like, but seeing it through to the end just to find out where it leads?
Ellie has no real logical clue how she’s ended up here, inside this strange, not entirely terrible, though most definitely bizarre, alternate version of her life. Perhaps worse, she doesn’t know how long she’ll be stuck in it. Is this whole thing akin to a short-lived weekend trip away? A long, extended vacation? A permanent move?
Ellie turns at the corner to loop back around the block. How is it possible that the rest of the town seems normal—not a pothole, not a crooked street sign, not a single thing out of place—except for her small pocket of it? Up ahead, Ellie sees the bookstore ( her bookstore, apparently— pffft ) and her favorite coffee shop across the street, outside of which is a chalkboard sidewalk sign. Come try our new signature breakfast blend!
Her mind immediately flips back to Sunday morning in Florida, Ellie and her mother at the kitchen table, talking over their steaming mugs. Things won’t be the same when you go back. Your life. The house. Everything will be different. Ellie cannot imagine a world in which her mother would ever mean for those words to be taken quite so literally. And yet ...
Now, Ellie pushes open the glass door. The inside of the coffee shop is thankfully the same as always. Wooden beams crisscross the ceiling. A wall of shiny espresso machines behind the counter hiss with steam. A dozen or so wood-top tables are scattered, in no particular pattern, throughout the space.
At the counter, Ellie orders a large hot coffee with a splash of cream and a sprinkle of cinnamon. It’s her usual order—nothing fancy that requires too many descriptions or steps. The twentysomething barista, a young man who wears an unseasonable beanie hat, shreds of lettuce hair poking out its bottom, works to prepare it. While she waits, Ellie looks through the glass display at all those sweets—croissants and brownies and those silly little cake pops that never actually taste very good.
“Want anything?” the barista asks, noticing her eyeing the case. He hands over her coffee, then taps the glass. “The cream puffs.” He points to a pyramid of golden rounds. “They’re my favorite.”
Ellie’s nose wrinkles at the suggestion. “No thanks.”
After she pays, Ellie briefly closes her eyes and takes a hot sip of her fresh breakfast blend. It’s good. Light. A little nutty. Comfortably predictable. Easy to drink. She opens her eyes and takes a step, scanning the place for a vacant table, then immediately swallows another sip of her coffee as she takes a shaky breath.
There, at the window seat— their seat, the one beneath that trailing cascade of green leaves—she sees him, like a ghost from a past life. He wears that undershirt again, the one that in his (in their ) real life, he’d never be caught dead sporting out in public. Although she can only see his back—his strong shoulders visible beneath the cotton—it is obvious that, once again, his thick chestnut-and-gray hair is a freestyle mess and in need of a trim (something Ellie is always the one to schedule for him).
She opens her mouth to speak but doesn’t know what to say. Does she call him by name? Does she reference yesterday’s accident as a segue? Does she—
“Ahh!” Someone bumps into Ellie from behind. Her perfect, hot, freshly brewed coffee somersaults out of her hand. It explodes on the floor, brown splatters splashing up onto her jeans.
“I’m so sorry!” a random man behind her gasps, already reaching for a stack of paper napkins. “This is completely my fault.”
“It’s—it’s fine,” Ellie decides as she bends down to help the stranger clean the mess he’s made. She picks up the empty cup and spreads the napkins over the puddle.
“Here,” a familiar voice announces above her. “Let me help with this.”
Ellie looks up, and there he is. Jonah. He smiles at her. When he does, for the first time in years, the sight of it triggers something deep inside her, some feeling that may be nerves or anxiety or excitement. It’s hard to tell. Sometimes, they all feel the same, like cousins—distinctive in their own ways and yet all stemming from the same family tree. It doesn’t matter. Whatever the feeling, Ellie forgets how to breathe.
Jonah, who moved away from his window seat while Ellie’s head was down, assists now with the spill. As he does, she smells the piney scent of his deodorant, the earthy aroma of his skin. He gathers a sopping pile of coffee-soaked napkins in his hand and then turns to meet Ellie’s face. Time stops. He parts his lips to say something. It could be anything. It could be nothing.
“I remember you,” he says.
It is everything.