Chapter 3
CHAPTER
THREE
Emma
Nine months later…
“I got your coffee,” I shout out to my granddad as I walk into The Vintage Verse, the bookshop he’s owned and run ever since I can remember. There are beads of sweat on my brow because the July heat blasted down on me during my walk back from the coffee shop. “And your breakfast.”
A strange sense of comfort hits me as I weave my way through the stacks of books, carefully balancing the Styrofoam cups and the bowl of oatmeal I bought for Granddad. This bookshop has always been my sanctuary. First when I lost my parents and my grandparents took me in, and then again last year when I split up with Will and licked my wounds in here for months.
Once upon a time this bookshop was run by both my grandparents, before my grandma passed away. They met in the sixties at some commune in Haight Ashbury. They turned on, tuned in, dropped out, and then she got pregnant with my mom and they dropped back in again, settling here in Oak Hollow, a little town on the north coast of Long Island.
My grandmother was a poet, though she only had one book published back in the seventies.
There are no copies in print. And since she died, finding it has become my grandpa’s version of the holy grail.
If there’s a yard sale, he’s there. When an estate sale or book auction comes up, he requests the catalogue and pores over it, determined to find the poetry once written by his lost love.
He hasn’t found it yet, but I don’t think he’ll give up until he does.
I sidle around two giant towers of books. The ones at the bottom have probably been there for twenty years. If anybody comes in here to buy one we’ll probably have to order a crane to extract them safely.
Granddad is on the other side, at the old wooden desk that probably predates him.
“What are you looking at?” I ask him, putting the coffee and oatmeal in front of him.
“We got a letter from the new landlord.” He puts it down and sniffs at the oatmeal. “Does it have syrup?”
“Agave.”
He shakes his head and takes the wooden spoon from the bag, looking resigned. “Your health food fads are gonna kill me.”
“That’s not exactly the plan.” I sit down opposite him and take the letter he’s put down. He has a habit of throwing away important information. Two months ago I found a letter from the electric company threatening to cut off our service being used as a bookmark in a first edition of A Tale of Two Cities .
I take a sip of my coffee and skim the letter, bracing myself for bad news. Keeping this place going is getting harder. It’s our online business that brings the money in nowadays. I set up the website when I started managing the shop full time, when Grandma was sick and Granddad spent most of his time in the hospital.
We have customers all over the world. My favorite sound is the ping of another sale coming out of my laptop.
Granddad came back to work full time after Grandma’s funeral. He loves working here. He loves his customers. Some of them have been coming in for decades to browse the shelves. Very few of them buy anything. But I get it, I really do. If he wasn’t here, he’d be in his empty house without Grandma.
I love this place too. In the months since I split with my ex it’s been my safe haven. Books have a magical way of healing broken hearts.
I frown as I reach the crux of the letter. A new management company took over the building a year ago. They’ve been noticeably absent, changing nothing at all except the bank account we send the rental money to.
“They’re sending us notice to evict?” I ask, alarmed.
Granddad looks at me, his spoon hovering between the oatmeal and his mouth. “Yep.”
“You don’t sound surprised.”
He lifts a brow. “Rita got the same letter yesterday. Mark got one, too.”
Rita runs the dress shop next door. Mark is a therapist. He’s the newest of the tenants here.
“Why didn’t you say something?” I ask him, frowning.
He shrugs. “Didn’t want to worry you. You have enough to think about.”
“They can’t make us leave,” I tell him. “We have a controlled lease.” I investigated it when the new company bought the building. Unlike Mark and Rita, who are relative newcomers, when Granddad and Grandma signed their rental agreement back in the early seventies, they were guaranteed their unit for life. All they had to do is pay the rent on time.
“I guess that’s why they’re offering money,” he says. “They’ve offered the same amount to Rita and Mark.”
“They don’t have to pay Rita and Mark. They can just evict them.”
“Maybe they’re ethical landlords. I don’t know.” He puts his spoon back in the oatmeal. “Seriously, what’s wrong with apple danishes?”
“Nothing. Once in a while.” I catch his eye. “I just like having you around, that’s all.
For a moment we sit in silence. I look at the thousands of books stacked up and lining the shelves. Some of them are so dusty you can barely read the titles. Most of them have been here since I was a little girl. I can remember my mom bringing me here when we were visiting from abroad. My dad was never there. He was always working, always traveling. And later my mom traveled with him while I boarded at school.
But when I was little, this shop felt magical. Like a version of Olivanders. My grandma would take me to the children’s section and let me pick out a book. I’d sit in the corner and read while she and mom had quiet discussions, usually about my dad.
I remember falling in love with a copy of Grimm’s Fairy Tales . It was half-falling apart, covered in dust, but the pictures inside were magical. When we left that day, my mom pulling at my hand because we had a flight to catch and we were already running late, Grandma had insisted I take the book with me.
“But it’s worth a lot,” my mom had protested. “She’s a little girl.”
“I’m a big believer in books finding the owner they want,” my grandma said, smiling at me. “Take it.”
I sigh at the memory. Grandma was always generous. Not just with books but with love.
“I’m not planning on going anywhere, Emma,” Granddad tells me.
And now I feel like the thirteen-year-old girl who turned up here carrying a suitcase, still in the uniform of jumper, shirt, and tie that my school – the same one that had thrown me out for non-payment – insisted we wore.
But I’m not that girl anymore. It’s my turn to take care of him.
“I like it here,” he says. “I’m planning on running this place for a long time still.”
“Me too,” I admit.
We both need this place. Granddad, because it was the shop he built from nothing with my Grandma. And me because I don’t know what else to do with my life. I love books, I love being here. I’m single and determined to keep it that way after my breakup with Will.
For the first time in months, I feel myself getting fired up again. “I’ll send them a letter,” I tell him. “Let them know we’re not interested in being paid off.”
Grandpa’s lips twitch. “Sometimes you remind me so much of your grandma. Same red hair, same fiery temperament. I remember us being at a protest in San Francisco.” He runs his finger over his gray-stubbled jaw. “I can’t even recall what we were protesting against. Whatever it was, she was so fired up. When the cops tried to move us on she refused to go.”
“What happened?” I ask him, because I breathe in his memories like I breathe in oxygen.
“She was arrested. Ended up spending the night in jail. When I went to bail her out the next morning she was reciting poetry to all the cops in the station. They were lapping it up.”
We share a smile, and then the bell above the door rings and one of Granddad’s friend’s walks in. He throws the rest of his oatmeal into the trash can, looking sheepish, then goes over to talk to him, leaving me to my coffee and laptop.
I open it to compose a reply to Salinger Estates’ letter. I’m going to tell them to shove their offer where the sun doesn’t shine.
If they want a fight, I’ll give it to them. My grandmother’s blood flows through my veins, after all.
brOOKS
“Mr. Salinger?” Luke, my assistant says, opening the door to my office. “Mr. Salinger is here to see you.”
“Which one?” I ask him. Because in my family there are a lot of Mr. Salingers. Six of them who regularly call or stride into the office to see me because apparently they don’t realize I’m trying to get some damn work done.
“Your father,” my dad barks out, pushing past Luke without being asked to come in. “We need to talk.”
Of course we do. I pinch the bridge of my nose because it’s only nine o’clock in the morning and today is already shaping up to be the worst day of the week after yesterday. And the day before.
“I’m busy,” I say as my father sits down on the leather sofa in the corner of my office. Which used to be his office, once upon a time, until he stepped down from his position as head of Salinger Estates to spend more time with his wife and his ex-wives. One of whom is my mother.
It’s complicated. Like the rest of my life.
When my father stepped down a year ago, I was the natural choice to step into his role. Not just because I’ve been working for Salinger Estates for the last five years, but because none of my brothers were interested in the job.
It took me about five minutes to work out why. My dad isn’t exactly hands off. Thank god for my stepmother, who insists that he travels with her and his ex-wives when they go on their cruises. She’s already told me she chooses the ones without Wi-Fi so he can’t keep interfering.
“The Redfern Building. Have you sorted it out?” he asks.
I grit my teeth together. The Redfern Building was his mess. It was part of a big auction lot he bought right before he stepped down. He bid on it because he wanted a landmark hotel in Manhattan. Along with that hotel came several other small buildings he intended to refurbish and sell for a profit.
But he didn’t read the damn fine print. One building – The Redfern Building in some tiny town in Long Island – has been a thorn in the business' side ever since.
“I sent an offer to the tenants,” I tell him.
“And have they accepted?”
The letter went out last week. It was a more than generous offer. At this point, our lawyers say our hands are tied. Unless the tenants leave willingly, we can’t refurbish the building and sell it.
And dammit, we need to sell it.
“Not yet, no.”
I look down at the letter I received this morning. Luke brought it in earlier, a grimace on his face.
Dear Mr Salinger.
You can shove your offer where the sun doesn’t shine.
Yours sincerely,
E. Robbins,
Manager, The Vintage Verse
There’s nothing funny about that letter. But it’s a perfect illustration of the tail wagging the damn dog. They have an unbreakable lease and they know it. I’m fuming at the way we can’t buy our way out of this problem.
“We should just sell the damn thing with sitting tenants then,” he grumbles.
“We tried,” I tell him. “Nobody wants a building with three failing businesses occupying it, especially when one of them has an unbreakable lease.”
He lets out a huff. “Life used to be so much easier when you could just intimidate your tenants out of the building.”
I shoot him a look. My father – Rupert Salinger – built his business up from almost nothing, back when Manhattan real estate was a surefire way to make money, and landlords held all the cards.
Now — rightly — there are more curbs on landlords. He doesn’t like it. Not one bit.
“It’s under control,” I tell him, my voice tight. “I’m going to visit the tenants later in the week. Make a deal face to face.”
“You are? Isn’t it two hours away?”
Yes it is, and nobody is more annoyed than me that I have to negotiate over a stupid building we never wanted. It’s going to take at least half a day and I’m working my ass off trying to manage everything here.
“Did you need anything else?” I ask my father pointedly.
“Ah, yeah. Your moms want to know when you’ll be at Misty Lakes next,” he says.
Misty Lakes is my father’s estate in Virginia. My brothers and I all have cabins around the lake, and my father, his wife, and his two ex-wives, who are all friends, stay in the big house on the hill.
My family is beyond complicated. And it’s put me off having one of my own for life, which is a good thing.
“I’m not sure,” I tell him. “I’m very busy.”
“They miss you.” He clears his throat. “Your brothers do, too.”
That almost makes me smile because I’m pretty sure my brothers are all too busy juggling their jobs, their relationships, and their army of kids to notice I’m not there. I’m the only brother unattached and without children.
And for some reason I start to think about last year. About the bridesmaid who howled at the moon. I blink, trying to ignore the memory of her mouth against mine.
For about five minutes I thought about tracking her down. And then I remembered that I’m not interested in relationships. Sure, I hope she’s happy, but that’s it.
My dad’s phone beeps and it feels like a relief. Growing up, we barely saw him. He was too busy building his empire to notice he had six boys from two different marriages who were all desperate for his attention.
It was our mothers who raised us. My mom was his second wife, well technically his third, but we don’t talk about the first wife. Four of my brothers were from his marriage before my mom. Myself and my brother Lincoln are from my mom, and we have a little sister, Francie, from his current marriage to Julia.
As I said, complicated .
“Ah, I’m supposed to be meeting Julia at the club for brunch,” he says, his nose wrinkling as he looks around the office. “I could tell her I’m busy,” he says hopefully.
“No,” I say firmly, because the last thing I need is him poking through all the work we’re doing. “I have everything under control. You have a good time.”
“You sure?”
“Yes.” I nod. “You don’t need to worry about anything. I’ll sort the Redfern Building this week.”
He gives me a quick smile as he stands. He’s lost a little height in the past few years. He no longer looks like the scary patriarch he was when I was growing up.
Now I look in the mirror and I’m almost a carbon copy of the man he used to be.
“Goodbye, son,” he says, patting my shoulder. “And call your mother. She misses you.”
“Sure,” I tell him, watching as he leaves the office, his gait slow, lying through my teeth. “I will.”