24
Aurelia awoke to insistent ringing and light coming through curtains she’d forgotten to fully close before tumbling into bed at dawn. She now stumbled out of bed and found her phone.
“Antonia?” she answered, slightly embarrassed to hear that her voice gave away that she’d only just woken up.
“You’re alive, then?”
It was indeed Antonia, sounding snappish.
“Alive and now awake,” Aurelia said, sitting down on the bed and looking at her bedside clock. “It’s only just eight. You couldn’t have given me another hour?”
“No, I couldn’t. You two didn’t call me yesterday and I was getting worried.”
“Oh, we’re fine,” Aurelia said. “I’m sorry, we got busy with things here.”
“Mmm.”
“Hang on, I’ll wake Julia so you can talk to her.”
“No, don’t. Let her sleep. Just have her call me later, alright?”
“Right, okay,” Aurelia promised.
They rang off and she climbed back into bed with Fezz tucked in next to her and Biscuit still passed out on the floor.
Later, at half past nine, Aurelia knocked on Julia’s door to wake her, their tea and toast ready on the table. Julia came out of the guest room with her hair piled on top of her head and plopped herself down in a chair.
“I have a crick in my neck from the window seat,” she complained.
“Just think how much worse it would’ve been if I’d left you down there.”
“Mmm.”
Julia’s noncommittal muttering reminded Aurelia strongly of Antonia.
“Your mum called this morning. We forgot to call her yesterday.”
“Oops. I’ll call her now.”
Julia stood and found Aurelia’s phone on the kitchen counter.
As soon as Antonia answered, Julia responded with a loud, “I’m alive, Mum.”
Julia put the phone on speaker and sat back at the table with Aurelia.
“Your aunt confirmed that earlier, thank you very much. What’s keeping you two so busy?”
There was a pause as Aurelia and Julia exchanged a look. Their faces slowly broke into smiles that soon led to laughter that neither of them could hold in.
“What? What is it? She didn’t let you pierce or tattoo anything, did she?”
“Please! Not on my watch,” Aurelia said disdainfully.
“It’s nothing, Mum. Just something funny that happened yesterday in the shop.”
“What?”
“Well, you sort of had to be there,” Julia said.
Aurelia didn’t want Antonia to feel left out, so she added, “Julia’s been finding out how unique some of the customers can be.”
“Yeah, the shop gets some interesting visitors,” Julia said, her eyes widening at her own daring to have come so close to the truth.
Aurelia’s heart skipped a beat as she tried to think whether she needed to say something to smooth over Julia’s comment. Then it skipped another when she realized that her secret was now in the hands of an indiscreet teenager.
“Oh—Aunt Aurelia, you didn’t tell me that Lydia got married at fifteen!” Julia said suddenly, seeming to forget that her mother was still on the phone.
“Fifteen? Who’s Lydia?” Antonia asked.
Aurelia opened her mouth, ready to begin the smoothing over process, but Julia beat her to it.
“Lydia’s in Pride and Prejudice,” Julia explained.
“I thought you were reading Jane Eyre?”
“I am. I just… I’m learning things about Pride and Prejudice too.”
“We watched one of the adaptations,” Aurelia explained, her eyes a warning to Julia. “They mention her age after she runs off with Wickham.”
“They do?” Julia asked.
Aurelia shot Julia a look of frustration, before saying, “They do, that’s how you know her age, remember?”
“Oh, right.” Julia shrugged her shoulders.
“We’d better get going,” Aurelia said, thinking it best to wrap things up before Julia confessed to learning some other detail from the characters. “We have to open the shop in a few minutes.”
As soon as they said their goodbyes, Aurelia put on a stern look as she turned to face her niece.
“Julia! That was a little too close!”
“What? I didn’t tell her it was Kitty who told me about Lydia.”
“No, but you’ve got to be more careful. Otherwise something will slip out, and it won’t always be so easy to cover for yourself.”
“So… no chance of us telling Mum?”
“We can’t,” Aurelia said, her tone softening. “We’ve got to keep this between us for now.”
“Alright, I’ll try,” Julia said as she stifled a yawn.
“And we’re going to have to start you on a napping schedule.”
“A what?”
“A napping schedule. You’ll keep falling asleep in the shop if you don’t get more sleep during the day. I usually nap after closing until Oliver gets home, then I go to bed until just before midnight, and then in the morning I sleep in until around nine.”
“Wow… It must feel like you’re constantly getting in or out of bed,” Julia said, shaking her head. “Does it really work?”
“It does, but it takes some getting used to. And I don’t usually go down every night, so that helps too. You just have to make sure to tell the characters not to worry if you’re not there.”
“I don’t think Mrs. Jamieson would be too worried if you went missing,” Julia said with a smirk.
“No, probably not,” Aurelia sighed.
Not long after they’d opened for the day, the shop’s phone rang.
“On the Square Books,” Aurelia answered.
“It’s me, David.”
“Good morning! I’m surprised to hear you up when you could be sleeping all day on your teacher’s holiday.”
“No, I got that out of my system the first week. Now I’m at the stage where I’m slightly bored but still don’t want to admit that the benefit of work is that it gives me something to do every day.”
“It does at that,” Aurelia said as she looked down at the inventory list she’d been reviewing just before he’d called.
“It doesn’t help having James away. Since we’re both book fair widows, I thought I’d see if you and Julia want to meet me for dinner tonight. We could see a movie afterward, get into some air conditioning?”
“Oh… What time were you thinking?”
“I don’t know—dinner at eight, movie at nine thirty or ten?”
Aurelia tried to do the math to see whether they’d be back by midnight, knowing that Julia wouldn’t want to miss the characters, especially after she’d fallen asleep and lost time with them the night before.
“Could we make it a little earlier? Or could we do lunch?”
“Lunch? This is déjà vu, me asking you to dinner and you asking if we can do lunch instead. That was your constant refrain when you were working on your first book and you’d practically locked yourself away in the shop.”
Aurelia closed her eyes, remembering all the times she’d refused to leave the shop after dark, needing the time to nap and worrying that she’d be back after midnight and miss a night with her fictional friends.
“No, you’re right. Let’s do something tonight. But how about seven instead?”