32
Eventually, Antonia left Julia where she’d fallen asleep on the sofa and went in to sleep in the guest room.
Aurelia got into bed but stayed up for a while, wishing she could see clearly how the next twenty-four hours would go.
Soon, however, she could hardly keep her eyes open and had to leave behind her worries in order to get some rest.
Oliver was due to arrive home later in the day, which gave her the morning to come up with a more solid plan.
She asked Antonia and Julia if they could leave the flat for the afternoon to give her a chance to speak with Oliver one-on-one.
Then, in the evening, they’d return so that Antonia could sit with him in the stairwell and he could hear the evidence of what Aurelia had told him.
As plans went, it was better than any she’d come up with before, since she’d have two other people to back her up.
By two o’clock, Antonia and Julia had gone to meet one of Antonia’s friends from university for a few hours and Aurelia was in the flat waiting for Oliver’s arrival.
Before they left, Antonia and Aurelia had sat Julia down and made her promise not to tell anyone else about the shop.
Julia seemed to understand the need for secrecy now, after seeing how angry and scared Antonia had been, and readily agreed.
Grey clouds materialized in the sky and a light rain started falling, promising a break in the heat at last. Aurelia stood in the living room, looking through the windows and watching for Oliver to appear in the street below.
She’d had about an hour alone in the flat, giving her time to both tidy up and obsessively work through what might happen next.
Her careful planning had Aurelia growing more anxious by the minute.
She assumed Oliver would be upset, but for how long? Would he forgive her? And if so, when?
She’d come close to telling him before, but it had always been accidental, like mentioning something a character had told her or what she thought about a character in comparison to how an author had described them.
But each time Oliver had written it off as evidence of Aurelia’s deep love of books and fiction, just the product of someone who got a little too invested in something that was both her passion and her work, rather than someone who owned a magical bookshop that defied explanation.
And that was the problem: again and again, Antonia had asked Aurelia to explain why the shop did what it did, but again and again Aurelia had to admit that she couldn’t.
Yet Antonia had known Aurelia her entire life—and Julia, too, of course—so that believing her unbelievable story may have come a little more easily to her than it would to Oliver.
Oliver, whom she’d known for nearly three years, who thought he knew her, didn’t have the store of trust and experience that Antonia had.
And he and Aurelia had promised to share their lives with one another, a promise that carried with it certain expectations.
Like knowing each other—the good and the bad—sharing your thoughts, experiences, and feelings about everything that happened to you.
Now, Aurelia was flipping the script on him, a man who had asked her for honesty and openness from the start.
She was almost beyond emotion; she couldn’t fully digest what it would feel like to hurt him, let alone how she would feel if she lost him.
All of her joy at planning the wedding, taking him to have and to hold forever…
It had seemed so definite, so absolute, that to face the possibility of a life without him felt too absurd to contemplate.
When Aurelia finally saw Oliver carrying his suitcase through the square (rolling suitcases, of course, were a convenience Oliver had given up since Biscuit was terrified of them), her heart leapt.
She grinned as he caught sight of her and started waving up at her, then she remembered—in just a few minutes, she was going to have to tell him about her double life.
But then the tinkling of the shop door seemed to wipe her memory clear of her agenda, and she found herself focused instead on how she couldn’t wait another minute to see him.
She practically ran down the stairs that led to the shop and nearly knocked him over as she swung open the door.
Throwing her arms around him, she planted kisses all over his face, and they both started laughing as Biscuit jumped up and barked in circles around them, overjoyed by Aurelia’s excitement and Oliver’s return.
“I missed you, I missed you, I missed you,” she whispered into his ear, catching her breath after he’d given her a long kiss.
He kissed her again and abandoned his suitcase on the mezzanine, leading her up the stairs to the flat.
“Are we alone?” he whispered.
“Mm-hmm. They’re not due back for an hour or two.”
Oliver kissed her neck and asked, “Did David take Julia somewhere? Remind me to thank him.”
Aurelia stilled, realizing her mistake. She’d said ‘they,’ forgetting that Oliver didn’t yet know that Antonia was in London, here to sort things out after Julia’s discovery. Having hoped to press pause on telling him, she’d suddenly hit fast-forward.
He kept up his work on her neck but soon sensed that Aurelia had stopped responding.
“Is she with David?” Oliver asked again.
“No, she isn’t.”
Oliver seemed to understand that something was off, then, and pulled away to look at her, still smiling in his happiness at seeing her.
“Who’s ‘they,’ then? Kali and Julia?”
Oliver and Aurelia had reached the top of the stairs, and he was attempting to guide her into the bedroom, his hands on her hips. Instead, she took one of his hands in hers and gently pulled him into the living room.
“Let’s sit for a minute. A few things have happened while you’ve been gone.”
“Okay,” he said, his tone a mixture of curiosity and concern. “Is everything alright?”
She sat on the sofa and Oliver joined her, his hand still in hers.
“Antonia arrived yesterday.”
Starting with the most basic facts seemed as good a place to begin as any.
“Really? I thought she wasn’t due for another, what, two weeks?”
“She wasn’t, but she decided to come up. It was a last-minute thing.”
“Nothing to do with your dad?” he asked, his face suddenly full of concern.
“No, he’s fine. It was… something came up with Julia and me, and Antonia wanted to be here.”
“Did something happen? I thought things were going well.”
Aurelia nodded her head slowly, then closed her eyes, hoping for inspiration.
“Aurelia, what’s going on?”
She opened her eyes again and immediately met his. The moment—right or not—had arrived.