Chapter Forty-Five
Forty-Five
Shelby woke up in Hunter’s sun-filled guest room.
Last night, realizing she couldn’t stay in the apartment above the store, she’d reluctantly called Hunter. Her only alternative was to sleep at Colleen’s, and she didn’t want to face the conversations about the storm damage. She needed some rest, a full reset, before she dealt with that dose of hard reality.
Hunter had been surprisingly welcoming. Before Shelby could even tell her the full story Hunter insisted she stay over. Buildings east of Commercial had been spared the worst of the storm.
When she was settled in the guest room, Hunter joined her for a chat, curling up in the walnut armchair and wrapping herself in a chenille blanket.
“I’m sure the Millers have insurance,” Hunter said, seeing how worked up she was about the whole thing and trying to make her feel better. While there was nothing she could say to convince Shelby the storm wasn’t a total disaster, she appreciated the effort.
Maybe their contentious conversation at the baby shower—as painful as it had been at the time—helped clear the air. Maybe Hunter had just needed to get some things off her chest. It was impossible to know for sure. But something had changed. Something for the better.
“I put the coffee on,” Hunter said, standing in the bedroom doorway on her way to work.
Shelby sat up in the queen-size platform bed. The guest room was all neutrals, with white walls dotted with framed black-and-white photos of seascapes. On the nightstand beside her, a moss green ceramic bowl from Simon Pearce was filled with white and gray stones from the beach. And from the window, there was a view of the Atlantic. She only wished she felt as tranquil as her surroundings looked.
“Thanks again for letting me crash here,” Shelby said. “I’m sure I can go back to the apartment tonight.” Outside, the sky was clear and blue. It was almost enough to make Shelby feel better about the situation: the shop would dry out. The books could be replaced. Her feelings for Justin would pass.
“No rush,” Hunter said cheerily. She had a thick manuscript tucked in one arm and a stuffed tote over her shoulder. Shelby wished she could have confided in her last night about Justin, her uncomfortable, inconvenient desire, but she knew it was a sensitive topic. No matter how healed their friendship seemed to be, she’d never bring up Justin again.
When she left, Shelby turned on her phone and saw a bunch of missed calls: three from Pam Miller, and one from Colleen. Pam left a voicemail about engineers headed to the shop, and damage estimates, and a bunch of other things. She called her right back.
“Shelby,” Pam said. “Colleen told me you did a good job getting to the store quickly, so thank you. Are you in the apartment?”
“No.” She’d only spent a few minutes packing up her laptop and a change of clothes by the light of her phone. “It lost power. I slept at Hunter’s.”
“Okay. Engineers are heading over in an hour or two. You should probably go pack all your things. It could be a while before you can stay there.”
Shelby looked around the room, running her hand through her hair. She hadn’t anticipated that. “Of course. What else can I do?”
There was a pause.
“You’ve done what you can. And we appreciate it. Colleen does, too. But we’ve made the difficult decision not to reopen.”
Shelby felt her stomach drop. “You mean...for the summer?”
There was a pause. “No,” Pam said. “We’re selling Land’s End Books. It’s time.”
Shelby closed her eyes for a minute. “Pam, are you sure? I can help. Maybe there’s a temporary space—”
“Annie and I have discussed all the options, and we feel this is the right decision.”
“What about Colleen?” Shelby said.
Another pause. “She’s taking it hard. But she’ll be okay. She’s got bigger things to think about right now.”
When Shelby got off the call, she immediately dialed Colleen. It went straight to voicemail.
So that was it. She’d come to help with the bookstore, and it was a failure. Not her fault, but a failure all the same. Now what? She didn’t have any reason to stay in town. Her book was written. Colleen, as Pam said, had bigger things to worry about. Really, that only left Anders. She’d take the trip with him to Boston, and then figure it out from there. She had mixed feelings, but mostly a sense of relief. She’d shown up for one friend, and mended things with two others. What more could she ask of one summer?
There was just one piece of business left. And she couldn’t leave without taking care of it.
Hunter was anxious to get Duke’s thoughts on the domestic thriller. She’d emailed him a copy and they were set to talk about it at the morning editorial meeting. But when she showed up at the office, Duke wasn’t in a work frame of mind.
“I heard about the damage to Land’s End,” Duke said, dressed up in a pink-and-blue pin-striped button-down and navy linen pants. His face was sunburned, probably from a weekend out on the water. His blue eyes were especially bright and vivid. “Have you spoken to Shelby or Colleen?”
“Shelby stayed at my place last night,” she said, unpacking her laptop on her desk. She set her creased copy of the manuscript pages beside it.
It felt good opening her home to Shelby. Of course, it didn’t change the fact that she’d slept with Anders Fleming. But maybe that wasn’t an issue after all; Shelby didn’t mention him once. “I haven’t spoken to Colleen, but I’m sure it will be fine. This house flooded once, right?”
He shook his head. “No, not a flood. Leaky roof.”
Same difference. And she didn’t want to waste time on weather-damage small talk.
“Did you get a chance to read the novel?” she said. She was eager to call the author of the thriller before someone else did.
He nodded, picked up the manuscript from his desk, and said, “Let’s discuss.”
They moved to the armchairs near the bookshelves where they had their editorial meetings. Hunter knew it was going to be good news. If he hadn’t liked it, he would have just put it back on her desk with a Post-it note reading Pass.
She opened her laptop so she could take notes on his feedback. Duke had very good editorial instincts and, if she was being honest with herself, he reminded her she still had a lot to learn.
“You’re right,” he said. “It’s very good. She’s talented.”
Hunter beamed with excitement. Okay—now they were getting somewhere! “I’m so glad you agree.”
“But we can’t publish her.” He removed his reading glasses and rubbed his eyes.
“Why not? I mean, if she gets an offer from a major publisher and wants to go with them, fine. But there are lots of examples of great writers who made their debut with a small press. Donna Tartt published with the Mississippi Review .”
He stretched out his legs. “I know. And stories like that were in the back of my mind when I started this little venture—”
“Great. So I’ll reach out to her.”
“No,” he said.
“Duke, what’s the problem? I’ll do all the work. Let me take the lead on this. Just go for the ride. You can trust me.”
Duke sighed and straightened up. “It’s not about you. Or this book. It’s bigger than that. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. And soul-searching. I suppose I have for a while now. At any rate, I’ve come to the difficult decision to shut down the press.”
Hunter leaned forward. “Excuse me?”
“I know, I know. It sounds like it’s coming out of nowhere. But since spending so much time with Max, seeing how things work behind the scenes at Malaprop, I’ve realized a few things,” he said. “One of them is that I’m never going to get the distribution I need.”
“Don’t say that.”
“No, it’s true. And it doesn’t matter so much to me—I do it because I love it. But ultimately, it might not be fair to my authors.”
“And what did Max say about this?” she said.
“He tried to talk me out of it.” Duke crossed his arms.
Hunter stood up. She hadn’t realized how seriously she took the summer job until that moment, learning it had an expiration date.
She shook her head. “This is a mistake,” she said.
Duke smiled at her in a way that was almost paternal. “It’s okay, Hunter. I’ll be fine. And I know you never intended to stay on past the summer.”
She bit her lip. Had it been that obvious? Had she seemed ungrateful? “I appreciated the job here. I liked it a lot.”
“Let me rephrase that: I never thought you should stay here past the summer.”
Hunter didn’t know what to say. She had the urge to cling to her desk and ask for more time.
“Go on,” Duke said. “Get out there. You found a great manuscript. That hasn’t changed just because Seaport Press is closing.”
He was right. But it did change her options for what she could do about it. She wasn’t ready to go out on her own.
She almost wished she hadn’t found it in the first place.