Chapter Fourteen
Jorja
I HEAVED THE BOX OUT on to the large table we had set up on the street, and dumped it down, catching my breath.
“Why do these things have to be so heavy?” I complained to Seth, as I started unpacking the box.
“Because nothing worth doing is meant to be easy,” he replied with that brightness he always seemed to muster in the face of any kind of adversity.
It was barely six in the morning, but I was already down at the store, moving books out on to the table outside, the posters plastered up in the window to announce the book fair was starting any moment now. I was so proud of all the work we had done, but it wasn’t enough to get rid of my anxiety entirely. I still needed this to actually work. We had the permit to do the fair for today and tomorrow, so I knew I shouldn’t put all my stock in right here, right now, but it was hard not to wish things into hurrying along a little.
We were stacking up a few books outside. I had carefully curated the collection I wanted to sell in this book fair, choosing books I was sure would be easy to shift. Classics, along with a few bestsellers with pretty covers that would catch the eye of anyone walking past. In a matter of hours, I hoped we had managed to move a good portion of them. There were plenty more inside, too, and we had set up a little hot chocolate station where people could get themselves something to drink if they wanted.
The blizzard seemed to be holding off for the time being, much to my relief. I wanted there to be plenty of people on the streets today, and I just had to hope that they would be ready to buy a few books. I appreciated the campaign Seth had helped me put together, and I just had to pray it was going to be enough.
Finally, come seven, we were set up and ready to go, and the two of us planted behind our table and waiting for people to start coming up to us with interest. Seth had taken the day off his job at the hardware store to help me out, though I had tried to convince him not to. He seemed so insistent on doing everything he could to make sure this worked out, and I was so lucky to have him by my side to get this off the ground.
“How long do you think it’s going to be before we make the first sale?” I asked him, shifting my weight from foot to foot nervously.
“Not long,” he assured me, though, for the first time, I was sure I could hear some doubt in his voice. I scanned the streets, looking for anyone who might be interested, but they were empty.
“It’s early yet,” he remarked, noticing my angst. “People will be out soon enough.”
“Hope so,” I muttered. And, sure enough, within an hour or so, people started coming up the street. A few of them cast their eye over the table full of books, but nobody seemed interest in actually buying anything.
The best we got was a couple of people pausing to pick up a book, flip it over in their hands, read the back, and then return it again. Every time they did, I held my breath, hoping this was going to be it, that this was going to be the moment that they actually purchased from us, but... no such luck.
As the morning wore on, I stuffed my hands into my pockets to try and keep warm, doing everything I could to keep from panicking. I could practically see the look on Wharton’s face when he had stormed into the shop a few days earlier, how angry he had been with me, how he had told me that I was going to pay for this. Was all of this, somehow, his doing? I tried not to let my mind stray somewhere so dangerous, but it was hard not to. I was sure he’d had a hand in making sure the print shop screwed up my order, and it wouldn’t have surprised me if he had thrown out some orders for people to keep away from this book fair in the hopes of backing me into a corner he knew I wouldn’t be able to get out of.
“You could make another post on social media,” Seth offered, as the clock ticked on toward midday. “Let people know what’s happening.”
“I don’t think anyone’s coming out,” I replied, shoulders sagging.
“They were probably just planning for the blizzard,” he suggested. “And they weren’t intending to go out today. If they’ve got a reason to leave the house, they’ll come. I’m sure of it. And there’s always tomorrow, right?”
“Yeah, always tomorrow,” I replied, trying not to let the pain of that show on my voice. I hated how this was going, hated how all the hope I had built up was starting to drain away, all at once. I had convinced myself, in that moment when Seth had been looking into my eyes, that everything was going to be okay because that’s how he made me feel. He made me feel as though that might have been possible, but now, I could see all too clearly that it wasn’t—that it was far from fixed yet.
I went to put up another post on social media, hoping this would be enough to attract a few customers. Keeping watch on the table outside as I worked, I chewed on my lip. Okay, I needed to calm down, I needed to stop myself from getting lost in my head. Everything might still turn out all right.
I put up the post, but as I did, I heard voices outside. I glanced up, to see Seth bickering with someone standing next to the table. I hurried out to see what was going on, and, as soon as I stepped outside, I noticed that the sidewalk beneath my feet was slick with something.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
The man, who looked seriously irritated, was holding a hose in one hand and a large scrubber in the other. “I’ve been sent here to clear the sidewalk,” he replied. “So you’ll need to move the table to—”
“We have a permit to be here,” Seth protested. “You can’t do this some other time?”
The man shrugged. “I’ve got my orders.”
“Your orders?” I replied. What was this, the military?
“Who from?” Seth pressed, though I already knew the answer to that question.
“Mr. Wharton,” the man replied, like it should have been obvious. “Look, I can do the rest of the street for now, but in an hour or so—”
“We’re not going anywhere,” Seth told him firmly. “Tell Mr. Wharton—”
“Look, I’m not dealing with him,” he replied, shaking his head. “I’ll work the other side for now. But after that...” He shrugged, and then moved away from the table.
I watched as he began to spray the sidewalk with the power washer he held, and felt my stomach sink.
“Nobody’s going to want to come down here while he’s spraying water around,” I muttered to Seth. “Plus if it turns to ice, this place is going to be a deathtrap.”
“I know,” Seth replied quietly, his eyes narrowed. “Wharton must have planned this.”
“Of course he did.” I sighed. We should have expected it. We had advertised it all over social media, so it wouldn’t have been hard for him to track down information about when and where this was happening, and throw some of his cash around to disrupt it.
Not that there was much to disrupt in the first place, anyway.
Seth took my hand and gave it a squeeze. “Don’t let it get to you,” he murmured. “It’s going to be okay. That guy doesn’t want to be here anymore than we want him to be. He’s not going to cause us any trouble.”
I tightened my grip on his hand, hoping to the heavens he was right, because I really needed to believe it right now. But, as the day wore on, there were still no people visiting our fair. A few people glanced at the books, but that was it.
My heart sank and sank and sank until it felt like it was hanging out somewhere around my shoes. I had put so much hope in this—so much hope that Christmas would bring around the miracle that I had needed to keep the store open, but the more time that passed, the less and less likely it looked like we were going to pull this off.
Just as we were about to pack up and call it a day, a sleek black car pulled up in front of the store, and a handful of men in fancy suits stepped out. Seth and I exchanged another glance. Was this another one of Wharton’s attempts to upstage us?
“Excuse me, you’ll need to move this table,” one of the men told us.
“Why?” Seth demanded. “What’s going on?”
“We’ve been sent to survey the property to begin the demolition process,” he explained, voice terse. I felt faint when I heard that word come out of his mouth. Demolition? This was what Wharton wanted to do to my grandmother’s store? Not even just turn it into something else, that would have been bad enough, but actually destroying it? I didn’t know if I could stand here and listen to this.
“No,” Seth shot back, his voice terse. “No, you need to go. Right now. You can’t be here. We’re in the middle of something, and—”
“There’s nobody here,” the man replied dryly, and he gestured for his men to start moving the table. They grabbed either end of it and tried to lift it, but Seth slammed his hands down on it, keeping it in place.
“That’s not the point!” he exclaimed. “I don’t care what you’re here for, you can’t do anything until we’re—”
“Mr. Wharton wants these reports in by the end of the day, and I don’t intend to keep him waiting,” the man replied, unbothered. How many times had he done something like this, forced someone out of a place that had been theirs for so long so they could begin the process of gutting it?
As Seth continued to argue with him, I dived inside, pulling the door shut behind me, as tears began to course down my cheeks. I couldn’t believe this. I felt so stupid for believing, even for an instant, that this book fair would have been enough to keep Wharton at bay. What was I, living in some kind of fantasy? I might have wanted to believe in the magic of the season to save everything, but that didn’t mean it was going to stop the cold, hard truth from catching up with me.
I leaned on the counter and tried to pull myself together. I didn’t want to let Seth see me crying like this. He had been so kind to me, worked so hard to help put all of this together, and the last thing I wanted was for him to think I wasn’t grateful for it.
I glanced around the store. This really was it. Wharton was going to pull out all the stops to make sure I didn’t make the money to save this place. The store was as good as gone, and I didn’t know what my life was going to look like without it.
Or how I would keep on going at all.