Chapter Thirty-three
They used to date, right?
‘What?’ I repeat again – because I can’t seem to say anything else – but it’s a whisper this time. As though my settings have been tampered with. ‘Declan and Tessa?’
I’ve literally been on tour with the man for two weeks . . . I’ve been kissing him for half of that. And, apparently, I never really knew anything about him at all. It was just a pause.
Yumi frowns. ‘You didn’t know? It was referenced in that article you were talking about, the one about the bookshop conversation.’
‘I didn’t read it.’ Bri didn’t say anything.
And Declan sure as hell didn’t, either. But then .
. . he didn’t say anything about moving, either.
Because we’re not friends . We’re not anything.
But I trusted him. I told him things I hadn’t told anyone and, even if that was never part of the deal, it still hurts .
I try to remember what happened yesterday – did I just miss it? But even in the haze of the past twenty-four hours, I know that I didn’t.
‘I’m not sure what the look on your face is,’ says Yumi. ‘But . . . coffee?’
I don’t know. I don’t know what I want. I just feel so stupid. And I feel ridiculous for feeling stupid. Declan doesn’t owe me details about his life plans, or his relationship history.
Except that he did an interview with her. Except that now my failure is on display. Again. How could he tell her about Mum trying to sell?
I close my eyes, trying to reconnect with the version of myself that felt confident in the dark. But whatever I felt in the moments I was spotlighting must have stayed in the forest.
Then the bell to the shop rings and my heart sinks, but my body turns automatically towards it, like it already knows who is there. As though it would know him anywhere.
Because of course he’d show up now.
Still, I’m not properly prepared for the sight of his green eyes and his black jeans and his stupid cap.
Declan slides it off the second my eyes meet his, and somehow in the last two weeks his face has become so familiar that it makes my heart clench.
‘I was waiting in the deli,’ he says, his voice low and hoarse. ‘I saw you walk past.’
We stand and stare at each other, and I see him note my luggage on the floor and the bags under my eyes.
‘I’m going to make that coffee,’ blurts Yumi.
‘Thanks, Yumi,’ I say, my eyes on Declan.
He takes a step forward the second she leaves the room, and I take a step back, because I don’t even know how to be close to him any more. Something whispers across his face, but he stops moving.
‘How is your grandmother?’ he asks, tucking his hands into his pockets, like he did at the airport.
‘Why are you here?’
Declan’s eyes are steady, searching mine.
‘I don’t really know,’ he says. ‘I just . . . I wanted to see if you were okay.’
‘So you can talk to your ex-girlfriend about it?’
Declan flinches, but he doesn’t look away.
‘I should have told you about Tessa.’
‘Told me what? That she might have a heightened awareness of your love life because the two of you used to date? Or that she was planning to announce to the world that Brooks’ was for sale?’
‘What?’ says Declan, his brow furrowing.
‘Don’t act like you’re not the one who told her,’ I say. ‘I confided in you, Declan.’ My voice breaks in a way that it didn’t earlier, and I hate it that it does. Declan looks like he’s going to take a step closer, but he doesn’t.
‘I didn’t tell her the shop was for sale,’ he says, and my heart twists in my chest. ‘When did she post it?’
‘I don’t know,’ I snap. ‘I’ve been busy visiting my grandmother in hospital. While my bookshop is falsely advertised on the internet.’
The words hang in the air between us. My bookshop.
Declan’s watching me, as though he noticed what just happened, and I harden my expression. I’m not sharing this with him.
‘I spoke to Tessa last night,’ he says, his eyes on mine, and it shouldn’t hurt but it does.
‘She apologised for the article yesterday and what it caused. It’s off the site now.
I don’t know anything about the new article, but if she thought the shop was for sale .
. . I think posting about it would have been her trying to make amends. ’
His tone is measured, and I want to scream, because I don’t want to hear about how perfectly reasonable Tessa is.
‘And is she going to come down and help when my mother walks through with potential buyers?’
I take a breath, try to steady myself. None of this matters right now.
I have to get back to the hospital. I have to deal with whatever the fallout of the announcement is.
But there’s a big, ridiculous part of me that’s distracted by thoughts of him and Tessa together.
I want to ask when they broke up. I want to ask whether he loved her, whether he still does.
I want to ask if she’s the reason he thought I’d leaked the dedication.
I close my eyes briefly, like I might be able to block the thoughts out.
None of that is my business. We were never anything more than a moment out of time.
‘I can help,’ says Declan.
‘What, from Mayfield? Come on, Declan, we’re back to reality now.’
‘What if I want us to be reality?’
His voice is so soft, but the words are sharp in my chest and I have a feeling that if I breathe they’ll destroy me. How freaking dare he?
‘And how would that work? You’d send me Christmas-themed postcards once a month? I don’t want your pity, Declan, and I don’t want your help.’
‘What do you want, Clarrie?’ he asks.
I have to focus on Gran. I have to deal with Mum. I have to forget about this man who is moving a full day away.
‘I just want you to leave.’ I hold his gaze. He watches me for another second, and when I don’t say anything, he just nods once, then turns round and walks out again.
The doorbell jingles, and he is gone.
My chest feels broken and sore, and my eyelids prickle, but I don’t cry.
Yumi creeps out from the kitchen, and some part of my brain notes that she has absolutely zero coffees with her.
‘Must have been some tour.’
Going back to the hospital feels overwhelming, but I don’t want to go home, either. And I sure as hell don’t want to talk to my mother yet.
Plus, I promised Gran.
The nurses on the fourth floor nod to me like they already know me, and I wonder how many new people they see every day, in their most vulnerable moments. They tell me that Gran is still resting, and I reassure them that I won’t wake her.
But when I sit in the chair next to her bed – the one that already feels moulded to my butt – the room is too quiet. There’s too much space for the past few hours to come crashing down on me.
I clear my throat softly, and the sound is loud in the white room, but it makes me feel less hollow inside.
‘I went on a book tour, Gran,’ I whisper. ‘To help save our shop.’
Gran doesn’t move, and I shift in my seat, opening my mouth again before I really know what I’m going to say – trying to fill the gaps in the room and in myself.
‘It was two weeks in remote locations,’ I begin, trying not to think about Declan’s face when he asked how she was, but I didn’t answer.
And I tell her about the tour. About Declan Archer and the book that I haven’t read, about Alex the bookseller and Merry the mechanic.
About Bri and the layers that give life to her endless positivity.
About Jed and his passion for birds. About how I think that there’s the smallest possibility that I might have accidentally fallen in love with a man who is moving across the country and didn’t even tell me.
I tell her about Wilderness Clarrie. About spotlighting, and about being alone in the dark, and the rain on my face.
I tell her about how the tour has given the bookshop a much-needed boost. That we’re going to have new lights, and that I don’t know if it will be enough, but that I am determined to do everything I can to keep it alive.
I tell her about the bookshop. About the things that have happened recently that I know she would love.
I tell her about the community, about the people whose stories have touched me.
The things that I missed while I was away.
And then slowly, more hesitantly, I find myself telling her all the things that I hate about it.
I whisper until my throat is sore, and I feel like there’s nothing left inside me. Gran just lies in bed, breathing steadily.
When I hear a soft knock at the open door, my heart tries to punch its way through my chest and I almost jump out of the chair.
I turn round, my stupid heart dropping when I see it’s not Declan. Of course it’s not.
It’s Ruth, watching me through her blue-rimmed glasses.
And, oh my goodness, how much of that did she hear?
‘Ruth,’ I say, standing up and walking forward like she didn’t just hear me spill my guts out to my sleeping and injured grandmother.
‘Hi, sweetheart.’ Ruth smiles. ‘I won’t interrupt you. I just wanted to come in and check how she’s doing. How you’re both doing, actually.’
‘Come in,’ I say, pulling up a fresh chair for her. Gran stirs in the bed, but doesn’t wake.
‘Are you sure?’ asks Ruth slowly, doubtfully, but at my emphatic nod she smiles kindly and takes the chair I’ve pulled up next to mine.
We both sit there for a minute, watching Gran sleep, and I can feel awkwardness crawling across my skin. It’s been a hell of a day.
‘How was your trip?’ says Ruth. ‘I so enjoyed all of your updates about it while you were away.’
‘Fine,’ I manage, my throat dry. ‘It was fine. Thanks for checking in on Gran for me, Ruth.’
Ruth waves my thanks away. ‘Any time you need to go away, consider me your woman on the ground,’ she says.
It’s nice, sitting with Ruth, but I’m so tired. I’m wondering how soon I can make my exit when she speaks again.
‘Your grandmother told me once that she hated the wonky shelves in the bookshop,’ she says. ‘She said that it drove her mad, the idea that the books weren’t straight.’
For a second, I just look up and blink at her. At this piece of new information.
‘I didn’t know that,’ I say. But then I realise – that’s not true.
Gran rearranged the books on the wonky shelves regularly, and more than once I saw her measuring them with a ruler, muttering. It’s just that those memories – the mundane, everyday moments – are never the ones I associate with Gran.
I realise that for all the time I spent in the bookshop with her I never got to see what the grind of it was like. Not until it was just me, running it alone. I never imagined that there might be things that she hated too.
I have so many questions for Ruth, and she waits patiently for me to speak. But none of what’s in my head is what actually comes out of my mouth next.
‘What do you hate about the antique shop?’ I ask her.
If she’s surprised by my question, she doesn’t look it. She doesn’t even pause long before she answers.
‘I don’t particularly like having people buy things,’ she says. ‘I rather like the way it’s all arranged.’
The words make me laugh. And then suddenly, irrationally, the tears that paused earlier are leaking down my cheeks, and I’m sobbing again.
I’m sobbing about the bookshop and about Gran and about Declan Archer and about how I don’t know what I want, but that, actually, I might also know exactly what I want, and right now is a terrible time to realise all of that when I’ve just done my best to give up on it all.
‘Oh, sweetheart,’ says Ruth, patting a hand on my shoulder.
‘Sorry,’ I tell her, sobbing harder. ‘I’m so sorry.’
When my tears finally subside, Ruth is looking both kind and sort of stressed.
‘I didn’t mean to make you cry,’ she says. ‘I’ve made a bit of a mess of this, haven’t I?’
I shake my head, because she really hasn’t.
‘You know her so much better than I do,’ says Ruth.
‘But if I know anything about Margaret, it’s how proud she’s always been of you, Clarence.
I’ll never forget the day she told me that she found a trail of books on the floor and when she followed it, she found you, tucked up and asleep on the empty shelf.
She said seeing the bookshop through your eyes is what earned it the place it had in her heart.
’ When I look at Ruth, she’s watching Gran, a sad smile on her face.
‘She might not be able to express it in the same way now, but if she thought for a second that it wasn’t what you wanted, she would be the first person to tell you to sell it and use the money to do whatever you want. ’
Tears prick behind my eyes, but they don’t fall down my cheeks this time, because she’s right.
I know it in the same way that I know that Gran would find Jed’s passion for birds inspiring.
But the thought of selling the bookshop with Gran’s permission doesn’t fill me with relief – it fills me with dread.
Not because I don’t know what to do without it, but because I don’t want to do anything else.
I love being a bookseller. The realisation is like a train that’s been coming down the tracks and, when it arrives, it’s without fanfare or tears. But it’s there: waiting calmly at the platform for me to step on.
‘Peggy?’ says a voice beside me on the bed, and Ruth and I both turn to look at Gran, blinking and stirring, calling my mum’s name. ‘Are you here?’
I reach out and take Gran’s hand, papery and thin, in mine.
‘I’m here, Gran.’