Overdue

Chapter Twenty-Nine

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Amira Najafi was born in the earliest hours of August. Baby and mom were both healthy and well, apart from Brittany’s fury that she had been pregnant nearly two weeks longer than expected. Even Reza’s dedication to being on time couldn’t make Amira arrive any faster.

I understood a little of what Amira was going through. She was transitioning from one phase of life into the next, and that required a lot of work. She was going as fast as she could.

All of my waking hours were now spent inside my empty store.

Finally, I had something substantial that belonged to me, and I was doing everything I could to open its doors quickly.

My stupidly ambitious goal was October first, but my reasoning was sound and practical.

I needed the tourist dollars that would arrive with the changing leaves.

Autumn was Ridgetop’s prime tourist season, and downtown would be packed with potential customers that I couldn’t afford to miss—nor could I afford to miss the holiday sales that would immediately follow.

Those few months represented an enormous percentage of my projected yearly sales, and the season that came after would be the slowest part of the year.

I couldn’t risk opening the store any later.

If I didn’t meet a reasonable-but-still-considerable sales quota by the end of the year, the store might go under as quickly as it had appeared.

No pressure.

I wouldn’t hear about the loan until the end of the month, so I continued to drain my savings and stretch each dollar as far as possible.

The loan officer at Ridgetop Means Bizness assured me that my chances were good, but I wouldn’t feel good until I actually had their money.

Plan B was a traditional bank, although my chances there were a lot less likely.

Plan C was my family. I prayed I would never need Plan B and prayed I would never, never need Plan C.

Those early days and weeks were frantic.

I trashed and recycled all the junk left behind by the previous renters and scrubbed every surface, ceilings to floors.

The dust was thick, the dead flies abundant.

To save money, I didn’t run the air conditioning, and I sweated and cursed through a raging headache from the scent of the old fragrances, which were baked into everything.

The fumes in the heat were horrific. I kept the doors propped open to circulate the air, and sometimes people wandered in off the street to see what I was up to.

Everybody gagged when they smelled the strong cocktail of perfumes and cleaning products.

“Jesus Christ,” said a woman whose shirt was moving. “How can you stand that?”

“What’s underneath there?” I asked, unable to suppress my curiosity.

Her eyes narrowed protectively. “My pet rats.”

“Ah, that’s Shanelle,” the owner of the toy store next door to me said later. Her storefront had dozens of whirligigs spinning in the wind outside, which I hoped would also attract children to my children’s section. “She’s churlish but harmless. Have you met Clyde yet?”

“Which one’s Clyde?”

“The guy with the flapping dentures who tells jokes and riddles.”

Clyde had popped in earlier that week to ask, “What smells better than it tastes?” I’d expected some crack about my store, but the answer had been an inoffensive groaner. “A nose!”

“Oh, he’s a sweetheart,” I said.

The toy store owner gave me a tiny pleased smile, and I sensed that I had passed a test. “It’s a great neighborhood,” she said. “Your bookstore will fit right in.”

On the other side of me, on the good corner lot, was a tenderly named coffee shop.

Kindred was, unfortunately, the same coffee shop that Gareth and I had gone to shortly before the first time we made out.

But despite my memories coloring it with this uneasy tinge, its owners were also friendly—especially once they learned my store would not have a café.

“We thought we might have to throw a rock through one of your windows,” the wife said.

“Which would have been a shame since you just cleaned them,” the husband said.

Mika couldn’t quit her job until September, but during her off-hours, she scraped and sanded and repaired the exterior.

Bex joined in when they could, too. Meanwhile, I kept at the interior.

Thankfully, the main layout and back room were already useable, but the restroom needed to be redone, and getting the lighting right was vital.

I met with contractors, plumbers, and electricians, trying to find people who could start work immediately, and scoured the town for discounted fixtures.

But even the cheap ones were expensive, especially the shelving.

And the most affordable shelves were metal, but I didn’t want metal. Metal felt so clinical.

In the middle of all of this, Macon suddenly appeared.

I confess that I’d been hoping to see him sometimes in the evenings after his shifts—that maybe he would drop by and lend a hand—even though, unlike Mika (and by extension Bex), he had no stake in the business.

But he was busy with his own life, helping at his mom’s house and working in his garden.

The grueling process of preserving the harvest had begun.

So my heart gave a startled leap of joy when his car pulled into a spot right in front one Monday morning. He almost looked disappointed to see me. I climbed off my ladder (his ladder, I was borrowing it) to greet him with a huge smile. “What are you doing here?”

“You weren’t supposed to be here yet,” he said. “It was supposed to be a surprise.”

“I’ve been starting early. While the temperature is merely miserable, not scorching.

” For the last two days, I’d taken over the work outside and had been painting the wooden part of the exterior.

It traversed the length of the store on top, framed the windows, and then extended a little beneath them.

There were lots of fiddly decorative bits, and the whole thing required several glossy coats.

Though the job itself wasn’t fun, it was exciting because it was the first time I was getting to make my mark on the space.

“What was supposed to be a surprise?” I asked.

“Oh my God.” He was staring up at my work. “Is that Hunting Party?”

“I loved it so much that I wanted to throw my own party. I hope you don’t mind. It’s such a perfect bookish color.”

His expression was astonished. He was still absorbing it, entranced. “Of course I don’t mind. You helped pick it. It’s your color, too.”

I laughed. “It is, isn’t it?”

“It looks beautiful. It looks so great.”

I’d almost texted him a photo, but then I’d gotten curious to see how long it would take for him to recognize the color in person. (An instant—that was how long it had taken him.) My smile grew. “What was supposed to be a surprise?” I asked again.

He shook his head, as if coming out of a daze, before glancing at me.

“What?” I asked, because I wasn’t sure what the glance meant. Instead of replying, he opened one of his car’s back doors and hefted a tall planter out of the seat. It was an attractive piece of cochineal red pottery. “Macon!”

He carried it to the entryway and set it down with an oof .

“Where did you find this?”

“Hold on,” he said, then went to his car and returned with a second one. He set it on the other side. “I bought them a few years ago for my mom’s house. She never uses them, and I’m tired of filling them and watering them myself, so they’re yours now.”

“I can’t take your mom’s planters—”

“If you hate them, they can be temporary. But you need something out here. Everybody has flowers downtown.”

“I don’t hate them. I love them. They’re gorgeous. I don’t know what to say.”

He strode away again, back to his car.

“I don’t know where I’d put a third one,” I joked.

He began hoisting bags of soil and plants from the trunk. “Consider them a housewarming gift. A store-warming gift.”

“The store already has plenty of heat, but thank you. This is so thoughtful.”

“I also brought these.” He held up two iron brackets with long arms. “I wouldn’t have installed them without your permission, though. They’re for those.” He pointed to the front passenger seat, where two hanging baskets with pretty coconut liners were stacked.

“Macon.”

“The liners are new, but the baskets are also from my mom’s house. And all the plants are extras from my place. I promise it’s not a big deal.”

I couldn’t stop beaming as I helped him unload everything. Yet I still felt a twinge of guilt. “Are you sure your mom doesn’t need these?”

“She won’t even notice they’re gone.”

There wasn’t enough humor to mask the underlying darkness of that statement. “How’s her health been lately?” I asked. So much of the focus this year had been on his aunt.

“Physical health? Fine. Mental health…”

I nodded with understanding.

As he slammed his trunk shut, his concern shifted to me. “I won’t be in your way, will I? I was trying to do all this before you got here.”

“You aren’t in my way.”

He was , a little, but I wanted him there. I was so glad that he was in my way. I wished I could give him a hug—for his mom, for his aunt, for the plants—but it still felt like a thing we didn’t do. I remembered the strength of his arms around me. The tightness of his grip.

“Oh my God.” He had stepped inside the store now. “It’s like an oven in here. What’s that smell? I swear it didn’t stink that bad before.”

“I’m airing it out. I think the paint will help—and all the books.”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “It’ll fade. Is it okay if I look around?”

“No. You came bearing gifts and the door is open, but I’m gonna have to ask you to leave.”

He gave me an exaggerated scowl, and I lit up with delight. He smiled and then poked around, appreciating my hard work, listening to my stories.

“You still haven’t told me what you’re naming it,” he said.

“You’ll have to wait like everybody else.” I felt protective and superstitious about the name, like how Brittany and Reza wouldn’t tell anyone Amira’s name until she arrived.

“Mika knows.”

“Mika works here,” I said. I’d needed her help with the signage and hiring the right person to design it, more costs I’d forgotten about.

“Nobody will ever be able to spell it,” Mika had warned me.

“Or pronounce it. Or know what it means.” She was correct, but I didn’t care.

The name was perfect. Some days it was the only thing I felt confident about.

“ I’m here to work,” he said.

“I offered you a job, and you turned it down. Speaking of, how’s the library?”

“Boring. Uneventful. It’s annoying how many people miss you.”

I brightened even more. “Yeah?”

“Everybody keeps asking where you are. I’m beginning to feel insulted.”

“I hope you’re telling them about the store. I need that free advertising.”

“I can’t tell anybody if I don’t know what it’s called.”

“Nice try.”

“Of course I’m telling them,” he said.

“How’s Jenny doing?” A library substitute whom we both liked had been hired into my position.

“She’s fine.” His nose wrinkled. “I hear a lot about the batting order of her daughter’s softball team.”

I laughed. I didn’t want him enjoying her company more than mine.

“Oh, did you hear they’re talking about eliminating fines again?

” he said. “I called every member of the board of commissioners to plead our case.” The idea had been floated before, but the county had a difficult time seeing the benefits, even though it was clear that fines disproportionally affected the low-income families who needed the library’s services the most. It felt odd to be on the outside of these conversations now.

As I listened to him go on, it seemed like so much longer than two weeks since I’d last sat beside him.

“Look at that,” he said, interrupting himself. “How did I miss that?”

His eyes had caught on the mosaicked entryway. A lot of buildings downtown still had them, remnants of their first occupants. I pulled a bag of soil aside so that he could read the name: ROMAN’S in hexagonal tile. It was the delicatessen that had occupied the space nearly a hundred years earlier.

“It’s great, isn’t it?” I said.

“I’m so glad you chose this place. This is the one.”

I was smiling at him again. I’d never stopped.

He grew alarmed. “What? You’re looking at me like there’s something on my face.” He brushed off his cheeks and chin, just in case.

“I’m looking at you like I’m happy to see you. I’ve missed you.”

“Oh,” he said. It was hard to tell underneath his summer tan, but I thought his skin reddened as he busied himself with his plants, the mounds of bushy herbs and trailing vines and cheerful yellow and orange flowers.

I climbed back up the ladder. “I’ve missed you, too, Ingrid.”

I’d expected him to laugh and parrot it back to me, but he didn’t.

His gaze remained affixed to the greenery.

I cringed for having taken the teasing too far.

Was this his way of politely shutting me down again?

Or was he too self-conscious to flirt back?

Either way, he worked underneath me and beside me for the rest of the morning.