Chapter Two
Chapter Two
Emma
AN HOUR AFTER THAT PANICKY WAKE-UP SCRAMBLE, EMMA was still feeling frazzled as she and her mother loaded her grandmother into the passenger seat of her beat-up third-hand Honda Accord.
“It will be better to take your car than your mother’s,” Sylvia had said in her no-nonsense tone.
“Why?” Rosie had asked, looking almost hurt, as if Grandma Syl had said her car smelled like a dead mouse.
“Because it makes the most sense. Emma already has a car seat for Miss Olive. And you know how hard it’s been for me to boost my fat tuchas into your SUV.”
So there Emma was, embarrassed about her junk-heap car.
When she paid cash for it a year ago, depleting what was left of her savings after tuition, the car had represented all her hard-earned progress.
She had a job. An apartment. And now a car of her own so she wouldn’t have to spend an extra hour a day catching public transportation to take Olive to day care before heading to work.
They settled Sylvia into the passenger seat, carefully adjusting her cast and her crutches, then her mother walked around to open the rear passenger door next to Olive.
“You can sit by me, Grandma,” Olive chirped, looking delighted at the prospect of a bookstore outing with her grandmother and great-grandmother.
Emma climbed in and backed slowly out of her mom’s driveway. She was fully aware she was a ridiculously cautious driver. She rarely exceeded the speed limit and always looked both ways twice before entering any intersection.
She guessed killing her father while learning to drive could probably scar a person.
Funny, that she was so careful behind the wheel when she’d certainly specialized in every other kind of risky behavior over the past ten years.
Mindful that she was carrying three people she loved, she drove slowly through Wood Briar.
The town had changed since she last lived here.
New businesses had popped up here and there and a few others had closed.
The pizza place where she and her friends liked to hang out now seemed to be a bakery, and the bike shop seemed to now sell tourist supplies like beach chairs, kites and towels, at least judging by the window display.
The town had added hanging baskets from the old-style streetlights, and their colorful blossoms spilled over in wild abundance.
The bookstore looked the same, taking up a prime corner of real estate only a block from the seawall.
“You can park in the back now,” her mother said. “A few years ago, the downtown alliance bought up the inner block area and made a parking terrace.”
That was new. Parking had always been a problem in downtown Wood Briar, especially in the summertime when tourists flocked to these small Oregon beach towns.
The tourist madness apparently hadn’t kicked in yet. On that early June Sunday morning, she could easily find a space close to the back entrance of the Wood Briar Bookshop.
Olive unhooked her car seat, a relatively new skill Emma wasn’t all that thrilled about. “Stay there,” she ordered her. “We need to help Grandma Sylvia first.”
Her daughter gave a pout but picked up her favorite doll she had named Penelope for some reason and began chattering to her as Emma opened her trunk and pulled out the collapsible wheelchair her mother had insisted they bring for Grandma.
“I don’t need this stupid thing. I’ve got crutches and a knee scooter. They’re perfectly fine.” Sylvia’s wrinkled features wore a disgruntled frown as she looked at the chair.
Rosie sighed, looking weary. Emma might have expected Sylvia wouldn’t be a very easy patient. When had she ever taken the easy route? Her grandmother loved causing trouble, which was one of the many reasons Emma adored her.
“You know you’ll heal better if you take it easy,” her mother said in an ultra-patient tone. “You’re great at the crutches, but why use them when you don’t have to? We rented the wheelchair. We might as well use it.”
“Fine,” Sylvia grumbled. “But this thing makes me feel like an old lady.”
“You are kind of an old lady,” Olive piped up from the back seat.
Yeah. Olive basically had no filter whatsoever. Kind of like her great-grandmother. Maybe that was why the two of them seemed to get along so well.
“Thank you for the reminder, my dear,” Sylvia said, sounding amused rather than annoyed. “I’m definitely not as young as I once was. I suppose it’s fine this once.”
Emma and her mother helped her grandmother from the car to the wheelchair. It didn’t really take both of them, but Rosie seemed happy for Emma’s assistance.
“Want me to push her in?” Emma asked.
Rosie shook her head. “I’ve got it. Go ahead and help Olive.”
She pushed Sylvia to the rear entrance of the bookshop while Emma opened the door for Olive and helped her out of the car.
“I love love love bookstores,” her daughter announced, her voice bubbling over with joy as she skipped to the door.
Same, girl. Emma smiled at her, grabbing her hand as anticipation curled through her. This place would be her project for the next few months—assuming Rosie could convince Sylvia to step back, which seemed a formidable task right then.
And speaking of formidable tasks.
Emma walked inside the bookstore and was momentarily speechless. All she could think was “ew.”
The bookstore seemed trapped in another era, with fluorescent lights, dingy paint and crowded aisles stacked with dusty books.
Olive looked around. “This place is messy.”
That was one word for it. Emma could think of several others, none of which were appropriate to say in the presence of her three-year-old child.
“We’re back here,” Rosie called out.
Still holding Olive’s hand, Emma made her way to the office that ran along the back wall.
Dust motes floated like tiny shards of gold in the light coming through the front windows.
She might think them pretty under other circumstances.
Circumstances where she had not found herself suddenly responsible for turning a profit out of that cluttered, disorganized pit of despair.
Inside the office, she found her mother trying to move a chair so Sylvia’s wheelchair could fit at the computer desk.
“Did you see the play area when you came in?” Sylvia asked. “I keep old books I find at Goodwill and yard sales for kids to read and take home if they want.”
“That’s nice,” Emma said as she exchanged a look with her mother. Wasn’t a bookstore supposed to sell books, though? “A play area is a good idea.”
“It gives the children somewhere to hang out in the store so they don’t pull everything off the shelves, plus keeps them occupied while their parents shop for books,” Sylvia said.
“The toys are a little outdated. I only have a play kitchen, some blocks and a couple of trucks. The kids seem to enjoy it anyway.”
“Maybe Olive can play there sometimes while you’re working,” Rosie said, that anxious note in her voice again.
Her mother was trying so hard to make sure Emma was comfortable. Her eagerness made Emma’s throat feel tight and achy.
“That will be great,” she said, meaning the words.
Olive was the main reason she was there.
For her daughter’s first three years, she had spent more time in day care than with her own mother.
Emma had been busy working or going to school, though she tried her best to work around her daughter’s schedule and take mostly online classes, so she could do the schoolwork while Olive was in bed.
Her daughter was smart, healthy, well-adjusted. But in three years, she had already been through eight day care situations.
In two years, she would be heading to kindergarten, then grade school. She was growing up far too fast. Emma wanted the chance to spend more quality time with her—and to have her spend as much time as possible with her grandmother and great-grandmother.
Finding good quality childcare was the single hardest thing Emma had to do as a single mother.
Harder than staying up all night with Olive when she was ill, harder than the constant grinding worry about finances, harder than the equally grinding effort to stay sober so she could be the mother her daughter deserved.
Depending on her mood, Emma found her situation either far easier or much more complicated because Olive’s father was not in the picture whatsoever. Most of the time, she thanked her lucky stars that she didn’t have to deal with Kevin Hollis on the daily.
Sometimes, though, she couldn’t help thinking how much easier her life would be if she had someone else to help carry the relentless parenting load.
Kevin would have been a lousy father. She knew that. Emma hadn’t wanted to let her child anywhere near him and she’d been relieved when he had signed away his parental rights, even when it complicated things for her.
Day care shouldn’t be as much of a problem in Wood Briar, especially if she could bring Olive along with her sometimes while she worked.
Besides her mother and grandmother to help out on occasion, she still had friends in town, including her best friend, Josie.
She was a trad wife, a stay-at-home mom with a daughter Olive’s age as well as a baby boy.
When Emma told her she was coming home for the summer, she immediately offered her babysitting services.
Yes, it would still be day care but in a homier environment.
Somehow, the office was even less appealing than the rest of the bookstore—windowless, cluttered, with dingy carpet and acres of dark paneling.
Emma pulled out her phone, opening a new note she labeled Possible Changes.
Beneath that, she wrote in big letters, Redecorate.
The place needed new lighting, new carpet, new paint and a whole hell of a lot of elbow grease. She definitely had her work cut out for her.
You’re going to screw this up, like you screw up everything else.