Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
Henry
“The Devils of Loudun by Aldous Huxley is often overlooked in favor of A Brave New World. But demon possession has never been more interesting. Those interested in spiritualism and history must read.”
—David’s Staff Pick
I’d been pacing in Leo’s office for the past two hours, running my hands through my hair. I’d barely left his office and slept for maybe three hours in the past two nights. Last night, I fell asleep with a Post-it note stuck to my chin, my head resting on Leo’s desk.
This was exactly why I wasn’t spontaneous.
I liked to make methodical decisions, sitting in a room and weighing the pros and cons.
But when Charlie challenged me to be fearless, I found myself wanting to.
What a mistake. Had I known the mess this would become, I would’ve run as far as I could from The Last Page.
I’d had a gut feeling things were too good to be true, and when I dug into the paper records and compared them to the electronic ones, I found that Leo had been mismanaging the store. He hadn’t been accurately entering the numbers for years.
I spent the last week entering them correctly and taking notes on places to cut the budget and save some money.
When I told Charlie the store wasn’t doing as well as it originally seemed, he insisted I needed to tell Ella.
I tried to warn her earlier, but it backfired on me as usual.
I knew I needed to go to her with all the facts straight, so I kept going back in the store’s history, reentering sales figures and expenses correctly.
I hoped that it would get better, that maybe it wasn’t as bad as it seemed, but last night I learned one very important thing:
The store was fucked.
With the accurate numbers now loaded in Leo’s online bookkeeper, the store wasn’t down by just a little.
Everything was in red. I’d been a business consultant for years and I’d never seen anything this bad.
I’d resuscitated some of the worst business plans I’d ever seen and made them profitable within a few years.
In my years of consulting, I’d only ever had to suggest closure for two businesses: Redbox and Schwartz I wanted to let her down gently. Regardless of her feelings toward me, I knew that this store was her lifeline.
I stood, shrugging on my jacket hurriedly. I skirted around her toward the door, not ready to admit that The Last Page’s closure would have my name written all over it. “Ella, I promise, I’ll explain—”
Ella blocked my way to the door, craning her neck to look up at me. “If you continue like this, everyone will quit and it’ll be the reason the store closes—”
“I can assure you I’m not the reason the store is going to close.” I gave a breathless laugh. As I stepped forward, she did too, with narrowed eyes.
“Everything was fine before you came,” she said.
“It wasn’t.”
“Everyone wants to quit,” she snapped. Her chest was heaving up and down. “They’re angry. You can’t just take away their cupcakes like that!”
My brow furrowed. “This is about the … cupcakes?”
“It’s more than that.” She poked her finger at my chest, her eyes full of fire. “They hate coming in—”
“Let’s take a beat and—”
Another poke. “You’re destroying The Last Page and I won’t let you ruin it for good.”
I grabbed her finger and gently pushed it away from me. “This isn’t my fault.”
“It’s entirely your fault! And look at you, you couldn’t care less!”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, growing angry myself.
I tried to push past her once again toward the door, but she stepped backward with me until eventually she was pressed against the door, her hand on the knob.
Against my will, my gaze flickered down to her lips, her chest. Images flashed in my mind of what it would be like to do this with a different kind of heat between us.
I shut my eyes, pushing the thoughts out of my mind, and said, “I don’t want that. The store means something to me, too.”
“Is that why you stayed away for a decade?”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I repeated, an edge to my voice. I tried to grab the knob, but she nudged my hand away. I rested my hand on the door, right by her head, looking down on her, my jaw set. Instead, I said, “I get that you’re grieving him. I am, too.”
“I lost Leo a few months ago,” she said, her chest heaving with anger. “You lost him ten years ago. It’s not the same.”
“This isn’t a competition,” I said, confused. “We can grieve at the same—”
“You didn’t even want him when he was alive,” she snapped, looking up at me. “And now when it’s convenient—”
“What about this is convenient for me?” I exploded, stepping away from her.
“Do you think I wanted to uproot my life? Leave my mom all alone when she needs me? Try to save a store that’s destined to close before I can even try to save it?
I didn’t ask for this, Ella. I didn’t want this.
” Angrily, I reached for my wallet in my back pocket and held my credit card out to her.
“Go get the fucking cupcakes if they’re so important to you. ”
Ella stood stock-still, pressed against the door still. She had gone pale and softly said, “The store’s closing?”
I sighed heavily, pinching the bridge of my nose. “This wasn’t how I wanted to tell you.”
“What do you mean the store is closing?” she asked, her voice panicked. “What did you do?”
“Let’s just sit,” I said gently. “I can explain everything.”
“Leo said everything was fine,” she said, her hands shaking as they covered her mouth. “How could we be closing?”
“Sit, Ella.”
Surprisingly, Ella didn’t argue and sat across from me at Leo’s desk. I leaned back in his seat, running my hands through my hair.
“The Last Page has until the end of summer at best,” I said gently. I looked down at my lap, feeling raw and torn. I whispered, “I tried. I can promise you that I really tried. And I know the changes were harsh and could seem pedantic, but … I was pulling every last card I had from my sleeve.”
“But … Leo never said anything … It’s been a rough few years, but … We can come back from that.”
I nodded at the laptop sitting between us. “He managed it all on paper, then entered it on his bookkeeper. But he didn’t do it right … I think he might’ve known some of it. He’s been cutting his own pay for the last year, but I don’t think he knew exactly how bad it was.”
“Leo,” Ella muttered, shaking her head. She dropped her head into her hands, sniffling, and when she looked up it was a dagger straight through the heart.
For the very first time, I saw Ella’s light green eyes fill up with tears.
An immediate panic went through me. Not the irrational fear men feel when they see a woman cry, but the fear of seeing her cry.
Knowing I was somewhat responsible and there was nothing I could do to stop it.
“We can stay open until the holiday season,” Ella said half-heartedly. “We always get a huge sale boost and then we can evaluate from—”
“I’m sorry,” I said quietly, cutting her off. I’d looked at it from every angle and there was just no way. We couldn’t afford to keep paying all the bills and salaries while making little sales. Not to mention the stack of bills stamped “overdue” in red.
This was the part of my job I hated and always, always tried to avoid.
I’d work tirelessly for the businesses that did have to close, hoping I’d find some salvation.
Then, I’d sit down with the owners and try to keep the emotion out of my own voice.
Try not to make it personal, even though I hated that phrase.
How could anything between people be anything but personal?
“The only thing to do is sell the business.”
Tears stream down her face silently. “There has to be …”
“Whenever we sell, I’m going to make sure you’re part of it. I’d want you to help me decide who to sell to and interview different investors and buyers. I know it’s less than ideal, but it’s better than closing.”
“You can’t,” she said desperately. “Some big chain will buy you out and change this store for the worse.”
“There’s nothing else to do,” I said, my voice equally ragged. “Unless you want to pay the booksellers less? Lay off a few people? Because I don’t want to do that, Ella. I know you don’t either.”
“How could this happen?”
“Sales have been down for a little bit now. The bills are too high. The general upkeep is too often and expensive. There are at least four bills here for an exterminator.”
“We live in New York,” Ella argued. “We have to.”
“There was some accident a few years ago? The store never recovered from it.”
Ella closed her eyes and groaned. “Fuck. I knew Leo was lying about that.”
“What happened?”
“A pipe burst in the store. It destroyed a couple hundred books in the drama section and one of the old wooden bookshelves. Leo decided it’d be best to invest in new, metal ones for that section, but it ended up being a lot more expensive than he thought. He told me insurance covered it …”
“The insurance didn’t seem to cover much … The store’s been in a steady decline for a while—”
“Which we know about. We’ve started integrating more merch and tote bags.
We even raised the prices of the used books!
Leo said we had plenty of time before we had to worry because we have hundreds of customers a day.
We’re a destination tourist spot in nearly every guide to New York. There are countless articles about—”
“Ella,” I said gently. “It’s not enough. Sure, lots of people come in, but how many people are buying books? And how many are walking away after taking a couple of quick pictures, then leaving?”
She quieted at this.
“I know this is hard—”
Ella laughed humorlessly, wiping her tears. “No, you don’t. You don’t know what this store means to me.”
“It means a lot to me, too,” I repeated.
She stood from her chair, which skidded back from her force. “Is that why you’re leaving at the end of the month? Because it means so much to you? Don’t pander to me, Henry. Sell the store if you want, but don’t pretend you care about me or Leo. He knew the truth.”
With that kill shot, Ella slammed the door behind her. When did I lose control over my own life? Some days, I wondered if I’d ever even had it. Maybe all along I’d been sitting in the very back seat, trying to get glimpses through the windshield, hoping that the road I was on was the right one.