Chapter 8 Prudence, Fathers & （badly uted） Apologies
PRUDENCE, FATHERS & (BADLY EXECUTED) APOLOGIES
“Idon’t think that cat likes you very much, Patches.”
Pru opened the blinds and set the new coffee carafe to brew.
The scent filled the room as the sun’s first rays made their way through the lines of shelves lined with books.
She watched them filter through the space she called her own and felt suddenly unmoored.
A little bit lost. It was a new sensation, a not entirely welcome revelation.
She had been so certain of her place in the world.
Her life, her family, her store, her town.
Why did it all feel just a touch tilted, as if in recent days a door had opened and the wind scattered the memories, making them all seem different, blurry?
Book Nest had been a labor of of love for Pru.
Every shelf, every book a careful selection, but she suddenly felt like she was wearing someone else’s clothes.
Her grandmother, despite never being heavily involved in Pru’s life, left the bookshop to her, so why did it feel like it had been something she was forced to accept?
Her grandmother being…quite a notorious piece of work could’ve had a lot to do with it, Pru thought.
But all of this wasn’t new, so why this acute sensation of missing something?
Of being the square peg in the round hole?
Her palms were warm, and as she looked down, she could catch the slow silver shimmer cover them for a few moments.
It blinked away, like a bunt-out bulb, but Pru felt she could bring it back.
How, she didn’t know, but the certainty of it was overwhelming.
She listened to the birds and the bluff, the island waking up around her.
The sounds were louder, clearer. Somehow more dear.
She closed her eyes and listened to the town coming to life.
Soon the shopkeepers on Market Square and Broad Street would follow suit.
She knew the fishermen on the wharf had already gone out into the eerie morning fog of the Atlantic.
A passing thought of probably getting something fresh for dinner crossed her mind and was gone—way too early to really make to-do lists, her brain refusing to focus on anything but this extraordinary feeling just yet.
Everything was magnified. And everything was in such sharp relief to all the days that preceded this one.
And so the least she could do, no matter what had been awakened in her, Pru thought as she sipped her coffee, was to be honest with herself.
The bookshop had been a labor of love but also familial guilt and obligation.
The place had been in her family for as long as there had been a Fowler on the island, and if her father was to be believed, that had been a forever kind of thing.
Pru didn’t question that. But she wished Jedidiah Fowler would at least on occasion leave some room for her to make her decisions herself.
Or appreciate those decisions. Yet after she returned to the island and despite him mostly staying out of her life, he never stayed away far enough.
She watched him limp his way along the still sleeping Broad Street, a smile crossing his handsome, fair features the moment he noticed her standing in the doorway of Book Nest.
“The prettiest girl on in town. And she’s my pride and joy!”
Pru rolled her eyes at the greeting he had been producing every day for decades.
“Father, your leg?” His limp was more pronounced today and Pru bit her lip, wondering how much she should push. When was the last time he saw a doctor? Predictably, he waved her away as he entered the store.
“It’s the storms, we should be past them by now. Something’s in the air this year.”
He kept looking out the window and Pru turned back into bookshop, a touch too quickly, hoping earnestly that he wouldn’t question her hasty retreat.
What would she tell him? That the storms were indeed characteristic, native, in fact, to the island and that she suspected they simply have not been in residence for the past twenty-two years?
That they were unlikely to pass anytime soon, unless Rhiannon Crowhart suddenly decided to pull up stakes and leave?
Predictably, thoughts about Rhiannon brought a sharp pang dead center of her chest that made her heart stutter, and she shook her head, reaching for her coffee yet again.
“For all the asking about me, you don’t look so good, Prudence.
Have you been staying up late working on the little shop?
You know you could join me as Deputy Mayor, Prudence.
Sure, the family business is important, but a Fowler had always been in the town hall at the Nest, dear.
That’s our legacy. And I’m not getting younger. ”
His tone didn’t betray their age-old argument, and she was not in the mood to dive into it yet again.
She had refused every overture he had attempted over the years at getting her involved in local politics.
Pru didn’t have the heart to tell him the truth.
She wasn’t interested in his politics. The fact that she hadn’t voted for him this past election since he started to become more and more conservative in some of the policies he was promoting…
She looked up to see him watching her closely and hurried her answer.
“No, Father. The store is doing well, so am I. As you said, the storms have been quite disturbing, is all.”
He threw her another careful look and took her hand, squeezing gently. She felt as if he had reached all the way into her heart. The lines around his mouth and under his eyes had grown deeper, veritable grooves now and his hand on hers was bonier, thinner.
Pru turned hers palm up and interlinked their fingers, trying to give as much comfort as she could. She and her father had been butting heads lately, but he was still her only blood.
She could almost feel her heart split, her love and her loyalties. To her family. To her own principles.
In the distance, rolling thunder boomed loudly in the clear sky. Her skin was warm, tingly. Her father’s face was impassive, devoid of all emotion, all trace of reaction. The only evidence of his awareness were his eyes scorching her hand, held roughly in his.
Desperate to escape the awkwardness of the situation, Pru murmured, “I don’t know what’s happening—”
This time the door jingling open felt like a blessing.
Pru jumped, stopped speaking, and hurried toward the front to greet…
Rhiannon Crowhart, in a long green dress, her hair down her back almost reaching her waist, the silver twinkling in her ears and on her wrists, was a vision.
The sun shone behind her, framing her in all its glory, and Pru’s breath caught in her throat.
The memory from yesterday intruded. A memory that she had relived over and over in her dreams all night.
The way Rhiannon looked at her, the way Pru could read her mind, the scenes projected there…
The store was suddenly very hot. Pru wanted to fan herself, she wanted to run away, she wanted to get on her knees and worship with her hands and her mouth… exactly like she did in the vision.
Wait! Was I saying something?
Her father’s polite cough brought her back to the present. Rhiannon’s face, pensive as she entered the shop, transformed. A bright smile lit up the room.
“Mayor Fowler, as I live and breathe!” The fake note in the greeting jarred Pru out of her stupor. No, she did not know Rhiannon at all. But the artifice in the voice was unmistakable. And it made Pru even more curious about Rhiannon’s presence this early in her store.
“Little Rhiannon! Not so little anymore!” her father boomed in response, taking a few steps before enveloping the newcomer’s hand in his.
Pru held her breath. For a spark, a sound, a change in the air, but nothing happened.
Nothing at all. She chewed on the inside of her cheek, standing quietly and observing the exchange.
Rhiannon extricated herself from the handshake and gave Pru’s father a light pat on the shoulder.
“Not locked up in the town hall, are you? For some reason I always remember you there, at your window, overseeing the Square, day and night. Has it really been twenty years?”
Her father’s voice was just as fake as Rhiannon’s when he answered.
“I think you are exaggerating my workaholic habits, but then twenty years is indeed a long time. I’m afraid there is even more work now than before, the town has grown, everything is flourishing as you will no doubt see for yourself, being as you are now a member of the Crow’s Nest Chamber of Commerce as a business owner. ”
Rhiannon’s smile was all sugar substitute, but she said nothing as Pru’s father went on.
“Oh, we were all so pleased when the last Market Square property finally found itself used again, and what kind of use! An antique bookstore, you say? It feels like it is all coming full circle. Rhiannon Crowhart back on Dragons and giving life again to the once-famed Atelier.”
Pru’s mouth fell open. Had she been so deep in her thoughts she missed the most interesting part of the conversation?
Something tugged at the corners of her memory, something familiar and important. Vital, yet just out of reach. So Pru asked the question that had an obvious answer.
“You’re opening a bookstore too?”
Rhiannon’s grin as she turned toward her felt genuine and warm, so unlike the one she had been bestowing on her father.
Pru wanted to pinch herself. The dichotomy was giving her whiplash.
Especially after their encounter on the balcony.
Pru wanted to preen under the warmth of the gaze.
And yet the stark contrast of it to how Rhiannon was behaving with her father was putting her on edge.
Still, when Pru lifted her eyes to the forest-green ones, they shone with kindness and not a little mischief.