Chapter 12 DID YOU FIND WHAT YOU’RE LOOKING FOR?
DID YOU FIND WHAT YOU’RE LOOKING FOR?
A solid hour – and most of Lara’s pay cheque – had passed by the time we’d emerged from For Old Times’ Sake, laden with gift bags and sporting new silk scarves and giant sunglasses.
‘I feel like I need to climb into a convertible and go cruising down the coast,’ said Lara, wrapping a floral scarf around her hair.
With her sunglasses and bright-red lips, she looked like a silver-screen seductress.
I wished I had half her confidence. My own scarf was looped half-heartedly around my neck, and my sunglasses had none of the pointy kitsch of Lara’s.
‘How about that one,’ I suggested, pointing at a shiny blue Cadillac parked outside the Chocolate Enchantress, a few shops down from Lorraine’s. A pug in a gingham skirt smiled out at us.
Lara nodded enthusiastically. ‘I’m going to sit on the hood until the owner comes back.’
Right on cue, two older gents came striding out, hand in hand. They were exactingly dressed in crisp chinos and pastel shirts. Tasteful hints of gold gleamed from their shoes and their wrists.
‘Nice ride,’ called Lara, who never let a thought go unspoken. It was a trait that had always worked out for her. Meanwhile, I feared letting just about any thought out of my head. No wonder my mind was always buzzing with confusion and anxiety.
‘She’s our baby,’ called one of the men, white teeth flashing against dark skin. ‘Oh hey, aren’t you the girls from the beach-bonfire charades? This one does a great Pink Power Ranger.’
I chuckled. ‘I’m just glad someone got it.’
‘That’s not all you got, by the looks of it. Save some for the rest of us, hon.’
‘Molly is a menace,’ agreed Lara, with a laugh. ‘Broken hearts from here to the city.’
I hid my face behind my scarf. I wasn’t a habitual heartbreaker – that was more Lara’s thing. This situation was … new.
The guy pressed a nostalgic hand to his chest. ‘Oh, I remember those days. Enjoy them, sweets.’
‘I’ll do everything in my power to make sure she does,’ called Lara.
‘Now that’s a friend. You hang on to her. And hold her hair when she overdoes it at the next bonfire.’
Lara clapped her hands over her mouth, giggling with mortification.
‘That never happened,’ she promised. ‘Never happened! Well, not this year.’
The men gave us a wave and chugged off, honking as they went. We made heart hands at the smiling pug, whose curly tail waggled energetically.
‘Do we want to stop by the bookshop now?’ asked Tiff, momentarily. ‘I’m burning through my beach reads and they have that amazing discount bin.’
‘Sure,’ I said. Maybe I could dig up something about the ring, like Noah had suggested.
The Last Word was a tiny used bookshop just off Oceanspray Drive.
Well, it was less tiny than it looked – it was just that its red-brick walls were stacked several feet deep with teetering piles of books, making for such narrow passage that you felt like you were spelunking.
I half expected to encounter stalactites.
And yet, thanks to a gentle hex on its contents, you always found whatever you were looking for.
All you had to do was walk around thinking about what you were after, and the shop would miraculously surface something perfect in one of the stacks closest to you.
I’d always wished I’d had the same skill with organizational hexes, but alas, my pens were constantly missing lids, and my socks remained mismatched (I pretended this was a matter of style).
‘Trashy beach reads,’ whispered Tiff, crossing her fingers. The floor creaked as she tiptoed through the stacks, then made her way to a particularly promising basket of yellowing paperbacks.
A fluffy cat regarded her with one haughty eye from a stack of leather-bound classics, its tail flopping from side to side like a very inefficient duster. This was Chester, the town’s most well-read cat. And given how much Cleo liked being read to, there was plenty of competition.
‘Yes!’ Tiff whispered as she flipped through the paperbacks, marvelling at the luridly illustrated cover art. ‘Oh, you’re going to have to drag me out of the hammock.’
‘Finding everything you’re after?’ A slender guy with kind eyes and floppy hair appeared from somewhere in the shop.
I knew from Rosie’s comments and from Tiff’s slightly starry-eyed chit-chat that this was Leon.
Leon didn’t disappoint: he was the epitome of nerd chic, dressed casually in jeans and a faded grey T-shirt that had at some point borne a slogan, and thin-framed glasses that suited him entirely too well.
I raised an eyebrow. Perhaps Tiff had surreptitiously asked the shop to deliver something other than her next beach read. But Tiff would never do that. Not intentionally. She was entirely devoted to Damien. Her constantly dinging phone was proof.
‘Um, yep. Yeah. Uh huh,’ said Tiff. ‘I’ve got … these. Books.’
This was unlike my sister, who ordinarily was the face of well-spoken erudition. She hosted a virtual book club! She’d done Toastmasters! (Upon Mom’s insistence.)
‘Beach reads, right?’ said Leon, who had a gentle, lilting accent. Dutch, perhaps?
‘Just while I’m on vacation,’ Tiff clarified.
‘Usually she reads serious stuff,’ I chimed in. ‘Hefty tomes. Ones with tiny print and forewords.’
‘In translation,’ added Lara, pretending to sound awed.
Tiff shot us each a warning look, and we tried not to giggle.
‘Actually, I’m also looking for something,’ I said, twisting my ring on my finger.
Leon regarded me thoughtfully. ‘Just ask, and the shop will deliver.’
‘What if I wish for a pizza?’ asked Lara.
Leon smiled, revealing slightly, charmingly, crooked teeth. ‘Then I will pick up the phone and call next door.’
‘Please do. Pie in the Wall does the best pizzas. Almost as good as Rosie’s.’
‘I hear it’s hard to compare with hers,’ said Leon. ‘So, what are you looking for?’
I ran a hand over the haphazardly stacked books, wondering how long it would take for someone to find me should one of the larger stacks collapse and take me down with it. Like Tiff had done, I crossed my fingers, then whispered quietly, ‘The ring owner’s story.’
A stack of books by a window nook caught my attention, and I went over to it, aware that I was being watched by Chester.
I picked up the top book in the stack. A photo album. Then the one beneath it. A diary.
‘Wow, the bookshop really does deliver, doesn’t it?’ I murmured, flipping through the photo album, which seemed as though it was from the seventies, perhaps the eighties. Big hair and high pants formed a magnificent sartorial through-line I was mostly familiar with from John Hughes films.
Hold on. There. There was my ring, gleaming on the finger of a brunette around my age, standing awkwardly next to a tall, skinny guy while a shorter guy in a puffy varsity-style jacket looked on in the background, arms folded and his expression sour.
Was it just me, or was the brunette angled more towards the grumpy guy?
‘Love triangle,’ said Lara, with her usual incisiveness. ‘Told you so.’
Well, shit. I’d somehow inherited a magical love triangle ring. Just what every witchy girl wanted.
‘What about the diary?’ asked Tiff, picking her way between the stacks of books.
I turned to the title page, where a name had been scribbled. ‘It belongs to Josephine … Lovell.’
‘Oh my god,’ said Lara, with a squeal. ‘The ring belongs to J.Lo!’
‘J.Lo?’ Tiff was confused.
So was Leon. ‘Like the singer? Or actor? Jenny from the block?’
‘That sounds adorable in your accent,’ said Lara, who’d happened across a box of vintage Vogues. ‘Jackpot. I’m going to take all of these. But, no, J.Lo is from the Heart Tree down by the beach.’
‘I remain confused,’ said Leon.
‘It’s a tree where couples carve their initials. It’s how you show your love. But there’s one heart with just one set of initials – “JL”. Molly and I call her J.Lo for fun.’
‘Ah. I see. And you have J.Lo’s ring?’
‘She has J.Lo’s ring,’ said Lara, ruffling my hair. Which, let’s face it, did not need ruffling after its exposure to the salt and humidity of the ocean. ‘And her very own love triangle to figure out.’
‘Well, I wish you all the best with that. Love is difficult enough even when geometry is not involved. Excuse me.’
He turned to greet another customer, who immediately began talking at length – and with serious gesticulations – about a specific romantasy she was looking for that had a purple cover and definitely the word dragon in the title.
And was the seventh in a series that had been published by an independent publisher back in the sixties.
‘Wait, that’s it! Right there!’ The woman, whom I recognized from her early morning beach yoga sessions, reverently pulled a purple volume from a nearby stack. ‘How did you … I’ve been looking for this for months!’
‘Must be magic,’ said Leon, as he processed the woman’s order and bagged her book. She hurried out, already shouting to someone on the phone about her successful book-shopping trip.
‘Our turn,’ said Lara flirtatiously, which was the only way Lara knew how to speak.
Leon carefully processed our orders and bagged our books – except for Lara’s enormous haul of magazines, which she was going to carry out in their box.
Tiff happily hefted her bag. In addition to the beach reads, she’d somehow ended up with a few literary-looking volumes about hotels by the beach and a hardcover book about hospitality management.
This one was so big she had to carry it under her arm.
Interesting. I wondered whether she’d just grabbed some nearby non-beach reads in her efforts to impress Leon.
‘Are you going to ask him out?’ murmured Lara over Tiff’s shoulder as Tiff fumbled in her purse for her wallet. Tiff never fumbled. She always knew exactly where everything was, and on the rare occasion she couldn’t immediately find something, she could always call it forth with magic.
‘Absolutely not,’ whispered Tiff. ‘I don’t do Summerween flings.’
‘And also …’ I added. I was intrigued by this particular line of reasoning, which was not what I’d expected from Tiff.
‘And also, I have Damien,’ Tiff whispered furiously.
Ah, there it was. As an afterthought. This was a side of Tiff I hadn’t seen before.
‘Damien? He doesn’t even go here,’ said Lara mischievously, quoting Mean Girls.
Tiff shot Lara a look, then took the bag from Leon.
‘I’ve put my card in there for you,’ he said.
‘Just in case you need any other beach reads. I am quite sure that the shop has plenty more where those came from. And we do local author readings, too. On Friday nights. You should come. We have one coming up from the author of that book you have there, actually. My cousin.’
He pointed to the hospitality book under Tiff’s arm.
‘She definitely should,’ said Lara, giving Tiff a not-so-subtle nudge.
‘And good luck with your diary,’ Leon told me with a smile. ‘I hope it has everything about J.Lo that you’re hoping to find.’
We stepped back out onto the street, laden with our books and shopping and ready for whatever baked goods Lorraine felt like plying us with.
As we did, we bumped into a familiar bright-eyed, curly-haired Tucker boy, who, judging from his salt-smattered skin and the towel slung over his shoulder, had just come from the beach.
He broke into a grin as he recognized us beneath the armour of our shopping bags.
‘If it isn’t the three prettiest girls of Whisperwind Cove,’ he crooned, kissing Tiff and Lara on the cheek. He took my hand, gently putting his lips to it, then raising it, spinning me in a twirl. My skirt flared dramatically – thankfully I was wearing leggings underneath.
Ouch! The ring zapped me, as though I’d scuffed across carpet in rubber shoes and received a static jolt. I pushed my hand into my skirt pocket.
‘Did your ring just flash?’ Finn asked curiously.
‘J.Lo does it again,’ purred Lara, with a wink at me.
Finn cocked his head, trying to figure this out. ‘I feel like I’ve missed something critical.’
‘Once Molly’s done her homework, she can tell you all about it. She has diaries to read,’ added Lara.
‘Still not following,’ said Finn, entirely unbothered. ‘I’m starving after that swim. Who’s up for ice cream?’
Lara grabbed Tiff’s hand. ‘Why don’t you take Molly. Tiff, you wanted to check out the fish pond at the Camellia, didn’t you?’
Tiff frowned, but as Lara gave her arm a light twist, relented. ‘You know I can’t pass up a koi.’
As Lara dragged her off, Tiff shot me one of her incredibly verbose looks.
After a lifetime together, I’d learned to read them well.
Even if I did tend to ignore them for the most part.
This one said something along the lines of, Molly, you’d better not make things weird between the Tucker brothers.
To which I responded with an eyebrow that said, Would I do that?
‘C’mon,’ said Finn. ‘Let’s go grab some ice cream.’