Chapter Thirty-two #2
I put my bags on the floor and sink slowly into the chair beside the bed, one that I could swear is the exact same brand as the chair in the airport hotel.
I want to take Gran’s hand, but I don’t want to wake her. Instead, I sit and stare at the lines of her face, like I might be able to remember all the expressions I’ve ever seen in them.
The animation in her features whenever she told a story or listened to one of mine.
The joy when she listened to a song she loved.
Frustration when she heard about something broken that she couldn’t fix.
And then both pulled down by the heaviness of grief and buoyed by her endless determination after Grandpa died.
I miss her so much.
It feels like such a stupid, selfish thing to say. She’s still here. Her face still dances through all those expressions. You still have time with her.
But I miss the lost moments too.
Gran wakes not long after, and it’s with a confusion that the nurses tell me is normal but that breaks something afresh in my chest. I stay for a few hours, trying to be as consistent as possible, but after a while, she needs to rest again.
And while it’s awful seeing her in the state that she’s in, my mind is more settled at having seen her. At being close.
I stretch my legs in the corridor, and pull my phone out of my pocket to see missed calls from Yumi, and my heart stops when I see there’s one from Declan too. The urge to call him washes over me like a wave. But I don’t. He’s moving away. It was just a pause.
I need to call Yumi back to tell her what’s happening, but I don’t want to talk on the phone right now. I want to be somewhere familiar. Somewhere that feels like Gran.
I’m walking out through the hospital doors before I can question the decision. Going to Brooks’ will get me out for a few hours, and I can talk to Yumi in person.
Navigating my way through the train station with my luggage feels overwhelming, so I do something I never do, and I order an Uber. The driver is blessedly quiet and the traffic on the road still hasn’t peaked. It’s not long before we arrive in the familiar tree-lined street.
I ask to be dropped off a street away.
The sound of the door shutting feels loud, and when the driver pulls away in his electric car the tyres peel along the road. The footpath is wet, like it rained recently.
My stomach twists and knots in anticipation as I walk past the deli, and Ruth’s antique shop, where I can see a hand-drawn sign on the door saying that she’s closed for the afternoon.
And then there it is.
Brooks’ Books.
I don’t know what I’m expecting. A lightning bolt. A punch in the gut. A feeling of overwhelming joy. Tears, streaming down my face, like my body knows what’s really in my heart when it comes to the bookshop.
None of those things happen. It’s just Brooks’, the same as it’s always been. More familiar to me than the back of my hand, and stamped with memories both good and bad.
The bell chimes happily above the door, like it’s welcoming me, though not any more enthusiastically or warmly than it welcomes any of our customers, and not as sweetly as Alex’s bell. I’ll have to ask him where he got that.
‘With you in a minute,’ Yumi calls from out the back, and for the first time in twenty-four hours I almost feel like smiling, because I know that she’s probably just sitting down for a cup of tea and her afternoon cookie and will be annoyed by the presence of a customer.
I put my bags behind the counter and note the small changes Yumi’s made while I’ve been away. She’s rearranged a few bookshelves. Updated the display table. All the small things that she knows she can do without me freaking out about the change.
‘Clarrie!’ Yumi’s voice sounds behind me, and I turn round, half expecting to be met with a million questions about the tour, teasing about Declan or a picture graph explaining why we should implement something new.
But the smile on my face drops as it takes in the tense look on her face. I’ve literally only seen Yumi stressed once in her life – when her neighbour phoned to tell her that her snake, Lucky, had somehow escaped from her apartment.
‘Where have you been?’ she says, her voice strained. ‘I thought you’d be here earlier.’
‘Hospital,’ I say, my heart tripping over itself to know what’s going on. ‘Gran had a fall. What’s wrong?’ I ask. ‘Yumi, has something happened?’
‘Your gran had a fall?’ says Yumi, her face falling further, if that’s even possible. ‘Oh, Clarrie, I’m so sorry.’
‘It’s okay,’ I say. ‘She’ll be okay.’
Yumi reaches out to squeeze my hand, and I try to smile. ‘What happened here?’ I repeat.
Her eyes search mine, and I raise my eyebrows. She raises hers back, but her heart’s not in it, and it makes me feel like my stomach is closing in on itself.
‘Yumi,’ I say.
‘Your mum came in again today. She was with the same woman as last time,’ she says finally. ‘The estate agent.’
‘Again?’ I say. I’m exhausted, and confused, and I don’t understand what’s going on. But I’m also not particularly surprised that the woman was an estate agent. I should have called Mum back. I should have stopped letting Wilderness Clarrie try to pause things.
Yumi nods. ‘I think . . . Clarrie, it seemed like she’s found a loophole.
She was talking about contesting your grandmother’s decision to give you the bookshop, given it was so close to when your gran was diagnosed.
Apparently, she’s been collecting evidence to put together a case that your grandmother wasn’t mentally fit to make the decision. ’
‘What?’
Yumi’s words feel like they’re filtering through me in slow motion. I don’t even know whether what she’s saying is possible, or legal, but the thought of Mum selling Brooks’ out from under me feels like a blunt force to my gut.
But apparently my gut hasn’t quite finished bottoming out, because when I look at Yumi’s face, there’s still hesitation there, and Yumi never hesitates.
‘There’s more?’ I ask, my voice ringing in my ears. Yumi nods once.
‘There was also an article on Read, Repeat,’ she says finally, and my stomach unclenches fractionally, because at least this is a familiar drama.
‘I know,’ I tell her. ‘There were people at the last event who were motivated to throw an apple core at me based on the imagined bookshop conversation Tessa Dalton wrote.’
But Yumi is shaking her head even as a frown blossoms across her face.
‘That’s hideous and let’s please shelve it for a few minutes, but . . . not that article.’
‘What?’
‘It was a new post. Announcing that the bookshop is for sale.’
‘ What? ’ My head is buzzing and my knees are threatening to sink me to the floor. It’s too much. Too many things, all at once.
‘Honestly, it was really more of an advertisement,’ says Yumi, but her posture seems a little more relaxed, the revelations out of her bones now.
‘Who would have even told her?’ I say, but dread is already trickling through my bones. I told someone my mum wanted to sell. ‘Declan,’ I whisper.
‘Probably,’ says Yumi. ‘They used to date, right?’