31. Juliette
— ? —
Juliette
The shop opens at nine.
By nine-fifteen, there’s a line down the block.
The first sale of the day is a paperback mystery to Mrs. Pemberton, and I ring it up wrong twice because my hands haven’t caught up to my morning, and she waits through both attempts with the beatific patience of a woman collecting material.
“Take your time, dear,” she says. “I was at the tree lighting. I have nowhere better to be for the rest of my life.”
At nine-forty, flowers arrive - a great shaggy armful of winter greens and white ranunculus, no card needed, because only one man on this coast has the florist file for that.
Edward carried them in himself. He put them by the register, said, “Your mother would have liked the light in here,” and went to go direct people to the history section before I could do anything embarrassing with my face.
I stand behind the register and watch the island pour through my door - Rosie’s friends, the fishermen who’ve been timing their morning coffee to Zachary’s arrivals, the summer people who stayed for the season, the year-rounders who I’ve been getting to know in the months since the fire.
They come to browse and buy and congratulate me, and every time I look up from the register, there are more of them.
“You’re going to need a bigger shop,” Rosie says, materializing at my elbow with a stack of bags.
“I’m going to need a clone.”
“I’ll settle for a functional credit card machine.” She slides behind the counter and starts bagging purchases with hardware-store efficiency. “Go. Walk the floor. I’ve got this.”
“I can’t just leave you-”
“You can and you will. This is your day. Go be the owner.”
I step out from behind the register and into the chaos.
It smells like every good thing at once - new paper and old paper, Helen’s pastries, wet wool, coffee from the urn Rosie insisted on and was right about.
Someone’s toddler is sitting flat on the floor of the picture-book section with the entitled sprawl of a duchess.
Two fishermen are arguing about a thriller.
The bell over the door will not stop, and I never want it to.
The fiction section is packed, and Walt is pressing his favorite thriller on anyone who pauses too long near the W’s.
“The twist,” he’s saying to a captive audience of two, “you won’t see it coming. I didn’t see it coming, and I’ve been reading mysteries since before you were born.”
“Walt, you say that about every book.”
“Because it’s true about every book. Twists are everywhere if you’re not expecting them.”
The bell over the door gives its little cough, and a woman in an immaculate coat steps in, takes one look at the crowd, the star shelves, the general joyful mayhem, and locates me with the efficiency of a woman who has located things professionally for a decade.
“Marcy,” I say.
“Mrs. Dean.” She surveys the shop once more.
“So this is what he traded the corner office for. The light’s better.
” She hands me a wrapped rectangle, heavy as a brick.
“Opening gift. It’s a ledger. Paper. He’ll tell you everything’s digital now - make him keep the paper.
Numbers behave better when they know they’re being written down by hand. ”
“You came all this way to give me accounting advice.”
“I came all this way to see it.” Something that is almost a smile happens to her face, there and gone. “Eight years of managing that man’s calendar, and this is the first thing on it I’d have chosen myself.”
I leave him to his lecture and move toward the children’s corner.
The star-carved shelves are surrounded by kids, their small hands running over the wood, their fingers finding the carved points like treasures hidden in plain sight. A mother is reading aloud from the cushioned nook, her voice carrying the rhythm of a story I know by heart.
“Juliette!”
A small voice cuts through the ambient noise, and I look down to find a girl about seven standing at the edge of the section, a picture book clutched to her chest.
“Hi there.”
“Can I show you something?”
“Of course.”
She leads me to the shelves, her steps careful and important, and stops in front of one of the carved stars. Her finger traces its outline with the reverence of someone touching something sacred.
“My mom says someone made these by hand. For you.”
“That’s true.”
“Why?”
I crouch down to her level, bringing my eyes to hers. She’s got red hair and freckles and the kind of earnest curiosity that makes children exhausting and wonderful in equal measure.
“Because he wanted me to know that he was paying attention,” I say. “Even when I thought he wasn’t.”
“That’s romantic.”
“It is, isn’t it?”
“My mom says romance is when someone remembers the little things.” She considers this. “Like how my dad always saves her the last cookie even though he likes cookies better than she does.”
“That’s exactly right.”
“Are you going to marry him?”
The question catches me off guard. “What?”
“The man who made the stars. Are you going to marry him?”
“I already married him,” I say. “A long time ago.”
“Then why did he have to make the stars?”
Because I forgot, I want to say. Because we both forgot.
“Sometimes,” I say instead, “even when you’re already married, you have to remind each other why you chose it in the first place. The stars are his way of reminding me.”
She nods solemnly, accepting this wisdom with the gravity of a philosophy student. “My mom says reminding is important. She reminds my dad to take out the trash every single day.”
“Your mom sounds very wise.”
“She says she’s very tired, but I think that’s the same thing.”
I laugh, and the sound surprises me with how easy it comes.
“Can I have this book?” She holds up the picture book, a story about a rabbit who gets lost and finds her way home.
“Let’s go ring you up.”
By noon, the shop is packed.
Edward has appointed himself traffic director, standing near the entrance with his hands clasped behind his back, guiding newcomers toward sections they didn’t know they wanted to explore.
By the door, Helen’s hand-lettered sign reads BOOKSTORE FUEL, over a jar marked CHILDREN’S CORNER, and her pastries are outselling me.
“History is in the back, behind the pillar. Yes, the one that looks structural - it is structural, we had it reinforced after the fire. Biography is adjacent, alphabetical by subject, not author. My daughter-in-law has opinions about organization.”
“She has correct opinions,” I call out as I pass.
“She has opinions,” he repeats to his audience. “I’ve learned not to argue.”
“Smart man.”
He winks at me, and I feel something warm settle in my chest. This is what family looks like. Not the version I married into, with its sharp edges and careful performances, but something messier and more real.
Rosie is still at the register, her voice carrying across the shop with updates and encouragements.
“Yes, we take credit cards. No, we don’t take checks - it’s not 1987, Walt, stop asking. Gift wrapping is free for the first week. No, I will not gift wrap your fishing magazine. Because it’s not a gift, you’re going to read it yourself in the parking lot, I watched you do it last month.”
“That was a different magazine.”
“It was the same magazine. I have a memory like a steel trap.”
“Your memory is like a steel trap with a grudge.”
“Exactly.”
I scan the crowd, looking for one face in particular.
Zachary is standing near the back, trying to stay out of the way. He’s been like this all morning, quiet and nervous in a way that’s completely unlike him, his eyes tracking me every time I move through the shop.
He’s waiting for my answer.
I’ve made him wait long enough.
“Can I have everyone’s attention?”
The shop goes quiet. Conversations trail off, books lower, faces turn toward me with expectant curiosity.
The whole island is about to witness whatever happens next.
Good.
“Thank you all for being here today.” My voice carries further than I expected in the sudden silence.
“This shop is a dream I’ve been carrying for eight years.
I shelved it when I got married because I thought that’s what you did - you put your own dreams aside for the life you were building with someone else.
I learned the hard way that’s not how it works. ”
A murmur runs through the crowd.
“But I also learned something else.” I reach under the register and pull out the divorce petition - the one Zachary signed, the one I signed, the one that’s been sitting in my bag since the lighthouse cottage.
“I learned that sometimes the person you married disappoints you. And sometimes they surprise you. And sometimes - if you’re very lucky - they become someone worth choosing all over again. ”
I hold up the papers so everyone can see them.
“This is my divorce petition. Both signatures are there. It’s legal and complete. If I file it, my marriage is over.”
“I filed nothing,” I say. “I checked with my attorney this morning, who advised me - at length, with sighing - that what I’m about to do has no legal standing whatsoever and changes nothing in the eyes of the Commonwealth.”
I look at the papers.
“Here’s what my attorney doesn’t understand. This was never a legal document. This was a test with two signatures on it.”
The room is absolutely silent.
I look at Zachary, who is standing very still with an expression of terrified hope.
I tear the papers in half.
The sound of it is enormous in the silence - paper tearing in a room full of people is a gunshot, a vow, a verdict, pick one - and Helen’s gasp arrives a half-second before the rest of the room understands what it watched.
Then in quarters.
“I keep what’s mine.”
The room erupts.
Cheers, applause, someone - definitely Rosie - whistles loud enough to shatter glass. I’m surrounded by people who want to hug me, congratulate me, tell me they knew all along.
Walt is pounding the counter. Mrs. Pemberton has her phone up and is narrating for someone on the other end. A woman I’ve never met is crying into a hardcover she hasn’t paid for, and honestly, fair.