CHAPTER TWO
Payton
FOR MOST OF MY CHILDHOOD, Edison existed as a surname and a warning.
Mom told me the truth about him plainly, without ever trying to turn me against him. When I was little and asked why my father didn’t live with us, she gave me the simplest answer she could.
“He wasn’t ready to be a father,” she said.
At twelve, I started questioning that explanation. By sixteen, I understood the truth. Edison had been ready to pursue money, power, women, and all the attention that came with success. A family with Mom had never interested him enough to stay.
She met him when she was twenty-four, cleaning houses for wealthy families in neighborhoods where the garages were larger than our apartment.
Edison was already successful, though his fortune was still years from becoming what it eventually would.
According to Mom, he was handsome, charming, and very good at convincing a woman he meant whatever he said in the moment.
She never gave me every detail, and I never asked.
I knew enough. Edison pursued her, made promises about their future, told her he was different from the wealthy people whose houses she cleaned.
Once she became pregnant, all those promises disappeared with him.
My childhood never felt tragic while I was living it.
We didn’t have much money, but Mom had a talent for turning difficult weeks into something I could handle.
If the heater broke, we piled blankets on the couch and watched movies.
When groceries ran low, she invented a “surprise menu” from whatever remained in the pantry.
I was much older before I understood how hard she’d worked to keep our financial problems from becoming my burden.
For years she cleaned houses six days a week, sometimes seven, leaving before sunrise and coming home with aching hands and the smell of lemon polish clinging to her clothes.
I grew to hate that smell almost as much as I hated watching people treat her with less respect than she deserved.
Jules’s family had been among the worst. I still remembered their marble floors and curved staircase, and the way Jules looked at Mom by the time she was thirteen.
“Work is work,” Mom would tell me. “There’s dignity in earning your own money.” She believed it completely, which was part of why The Turning Page eventually meant so much to both of us.
The idea began one afternoon when I was fifteen. We passed an empty storefront with a FOR LEASE sign, and I stopped to peer through the glass.
“We should open a bookstore.”
Mom laughed. “With what money?”
“Eventually.”
“Ah. Eventually. My favorite currency.”
A short time later, she started saving quietly, taking extra jobs, keeping an envelope in the kitchen cabinet above the refrigerator that she thought I’d never find. I did. By the time I graduated college, the money had moved into a savings account, and the dream had become a real business plan.
I remembered opening morning, Mom unlocking the door at eight fifty-five, standing with the key in her hand.
“Go on,” I told her.
“You go.”
“It’s your store.”
“Ours.”
Hearing her say it nearly brought me to tears.
Our first customer bought a paperback mystery and a bookmark, and Mom kept the receipt framed in the office for years.
The early months had plenty of problems, half-assembled shelves, a coffee machine that broke twice, an inventory spreadsheet that seemed determined to ruin my life.
None of it mattered once customers started returning.
Mom and I learned what our regulars liked and remembered their children’s names.
Eventually the store became busy enough that she gave up cleaning houses entirely.
After college, The Turning Page became my full-time job too.
We shared shifts, ordered inventory, planned events, argued over displays and how much we could afford to spend on new stock.
I expected us to keep growing, maybe open a second location eventually.
Back then I couldn’t imagine wanting another life.
The Winslows changed that future. But they weren’t the first part of the story to reach me. My father’s business was.
The first sign was construction fencing around an empty lot less than two miles away, glossy banners announcing one of Edison’s newest retail developments.
“There’s always something opening,” Mom said, unpacking a shipment.
I studied the list of businesses planned: groceries, home goods, clothing, electronics, a pharmacy, restaurants, a garden center. Halfway down the banner, one word caught my attention. Books.
“They’re going to have a bookstore.”
“So do we.”
“A huge one.”
“We have personality.”
“They’ll have air conditioning that works.”
“Our air conditioning works. That’s how you know it’s working.”
I laughed, and for a while I let myself believe we’d be fine. We had survived chain bookstores and online retailers before. Personal service had kept us going through every change in the industry, and I hoped it would carry us through this one too.
Then Edison’s development opened. The bookstore department alone took up more space than The Turning Page, polished concrete floors, huge displays, new hardcovers stacked beneath signs advertising prices we had no hope of matching.
Beanbags and interactive screens in the children’s section, a café, a huge free parking lot.
Their loyalty program let customers earn points across the entire development, so a grocery trip could earn rewards spent on books.
Their book department could survive on narrow margins because the rest of the complex generated revenue from a dozen other sources.
The Turning Page depended entirely on the books we sold.
Our sales dipped the first month. Mom called it curiosity.
By the third month, that explanation was harder to believe.
Regulars still came in, though less often, some apologizing when they admitted buying books at Edison’s store instead.
One afternoon, a woman brought a hardcover to the register and hesitated at the price.
“I can get this for eleven dollars less over there.”
“I understand.”
“I want to support you.” She glanced at the book. “Eleven dollars is eleven dollars.”
She left it on the counter and walked out. Mom leaned both hands against the counter after the door closed. “Well. We need better coffee.” I laughed because I knew she wanted me to. That became our way of getting through the difficult days.
We tried everything: more author events, expanded children’s activities, signed copies, seasonal displays, a loyalty card.
The improvement never lasted long enough.
Edison’s company could sell a hardcover at almost no profit and recover the difference elsewhere.
We had rent, payroll, and supplier invoices that depended on every book leaving the store.
By the end of the first year, Mom was slower to replace titles.
By the second, she’d reduced staff hours, and I took over more of the ordering to save money.
Our conversations about a second location gradually disappeared.
Neither of us announced that the dream had changed.
We just adjusted our expectations each time the numbers forced us to.
One night after closing, I found Mom alone in the office, staring at the computer.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” She minimized the screen before I could see. I’d already seen enough.
“We’re down again.”
“We’ve had slow months before.”
“This has been going on for months.”
“We’ll figure it out.” I’d heard those words throughout my childhood, whenever the car broke down or the rent increased. Somehow she usually found a solution. Sitting there looking at another month of falling sales, I wondered how many solutions we had left.
At the time, neither of us knew Edison was already aware of the daughter he’d spent years refusing to acknowledge. Then Conrad Winslow approached him with an opportunity, and after a lifetime of silence, Edison finally had a reason to learn more about me. Soon I’d have a reason to wish he hadn’t.
Edison called me himself, which surprised me almost as much as discovering he knew where I worked. My phone lit up with an unfamiliar number while I stood behind the register.
“Hello?”
“Payton. This is Edison.”
My stomach dropped. I stepped away toward the back of the store. “What do you want?”
“I’d like to meet you.”
“You’ve had twenty-six years.”
“I understand you’re angry.”
“No, you don’t.” Hearing my name in his voice made my shoulders tense.
“This concerns your mother,” he said, and that was exactly how he kept me on the phone.
“Does this have something to do with the store?” I asked.
“Yes.”
I agreed to meet him the next afternoon and spent the rest of the day wishing I hadn’t.
He was already seated when I arrived, his face familiar from magazines and business profiles.
He stood as I approached, and I searched his face for a feature I recognized from my own reflection and came away empty.
“Payton.”
“Edison.”
His expression tightened slightly, as though he’d expected me to call him Dad. He’d be waiting a long time.
“I’ve wanted to reach out for some time,” he said.
“Then you should have.”
“You have your mother’s directness.”
“You would know?”
“I handled things badly.”
“That’s an interesting way to describe disappearing.”
“I was young.”
“So was she.”
“You know now. There’s a difference.”
His jaw tightened, and within seconds he abandoned the subject entirely. “I know The Turning Page is struggling.”
“Your company is part of the reason.”
“I’m aware.”
“You sound very concerned.”
“I didn’t personally select that location.”
“That must make Mom feel much better.”
“I didn’t ask you here to argue.”
“Then why did you ask me here?”
“I can help. I can eliminate the store’s debt, secure the property, cover operating costs, and provide favorable supplier terms.”
The scale of it left me staring at him. “Why?”
“There is a larger opportunity involved. An alliance. Conrad Winslow and I have been discussing a long-term arrangement between our companies.”
“What does that have to do with me?”
“Conrad wants the alliance secured through family.”
“No.”
“You haven’t heard the full proposal.”
“His son is unmarried,” he said, and I pushed my chair back, ready to leave.
“Sit down. Your mother will lose the store.”
My hand stopped. “You don’t know that.”
“I’ve seen the numbers.”
“How did you get her financial records?”
He gave me no answer. He’d invaded Mom’s privacy and saw nothing wrong with it. “The Turning Page has months. Possibly less.”
“You helped cause this.”
“My company expanded into a viable market. We opened near thousands of customers.” No trace of guilt. “This arrangement solves the problem.”
“It solves yours.”
“It saves your mother’s store.” He slid a folder across the table. “If you marry Max Winslow, your mother keeps The Turning Page. The debt is cleared, her future is secure.”
“And you get your alliance.”
“Yes.”
“What does Max get?”
“That is between him and his father.”
So Max was being traded too. I stood. “I won’t do it.”
“Then don’t.” His lack of resistance stopped me. He turned toward the window. “When the bank closes The Turning Page, remember that you had a way to save it.”
I hated him enough to walk away, and for several steps that hatred carried me toward the door.
Then I thought about Mom, about years of cleaning other people’s houses so I’d never understand how frightened she sometimes was about money.
My anger at Edison couldn’t pay the invoices piling up in the office. I left without taking his folder.
Three days later, I called him. He answered on the second ring.
“I’ll do it.”
His voice held none of the surprise I’d secretly hoped for. He’d known I would come back. “I’ll have the attorneys contact you.”
“I have a condition. Mom keeps the store completely. You don’t own any part of it, control it, or get a stake in the business.”
A brief silence. “Agreed.”
“The debt is cleared before the wedding.”
“Agreed.”
That phone call made me Max Winslow’s fiancée. There had never been a proposal or any expectation of romance. I agreed to marry a stranger while standing with a phone pressed to my ear, and Edison secured the corporate alliance he wanted.
All I cared about was keeping The Turning Page in Mom’s hands. She had spent my entire life finding ways to protect me. For once, I had found a way to protect her.