1. Lina #2
I walk him back to the door, watching as he steps out into the gray afternoon.
The wind catches his coat, and he holds onto his hat as he walks down the sidewalk.
Across the street, a dark sedan is parked near the curb.
The engine is running, a thin trail of exhaust curling up into the cold air.
The windows are tinted dark, so I can't see who's inside, but as I watch, the car slowly pulls away from the curb and disappears around the corner.
A strange prickle of unease dances across the back of my neck.
You’re reading too many thriller novels, I tell myself, rubbing my arms through my knitted sweater. It’s just a car. People park on this street all the time.
But as I lock the front door of the shop—it’s five o’clock, closing time—I find myself checking the lock twice.
"I'm heading out!" Maya calls, walking out from the back with her purse slung over her shoulder. She drops a handful of sticky notes onto my counter. "These are the books that have torn pages. I put them on the desk in your office so you can tape them up."
"Thanks," I say, walking her to the side door that connects to the alley. "Go home. Get some rest. Stop reading about dukes who have secret dark pasts."
"Never," she says, blowing me a kiss as she steps out into the chilly evening. "See you tomorrow, bookworm."
"See you tomorrow."
I lock the side door, slide the heavy deadbolt into place, and turn off the main lights. The shop plunges into a soft, blue twilight. The only light comes from the streetlamps outside, casting long, geometric shadows across the wooden floorboards.
I love this hour.
The baseline tourist rush from the summer has left my accounts comfortably padded enough that I don't have to sweat the minor financial losses from the free croissants I slide to Mr. Henderson.
I pull my knitted sweater tight around my arms, grab my canvas tote, and step out into the chilly evening air for the familiar, two-block walk to my apartment building.
Minutes later, I’m making my way up the narrow, creaking staircase at the back of my residential building, my feet knowing exactly where to step to avoid the loudest squeaks.
My apartment is small, just a single bedroom, a tiny kitchen, and a living room filled with plants that I constantly forget to water.
It’s cozy, decorated with mismatched furniture I bought from thrift stores and a faded rug my mother brought with us from whoever-knows-where.
I throw my keys onto the kitchen counter, kick off my shoes, and head into the bedroom.
I slide onto the floor beside my bed, my knees protesting slightly against the hard wood. I reach underneath, my fingers searching through the dust bunnies until they hit the rough cardboard of the box.
The box.
I pull it out, the heavy cardboard scraping against the floorboards. It’s the same box my mother carried under her arm the night we ran away from the big house. The brown tape along the top has been sliced open, but the edges are frayed and yellowed with age.
I’ve opened it before. Many times, actually. Whenever I missed her so much my chest felt like it was going to cave in, I would pull this box out and look at the things she left behind.
I lift the flaps.
On top is a collection of ordinary memories.
A silver locket with a picture of her when she was young, her eyes bright and laughing, a version of her I never knew.
A couple of cheap plastic bead necklaces I made for her in elementary school.
A stack of letters from a utility company in Chicago, addressed to her under a name that isn't the one she died with.
Maria Rossi. That’s the name on her death certificate. But some of these old papers are addressed to Maria Salvatore.
I trace the name with my thumb. Salvatore. It sounds heavy and weird.
Whenever I look at these papers, my stomach does a little flip, and I find myself sliding them back into the envelope.
My mother fabricated our entire life. I know that much.
I know she changed our names, that she lied about where we came from, that she kept us moving from town to town until she finally felt safe enough to stop here.
But I’ve never gone all the way to the bottom of the box to actually unwrap its final secret.
Deep down, beneath the envelopes and the cheap jewelry, there is a substantial bundle wrapped tightly in a heavy piece of dark velvet.
I’ve pulled the cloth-covered package out a dozen times over the years, testing its solid, square shape against my palms and weighing its incredibly heavy mass in my hands, but every single time I reach to peel back the fabric, I stop.
If you open it, things will change, a small, warning voice whispers in my head. You have a good life. You have a shop. You have Maya. You are safe.
My mother died to give me this quiet. She worked herself to the bone, her hands raw and blistered, just so I could run a coffee shop and read books and never have to look over my shoulder. If there is some ugly, violent truth waiting at the bottom of this box, why would I want to find it?
I look at my hands. They are soft. They don't have scars. They smell like coffee and vanilla.
I am Lina Rossi, I tell myself, my voice small and steady in the quiet bedroom. I am ordinary. And I am going to stay that way.
I push the velvet-wrapped bundle back down, tucking the old envelopes over it like a blanket. I close the cardboard flaps, seal them with a fresh piece of tape, and slide the box back under the bed, pushing it deep into the dark corners where the light doesn't reach.
I stand up, brushing the dust off my leggings, and walk over to the window.
Outside, the quiet town is settling into the night. The streetlamps cast a warm, amber glow over the wet pavement, and the sound of the ocean waves crashing against the pier carries through the glass. It’s peaceful. It’s completely and utterly normal.
But as I look down at the street below, my eyes automatically drift to the empty parking spot across the road where the dark sedan was idling earlier.
The spot is empty now. But for some reason, the hair on my arms stands on end.
I pull the curtains shut, shutting out the dark, and head into the kitchen to make myself a cup of tea.
I don't know anything about the world my mother fled. I am just a girl who runs a lending library.
And as I listen to the kettle begin to whistle in the quiet kitchen, I genuinely believe that is all I will ever be.