The Printed Letter Bookshop

by Katherine Reay

  The messy shelves require concentration so, bottle empty, I bend to rest it on the floor. It tips and rolls. As I watch it stop in a patch of moonlight, a shadow covers it. It’s so dark no light penetrates the shadow, and I wonder if the bottle is still there. I look up as a man passes by on the sidewalk and the light returns.

  Seth?

  I’m not angry anymore. And he’s not on his date. He’s alone. I know that walk, that lope to his stride. I walked beside it for almost thirty years, and this afternoon I had hoped—

  “Seth, come back!” I dash to the door, kicking the bottle in my path. The door is locked and my fingers bungle over the deadbolt, then the lock in the knob. Why haven’t we fixed these? They don’t move.

  “Wait,” I call again as I wrench the door open and stumble onto the sidewalk, weight and momentum carrying me faster than my legs can move.

  It’s empty. A few parked cars. A few streetlights. But no man. In fact, no one.

  But . . . I wonder as I look to the corner. The lock took time—perhaps enough that he may have just turned the corner.

  “Seth!” I call his name again and follow.

  I round the corner and head behind the shop to the alley. One more corner and there he is, crossing through the alley toward the town’s public lot. People are spilling out of Bistro North and more from the bar down the street.

  I don’t care who hears. “Seth!”

  He turns.

  I step back. “I—I thought you were someone else.”

  The man, shorter than Seth, broader than Seth, younger than Seth, calls “No problem” and resumes his walk.

  The air leaves me, wilts me, and that darn cat is blocking the Printed Letter’s alley door.

  “Don’t you ever learn? Can’t you see nobody wants you!”

  My yell sends it scurrying away and I’m left alone.

  Chapter 14

  Claire

  Claire pushed up from the sofa, blinking at the sunlight coming through the living room window. She had fallen asleep in a half-sitting pose, and her back felt stiff and her neck was cricked on one side. She rubbed it as she slid her phone from the coffee table. No texts from Brittany. But a missed call and three texts from Brian.

  I tried to call. Are you awake?

  I’m sorry I missed tonight.

  I love you. Sleep well.

  She smiled. It was easy to blame him—the easiest thing in the world really. But it wasn’t right. Brian worked hard and he loved her and the kids, and he never missed texting every night he was away. Wait, that was new . . . They used to talk every night. They’d recount their days, his work, her work, and all that the kids had going on. When had that changed? Claire laid down the phone. It changed when she quit having things to say.

  She tossed the throw blanket back onto the sofa and headed to the stairs as Brittany raced down. Claire stepped back in time not to be squished.

  “You were grounded last night, yet you weren’t here when I got home. Where were you? What time did you get in?” She followed Brittany into the kitchen.

  “You were asleep on the couch. I didn’t want to wake you.” Brittany shrugged and grabbed a Kombucha from the fridge and popped the top. “I didn’t think studying violated my jail sentence, but we can talk about it later. I’ve got a physics study lab starting early this morning.” She walked back to the stairs and called up. “Your ride is leaving.”

  The house shook as Matt pounded across the upstairs hall, then down the stairs.

  “Lunch?” he called as he passed.

  “I . . . I just woke up.”

  “I’ll buy today. Bye, Mom.” He waved and flew out the door.

  Brittany offered nothing other than one last look and shut the door behind them both.

  Claire stood there dazed but also aware—Brittany hadn’t answered her questions. She had stepped around them. How many times had Brian warned her? You’re not her friend. You’re her mom. And how many times had she replied, so certain? I am both. She doesn’t need me hovering.

  At one point perhaps that had been true. Or maybe it was the impossible dream moms wanted to believe. But Brittany had seemed so lost for so long, Claire was sure her daughter needed a friend to listen far more than she needed a mom to chide. Only now—no longer trusted like a friend nor respected like a mom—did Claire question her motivation and her actions.

  The evening, the grounding, and Brittany’s evasion picked at her for the three-mile drive to work. Brian had come down hard about the vodka bottle, but then he went out of town and all the punishments he laid down, Claire couldn’t enforce. She’d lost that thread of authority and it couldn’t be woven back again—at least she didn’t see how.

  She played it over and over, fantasizing what she should have said, could have said, to make her daughter answer, obey, and come back to the relationship they’d once shared. That’s what she missed most—the Brittany who was—the girl who stayed up late to draw and create, the girl who made homemade cards for every occasion, the girl who came home crying in the fifth grade because the teacher asked for her best handwriting and that would take too long.

  Claire could almost feel Brittany’s lanky limbs drape across her lap as they had that day when she pulled her close. She remembered the feel of her, the smell of her, as she pushed Brittany’s hair back and kissed her brow. Sweetheart, she doesn’t understand. You give her your third best handwriting. That’s what she expects. No one has handwriting like yours.

  But this morning was different. The tone and tenor had changed yet again. Claire felt it. It wasn’t avoidance or disrespect. Enmity charged the air. It was tangible, but not something she could articulate to Brian two thousand miles away. It would have to wait until he got home—in three days.

  As she pushed open the Printed Letter’s alley door, she saw the cat creep into view.

  “You need a home, sweet thing. Wait here. I’ll get you milk.”

  It hit her the second she stepped inside. Ice. Her first thought was that the furnace had finally died. Her second was that broken heaters don’t generate a breeze. She rushed from the office into the store front and faced disaster . . .

  All the paper in the world had been scattered. She looked to the open front door, wondering how wind could do so much damage. Then a torn cover, half of Martha Stewart smiling from her Homekeeping Handbook, shifted in the breeze. No wind had torn Martha from her 752 pages of sage advice.

  Claire stepped through the debris to shut the door. With gloved fingers, she pushed it closed, avoiding the knob or anything else the police might want to see.

  She then dialed the police’s nonemergency number. “I need to report a break-in.” As she described the scene and gave the address, she noted several Sharpies scattered amidst the pages. She let her gaze drift up. “Sharpie . . . They took the Sharpies we use for authors to sign books and drew all over the shelves. It’s unbelie— I can’t wait in my car. I’m already in the building.”

  Claire tiptoed her way back to the office, the storage room, the side room, and the restroom. “No one’s here . . . Yes, I’ll stay still.” She stood at the counter surveying the damage. Books torn, scattered, shelves drawn on as if they were coloring books, smashed picture frames, a tossed wine bottle, and . . . She sniffed. Did someone pee in here?

  Two police officers soon arrived. They entered through the front door and treaded lightly through the mess to Claire.

  One of the officers whistled as he scanned the scene. “This sure is something. Don’t see much of this around here.”

  “I don’t think anything was taken. The register is untouched, and I forgot to make the bank deposit yesterday. It’s still in my desk.”

  “That’s lucky.”

  “This doesn’t look like luck.” Claire noted the Hemingway note smashed on the counter.

  “No, it doesn’t,” the other officer replied.

  Claire felt a presence to her left. Madeline stood in the doorway to the office, jaw dropped. Her eyes flew to the ce
iling moldings. Claire’s gaze followed, though she knew what she’d see. Nothing. Most of Maddie’s beloved letters had been smashed and lay in twisted piles of wood, glass, and paper on the floor amidst all the other wood, glass, and paper.

  “We hung those together. Uncle Pete did that for her.”

  “I’m so sorry, Madeline.”

  The officer stepped forward, and Claire watched Madeline’s eyes focus and harden. “How did this happen?”

  “We don’t know yet. I’m hoping you can help us.”

  Claire couldn’t hear what they said as they moved forward toward the evidence technician, who was photographing every inch of the store.

  After a few moments Madeline waved Claire to them. “Did you get to the bank yesterday?”

  “I forgot, but the deposit is still there. The register wasn’t touched either.”

  “Then this is vandalism and not burglary?” She turned back to the officer, whom Claire now knew was named Brennan.

  “It appears to be, but we’ll cover all the bases to make certain.” Officer Brennan then asked both women a series of questions, all of which had the same answer:

  Does anyone hold a grudge against either of you? No.

  Did you terminate anyone recently? No.

  Do your neighbors or any local businesses have complaints against you? No.

  Does anyone wish you harm? No.

  Officer Brennan nodded and returned to the technician.

  Madeline lifted her hands in a gesture of defeat. “This is Class 2 felony kind of destruction.”

  “What does that mean?” Claire whispered.

  “It means we lost a whole lot more than ten thousand in property damages, but probably less than a hundred thousand.” Madeline pointed to the center wood columns running the length of the store. Three of the four were buckled.

  Claire stared at them. “Those are support beams. We need to bolster those. Do you think the ceiling will hold?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Three hours later the officers left, and Claire and Madeline stood alone in the chaos and the cold.

  Claire buttoned her coat’s top button. “I’m going to turn up the heat. It’ll take forever to warm this place up.”

  Madeline spun around as if remembering something. She touched a fresh indentation on the wall, the blue paint torn from the drywall. The Hemingway note lay beneath it on the counter, ripped by the shattered glass.

  “I saw that earlier. The glass cut it to shreds.” Claire reached for it.

  “Don’t. You’ll get hurt. It’s ruined anyway.”

  “Let’s leave it and start cleaning.”

  “I told you . . .” Madeline drew a deep breath. “One thing and we were done for.” She looked at Claire. “This is a little worse than a hard snow or the flu.”

  “Don’t say that. We can fix this.” Claire heard the desperation in her voice. She needed those words to be true. “I’ll get a broom. You call the insurance company, and a contractor.”

  * * *

  Madeline

  Insurance.

  I meant to call. It was on my list . . . Who doesn’t handle that first? The safety net, the backup, the protection. But first the partnership loss, then I planned to sell, and it was only going to take days, a week at most . . .

  Excuses.

  Every single one of them.

  Bottom line: I forgot about the insurance.

  End result: I was sunk.

  The Printed Letter’s policy, as any business insurance policy, was tied to the entity’s owner—be it an LLC, a corporation, or an aunt. The Printed Letter’s policy ended with Aunt Maddie’s death.

  None of this was insured. And the money had run out. Her money. My money. All of it.

  Not that her policy would have helped anyway—she cut her contents clause when the shop stopped making money, and she scaled back her general liability into legally dangerous ground three months before her death. She was lucky no one slipped on an errant book or her uneven floors and took it all from her. Instead, they’d now take it from me.

  Aunt Maddie’s insurance coverage had been laughable.

  Mine brought me to tears.

  “It’s not that bad.” Claire touched my arm.

  Her consoling gesture made me feel like a jerk. I wasn’t the only one who’d pay for this. She and Janet would too. And Aunt Maddie’s beautiful shop . . . I needed to throw up.

  “It is that bad. We have no insurance.”

  Her touch turned to a tap. “I’ve got the policy in the file. Give me a sec.”

  I shook my head and explained. How any lawyer could forget that detail was a little harder to articulate.

  Claire absorbed the mess. “But this is probably thirty thousand dollars of damage in stock alone, maybe more. There’s structural damage too. We need a contractor.”

  “I’m aware of that.”

  She sighed, an audible, heart-worn sound.

  “Exactly.”

  “If they find who did this, you could win damages in court, right? The officer said they might get something off the bank’s surveillance cameras next door.” Claire wasn’t giving up.

  “If they came from that direction. But even then we can’t count on any compensation. It rarely works the way you might think.”

  I stepped away. I needed to do something, some form of forward motion to stem the drowning feeling that swamped me. Nothing in my life had prepared me for this. Nothing in my life had prepared me for the past three months . . . College, law school, clerkship, associate, partner. That was the path. Bankrupt bookshop owner who had no idea what she was doing on a daily basis, much less the next day, was not part of my plan. Ha. My plan.

  When had my plans ever worked out?

  Claire picked her way to the front of the shop as if she were playing hopscotch, stepping around scattered books and debris. Plaster dust sprinkled her hair as she passed beneath a hole in the ceiling. A gaping wound existed where yesterday a charming drop chandelier had hung. She returned with more purpose and headed to the office. I suspected she was searching for the defunct insurance policy—the mom in her needed to fix this.

  I pulled out my phone to take pictures. The police had theirs, but perhaps I could capture something new, something different—maybe something that would help us in court, assuming we found the vandals.

  As I walked around snapping photos, I was again horrified by the crime. It was senseless. It felt as if someone had enjoyed this—torn books, thrown them in the air, and laughed as pages fell like snowflakes to cover almost every square inch of floor. Two small wooden chairs from the kids’ section had been destroyed—not picked up and slammed against the wall or the floor, but tossed. They had smashed upon landing fifteen, twenty feet from their points of origin. One must have taken out the chandelier as it sailed by.

  I then photographed the three central beams and the damaged walls. Someone had wielded the baseball bat, now lying under Spirituality, with a vengeance. And Claire was right, someone had used World Travel as a latrine. Definitely a man, as the urine started at waist level in Monaco and traveled south through Zimbabwe.

  After pictures, I began to clear the floor. I picked up any salvageable books. Greg would help me place them. We couldn’t sell them, but they couldn’t and wouldn’t go to waste. They could still benefit someone . . .

  Greg. I had to call Greg and tell him I’d lost Aunt Maddie’s beloved shop.

  And it was beloved. I suspected she put God and Uncle Pete above the shop, but it might have been close running. I imagined her indomitable spirit digging in to clean up with the cheery statement that the new stock would be even better. She was the one who saw the vision and led the charge all those summers ago when I only saw books and work ahead of me. But she’d been right. She’d created magic and something significant. If she saw it now . . .

  I only saw my aunt cry once. Granted, I hadn’t known her well, but I hadn’t forgotten it. I had just landed in Chicago for law school when my mom ca
lled.

  “Uncle Pete died on Tuesday. Your father refuses to go to the funeral. Will you go? Family should be there.”

  I remembered feeling hot with fury, no matter what she’d done. “What is wrong with him?”

  “He’s having a hard time with forgiveness, my darling.” Mom gave a small, self-deprecating laugh I didn’t understand.

  Now, a decade later, I read so much more into that moment. Dad wasn’t trying to forgive Aunt Maddie. He was trying to forgive himself. I lived under the lie that Aunt Maddie had betrayed him. But Mom didn’t know that—she had thought she was sending me as a family emissary, whereas I had thought she was offering me a “hall pass,” an appropriate way to see my aunt without being disloyal to my father.

  I’d stood in the back of the church for Uncle Pete’s funeral, full of wonder at the beauty of it. So many friends stood and spoke of his kindness and generosity, his faith and his sense of humor. We should have allowed such a moment for Aunt Maddie. Dad had directed the funeral details. Short and simple had been his dictum.

  At Uncle Pete’s service I watched Aunt Maddie thank everyone for coming to honor her husband, thank everyone for their years of friendship and support, and thank everyone for showing such love—that’s when she saw me. She pulled in the corner of her lower lip, and tears flooded her eyes. She faltered a heartbeat, unable to speak. Eyes locked on mine, she finally added, “God is good,” and sat down.

  On her walk up the aisle, she stopped, hugged me long and hard, and said, “I understand how hard all this is. It means everything to me you came today. I love you, Madeline.”

  Today. That word stayed with me. The way she said it made it feel final, as if she, too, had understood—a hall pass was only valid for a short time. She had known her brother much better than I knew my father.

  So many secrets, and they damaged us all. And now today the last bit of her, my beautiful—and “crazy” in all the best ways—aunt, was beyond repair.