by Laura Alden
Yvonne’s fingers trembled. She slid the book she held onto a shelf. Into, I noted, the correct place. “Yes, but—”
“Then no more need be said.” Mrs. Tolliver swept out of the store.
Of the three remaining customers, one scuttled out, her gaze skittering over and through Yvonne. Another edged to the back of the store. The third, a regular customer from Madison whose name I could never remember, looked at Yvonne, then looked at me. She shrugged and went back to perusing the early chapter books.
“I’m so sorry,” Yvonne whispered. “I’ll leave now. Maybe you can catch up with Mrs. Tolliver and—”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said, loud enough for everyone in the store to hear, including an openmouthed Lois and a very still Paoze. “You’re not quitting. You didn’t kill anyone. You’re completely innocent. You received a complete acquittal.”
She’d also, I’d found out during our walk back from eating cookies, been awarded a hefty compensation check and didn’t need to depend on a paycheck from the Children’s Bookshelf to make the mortgage payments. This was an excellent financial situation for a bookstore clerk.
Yvonne kept her head down. “It doesn’t matter if I’m innocent or not. People will know I was in jail. I don’t want to hurt your business, Beth, so I’ll just—”
“Don’t you dare walk out on me.”
“I . . . what?” Her head popped up.
“You saw what happened yesterday. Lois and I can’t do all the work that needs doing. We need a third fulltime person and you’re the person we need.”
“There must be someone else.”
“Everyone with the qualifications wants benefits, and the only benefit I can provide is the smell of new books.”
She was starting to edge away and I didn’t know what to do. If I’d been Erica, I could have pummeled her with sound logic and have her begging to sign a contract for indentured servitude. If I’d been Marina, I’d have thrown my arms around her and wept until she agreed to stay. But I was only Beth, and my powers of persuasion were limited.
“Please stay,” I said softly. “We need you.”
Five simple words, each one a single syllable. No way was that going to be argument enough. I heaved a heavy internal sigh. Yvonne would leave and never come back. The newspaper ad for a new employee would go answered. Lois and I would run ourselves ragged trying to operate the store ourselves. Lois would get sick from stress and have to be hospitalized. I’d rush from store to hospital to PTA meetings to home and would inevitably forget one of Jenna’s hockey games. She’d never forgive me, and as we descended into her teenage years, our relationship would deteriorate to silence. All for the want of a bookstore clerk. I looked at Yvonne and couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“You really want me to work here?” she asked.
My heart started beating again.
“Yes!” Lois shouted. Her head was peeking up over the row of middle-grade bookshelves. “Absolutely yes.”
“Are you sure?” Yvonne asked. “What if Mrs. Tolliver tells three people not to come here again, and those three people tell three other people, and—”
“Don’t be such a worrywart,” Lois said, coming around the endcap. “It’ll be fine. The three of us will make a great team.” She draped her long arms over our shoulders. “Paoze, get over here. Add in Sara, and Beth will be franchising the place before you know it.” She beamed.
Like I wanted the headache of franchising. Ick.
“Well, if you’re sure . . .”
“Very,” I said firmly.
“Hooray!” Lois cried, and slapped us both on the back.
We stood there, a perfect photo opportunity for anyone who wanted to take a picture of a young man and three women of varying ages. One tall and familiar man did walk in the door, but he didn’t have a camera in hand. What he had was a concerned expression on his face.
“Beth, can I talk to you?”
I shut the door, wondering what was so important that Evan would leave his store in the middle of the afternoon. He’d spent the first year of his ownership of the hardware rearranging displays and adding items that would attract customers other than laconic contractors, and was starting to reap the rewards of his savvy instincts and immensely long hours.
I hoped there wasn’t a problem with one of his girls. Evan was divorced and had two children, but his daughters were grown. One was in the army, and the other was a sophomore at the University of Wisconsin.
But the look on his face wasn’t that kind of look. I looked up into his blue eyes. Blue as the eyes of the Siamese cat I’d had as a child. Blue as a winter’s dawn.
“Beth, are you listening to me?”
“Um, sorry. I was just . . . thinking.” Daydreaming, whatever. For some reason, Evan’s presence had that effect on me. One look into those light blue eyes and the real world fell away. In my imagination we were often on a desert island, or in Europe, or in the English book town of Hay-on-Wye with Evan cheerfully carrying all my purchases.
“Thinking is a good thing.” He pulled out my desk chair and kissed me as I sat down. The spare chair was covered with catalogs and books and magazines, but Evan knew the drill. He picked up the pile, dropped it onto the floor, and sat.
“So I hear you’ve hired a convicted murderer.” He draped one ankle over the opposite knee.
I’d been in the act of leaning back comfortably, but at his words I sat bolt upright. “Where did you hear that?”
He waved his hands. “You know this town.”
This town, that town, every town, probably, when it came to news like this. “It’s not true.” Well, technically it was. I sighed and gave him the thirty-second summary.
“Interesting situation.” He put his hands around his knee. “How do you feel about some unsolicited advice from a current business owner and former attorney?”
I put my hands over my abdomen. “My stomach hurts already.”
“Your stomach hurts all the time.”
“Only when I worry.”
“You worry all the time.” He gave me that lopsided grin.
I smiled back. “Not all the time.”
We sat there making goopy-eyes at each other until my face got tired. “Okay, I’m ready for the advice. Hit me.”
He dropped his foot to the floor and looked at me straight on and serious. “Hiring Yvonne is a mistake.”
I felt as if he had hit me. “No,” I said. “You’re wrong.” I started listing all the reasons Yvonne was perfect for the job, perfect for the store, and perfect for Rynwood, but Evan rode over my tally.
“Hear me out, okay?” He sat forward, elbows on thighs, letting his hands dangle together. “None of that matters. The only thing that counts in a business is that it makes money. Every decision has to have that as its focus.”
I stiffened. He was using the patient voice. I hated that. “Are you saying I don’t know how to run my own business?” Stupid Beth, floundering in her own ignorance. It was amazing the store had carried on this long.
Evan stood and walked over to my chair. He took my hands, pulled me to my feet, and enfolded me in his arms. “You’re doing a wonderful job,” he said into my hair. “You’ve created an almost magical atmosphere here. You think it’s the books, but the crucial ingredient is completely different.”
I pulled back and looked up at him, frowning. “What do you mean?” He wasn’t making sense. Of course it was the books. Poor man; he’d been spending too much time with plumbing fixtures.
He kissed the tip of my nose. “It’s you. Your quirky sense of humor and your sense of fun, but most of all your warm heart.” His lips touched mine softly. I would have put my arms around him and leaned into the kiss, but I didn’t want to get a stiff neck. Our height differential necessitated a couch for even mildly amorous activities. Either that or a step.
“You,” he whispered, and kissed my forehead. “You make this store a haven.”
He was wrong, but it was a nice thing
to say.
“That’s why I want to warn you about this decision.” He kissed me again then released me. “Your sense of fairness is exceptional, and I’m afraid it could land you in trouble.”
Back to Yvonne. Rats. I thought the topic had been successfully buried. “She didn’t kill anyone.”
“A lot of people think she did.”
“They’re wrong.” I folded my arms.
“Your customers’ perceptions count more than any fact,” he said. “If we didn’t have an unsolved murder in town, this issue wouldn’t be so crucial, but the facts are undeniable. Yvonne was sentenced to life in prison for murder by way of strangulation. Sam Helmstetter was killed the same way.” Evan took one of my hands between his two large ones, hiding it completely. “Let’s think about this differently. If a pediatrician came to town and you heard that he’d been accused of malpractice, would you consider taking Jenna and Oliver to him?”
“Of course not,” I said indignantly. And as I said the words, I realized what I’d said. “Um, not until I’d done some investigating . . .” My voice trailed off to silence.
“Point taken?” Evan asked. His tone was gentle.
I nodded, unhappy with myself for leaping right into the trap. “Some days reality stinks.”
He laughed. “Ah, it’s not so bad. We’re alive, breathing, and in good health. What else could you want?”
My answer was automatic. “Full-ride college scholarships. Two of them, please.”
“I’ll see what I can do.” He opened his palms and kissed the back of my hand. “Thanks for listening.”
“You’re welcome.” I looked at my hand. The only other person who’d ever kissed my hand had been Uncle Rolly on my thirteenth birthday. “Thanks for caring enough to voice your concerns.”
“I care about you.”
“And I care about you.” This was as close as we’d come to saying the scary “I love you” thing. Stronger than “I like you,” but much safer than the L word. “So I hope your feelings aren’t hurt,” I said, “when I ignore your well-meant advice entirely.”
“You mean—”
“I’m not going to ask Yvonne to leave.”
He sighed. “I had that feeling.”
“If this town turns against the store, we’ll survive. Over half of our customers are from Madison.” Which I only knew because we’d started to ask for zip codes. Though I disliked asking, the information was helping us decide which advertising was worthwhile. My advertising budget was about the size of a twelve-year-old’s allowance, which made wasting even a single dollar painful.
Evan looked unconvinced. “If you lose—let’s just hypothesize here—twenty percent of your Rynwood customers, how would your monthly revenues match your budget forecast?”
I did the math in my head. Then, since I didn’t like the way it turned out, I did it again. “Math isn’t my strong suit.” But even I could recognize impending doom when the edge of the cliff was rushing near. For once, however, I wasn’t going to worry about it. “And it doesn’t matter. Yvonne is staying.”
“It sounds as if you’re making this a statement of principle.”
I hadn’t thought about it in those terms. Principles weren’t something I thought about on a daily basis. “I suppose I am.”
He frowned. “Principles can be expensive. I hope the cost isn’t too high.”
“You and me both,” I said, hoping to make him smile. “Stop worrying, or your face is going to freeze like that.”
He didn’t laugh, but he did smile a little. “Are we still on for Saturday night? I have—”
The phone rang. Then again. “Sorry,” I murmured. “Children’s Bookshelf, how may I help you?”
“Beth,” said Richard, my ex-husband. “It’s Richard.”
“Hello, Richard.”
As soon as the name came out of my mouth, Evan stood and headed for the door. “Wait,” I said.
“What?” asked Richard.
“What?” asked Evan.
“Not you,” I said into the phone. “You,” I said to Evan. “Saturday is still good. Five o’clock?”
“How about four?” He smiled as he shut the door behind him.
“Okay, I’m back,” I told Richard. As always after seeing Evan, I felt as if I could solve the world’s problems and be home in time to cook dinner. “What’s up?”
He said three short words and my life changed. There were other sets of three words that changed lives: “I love you,” “It’s a girl,” or the pronouncement of “husband and wife.” Those were all good changes, at least most of the time. No, Richard’s three words were the bad kind, the kind you hoped you’d never hear. But maybe I’d heard wrong. I didn’t always listen to Richard as closely as I might. Maybe he’d said something else. “I’m sorry, Richard. What did you say?”
“I’ve been fired.”
Chapter 7
Marina’s kitchen was bright and cheerful, a welcome change from the blustery Friday evening weather that had pushed me inside the door. I was flying solo tonight. Evan kept the hardware open on Friday nights, and the kids were with their newly unemployed father, doing the trick-or-treat thing. I’d taken them out last year, so this year was Richard’s turn.
Poor Richard. I hoped they’d be able to distract him from his worries. He’d worked for the insurance company for over twenty years, been CFO for almost ten. A few months ago a merger had swallowed them whole, but he hadn’t been worried. “I have too much corporate memory,” he’d said, tapping the side of his head. Either the new guys didn’t care about his memory or he’d been sucked dry.
Marina turned over a slab of pork and it sizzled in the cast-iron frying pan. “What did he say after that?”
My stiff-upper-lip ex-husband had broken down in tears, but I wasn’t going to tell Marina. Two years of divorce didn’t entirely stamp out the loyalty built in a marriage. “Oh,” I said, “you know men.”
“The gender is a blight on the planet.” Marina grabbed a potholder. She yanked open the oven door and pulled out a cookie sheet covered with potato slices. “What do we need them for, anyway?” The potatoes looked seasoned enough to me, but Marina grabbed her shaker of special spices and shook it furiously.
“Aside from the need to propagate the species?”
She tossed away the notion with a shower of the spices. “We’ll figure out another way to reproduce. Name another reason.”
The oven door slammed shut and I wondered what Marina’s Devoted Husband had done to deserve such ire. “Opening jars that won’t open.”
“Bzz. When women run the world we’ll adjust the machines so they don’t get so tight in the first place. Next?”
“Taking the car to the mechanic. No matter what, I always feel like an idiot.”
“When all the mechanics are women, that won’t matter, now will it? You get one last chance for the continuation of male humans. Why, pray tell, should we keep them around?”
“To get rid of dead things.”
Marina’s mouth opened, then closed. A slow grin cleansed her stormy face. “Reason enough, mine friend. Since you’ve answered my question of the day, shall I answer yours?”
“Well, I am wondering how Mrs. Tolliver, and therefore the whole of Rynwood, found out so quickly that Yvonne was in prison for murder. I’d hoped it would take a few months to get around, but no, it wasn’t even twenty-four hours. How on earth . . . um, are you okay?”
Marina was leaning against the kitchen counter, her face in her hands. “Oh, no. Oh no oh no oh no.”
I was getting a bad feeling about this. “What did you do?”
She mumbled some words into her hands and I reached over to pull her arms down. “Again. This time in English.”
Her eyes darted left and right and up and down and everywhere but at me. “I had to tell CeeCee Daniels.”
I stepped away so I couldn’t give in to my urge to shake her silly. “Had to?” My voice echoed around the kitchen. I shut my eyes for a second, t
hen started again, cool, calm, and somewhat collected. “Could you have picked a more inappropriate person to tell?”
“Cindy Irving,” she said instantly.
My irritation zipped up, then came back down again. “Okay, Cindy would have been worse.” Cindy did landscaping and janitorial work for city hall and a number of downtown area businesses. She probably talked to more people in a day than walked into the bookstore in a week. “But why did you tell anyone?”
“I didn’t want to,” she wailed. “CeeCee was here one day and Yvonne stopped in and they hit it off, and the next day CeeCee calls asking if I thought Yvonne would be okay babysitting her kids. I said sure she would, she’s great with rug rats. Half an hour later CeeCee’s in here about ready to roast my gizzard. She’d looked Yvonne up on Google and there it was, all bright and shiny. Convicted of murder. CeeCee didn’t read anything after that. I tried to explain, but I don’t think she heard a word I said.”
It all made a Marina-based sort of sense.
“CeeCee must have told Claudia, and who knows who she told? I’ll call Yvonne tonight and apologize,” Marina said. “I should have known what would happen, it was stupid, and I am really, really, really sorry.”
She certainly looked apologetic. The word “contrite” didn’t begin to cover the drooping eyes, the slumped shoulders, and the overall attitude of dejection. It was so unlike her that I couldn’t stand it. I poked her shoulder with my index finger. “Well, everyone’s entitled to one mistake a decade. Too bad you used up yours so early.”
Her smile came a moment after mine. “Yeah,” she said. “Too bad. I’d better be on my best behavior the next few years. Think I can do it?”
“Not a chance.”
Five minutes later we were seated at her kitchen table, our bright red plates laden with meat, potatoes, and a small heap of beans. It was just the two of us since Marina’s young son, Zach, was staying overnight at a friend’s. After her earlier behavior, I wasn’t about to ask what her DH might be doing. We’d slid into the habit of Friday night dinner and a movie soon after Richard and I separated. The evenings had been a lifeline in those first lonely months, and it would take a thousand years to repay what she’d done for me.