by A. K. Klemm
Poor old fool of a man. Abigail had to dry her eyes a bit when she thought of him. AJ stood at the tombstone, looking like she was willing tears to come, but Abigail didn’t see any. Abigail could only speculate as to what AJ had to say to Kevin that morning.
It had been hard for Kevin to keep a job. He was never fired—people loved him too much—but often, he’d lose his motivation and passion for whatever work he was doing and just quit after moving up the ladder. His charisma kept him paid decently, but the frustration of not having roots and never being certain had worn AJ thin.
She had continued to plug away at her nine-to-five, and, a few years into their marriage, realized she and Kevin never talked anymore. They ate dinner at different times and slept in different rooms. She was lonely, he was sad. Ironically, their world imagined them to be the happiest couple alive. Everyone home in Lily Hollow was waiting for news of babies that AJ was sure she didn’t want to have, not in this marriage.
She’d come home to grand announcements that they were leaving, moving here or there, in all the excitement they would grow close again, and sometime later, she would find herself in the same situation as before… tired.
It broke Jack’s heart every time AJ called to tell him they were moving again and that it wasn’t back to Lily Hollow. During football season, their email accounts would be flooded with requests to have Kevin at the homecoming game. They never went.
Every time they didn’t show, a new wave of disappointment came over the town. Kevin and AJ Rhys were Lily Hollow royalty, and Lily Hollow eagerly awaited the prince and princess’s return every semester. The town was devastated when the two graduated and didn’t come back to live in Lily Hollow after the wedding. After being away for so long, Kevin and AJ Rhys had become Lily Hollow legends.
Jack liked the pedestal his great granddaughter had been put on. Always the novelist at heart, he thought that being a legend or being married to one meant they’d come home one day for sure. “Abby, legends always come home,” he’d told Abigail while they waited. “AJ and Kevin will, too.”
When AJ woke up in the hospital with nearly every bone in her body broken and the news that she was a widow at the age of twenty-five, she just sighed. She didn’t have it in her to cry. She barely had it in her to start therapy, but Granddaddy Jack had called and pushed her to start again.
She was more healed than not, on crutches and in casts when she came back to help with Jack’s funeral. It wasn’t until after it was over and she had the plans for the bookshop in hand that she finally made her way to the headstone of her own husband.
“Oh, Kevin, I’m sorry. I’m sorry we ended like that. I miss you. The old you. You were such a beautiful boy. I’ll visit from now on, I promise. I don’t want you to be lonely.”
Abigail had been quietly sitting on a bench near Jack’s plot that first time. She’d heard it all and instantly knew what she already had known: Kevin Rhys had been a town hero, but he had also been the saddest part of AJ’s life. Jack and Kevin had both left the world the same year—heartbreakers, the both of them. The whole town had wept at both funerals, but Kevin’s more so, because he was young. At Kevin’s more so, because it came as such a shock. At Kevin’s more so, because, well, AJ wasn’t even there.
The town was happy to receive AJ when she decided to move back to town. She spent the first few months hiding out in Jack and Maude’s house, where she’d grown up. Jack had always walked a fine line between losing the women in his life and being exceptionally close to them. Fate, it seemed, preferred it that way. Though he’d been a young widower, Jack’s daughter Maude had been his constant companion after she lost her own husband to the war and was left raising AJ’s mother.
There was still chatter. They weren’t very pleased that she was so self-sufficient, and they weren’t pleased that she didn’t spend her days weeping over Kevin’s grave. Abigail’s nephew and Kevin’s father, Karl, was none too happy that his daughter-in-law had no desire to see them. People seemed to forget that she had spent months alone in a hospital fighting for some semblance of a normal life and that she was just barely out of her first round of rehab when Jack passed.
During that time, Abigail went to visit Maude, hoping to have tea with the whole household, but Maude sat with Abigail alone that day in the kitchen. AJ was sitting outside in the garden, staring down the tomatoes Jack had left behind. “Just leave her be, Ms. Lacey. Just leave her be.” Maude patted her hand firmly, not allowing her to go to the window to peek at the oldest twenty-six year old anyone had ever seen.
“She needs purpose, Maude,” Abigail said that day at Maude’s, misty-eyed, thinking of Jack. Jack would never stand for this. She’d known Jack her whole life. Jack and his sister climbing trees as children. Jack and his own football heroics. Jack and his serials.
They were nothing spectacular, but he’d been quite the western novelist in his day. Tourists still drove by the very house she sat in with Maude to take pictures of the house where the great Jack Walters lived and died.
Abigail remembered when Jack married his pretty little wife Emma, a girl he’d met in the city, and brought her home. Abigail remembered Jack and Emma having that pretty little baby girl, who was now sitting in front of her as withered and as old looking as herself.
Maude had married and had a baby, Sidney, and then her husband had died a soldier overseas. After that, Maude gave up any plans of leaving her father’s house, and the two had raised Sidney together.
Abigail had spent hours rocking Jack’s little grandbaby, Sidney, in the rocking chair, wishing it were her little grandbaby, grateful to be touching his flesh and blood. Oh, Jack. She’d loved him her whole life and never said a word. It had never been her place.
When Sidney had AJ, Jack paraded her around like a proud papa. Sidney was a mess of a girl. She never did the right thing and came home pregnant at fifteen. Still, Jack loved AJ and never let anyone say a bad word about her or her mother, who flitted around the globe like a mad woman. Jack and the town raised AJ, and AJ was the better for it.
Maude, a grandmother who lived to admit her mistakes as a mother, yielded to all of Jack’s decisions. Emma hadn’t lived to see all these babies, but Abigail had. Selfishly, she thought that maybe that was God throwing her a bone. Emma got to marry Jack, but Abigail got to grow old with him.
“She needs purpose,” Abigail repeated.
“I don’t know where she’s going to find that. Daddy left her that damn building just sitting there, rotting. She’s going to sit there and rot with it.”
“No,” Abigail said half to herself. “Maude, did AJ get anything other than the building?”
“A manila envelope she won’t open. It’s thick, too.”
“Give it to me.”
Maude never had much fight in her, so much like Emma and nothing like Jack. She came back with the envelope in hand, and Abigail tore it open, her hands aching as she lifted the metal clasp at the top. Just as she suspected, there was a notebook inside, a notebook Jack had pored over with AJ when she was young. Their dream project. AJ had always thought it was just an imagination exercise, but Abigail knew that Jack took it more seriously than that.
Abigail marched out to the garden and tossed the notebook onto the girl’s lap.
“Ouch!” AJ rubbed her leg.
“Look, child. I’m sad, too. Everybody’s sad. And Kevin—well, Kevin I’m sure is over it all, being that he’s dead. And Jack, well, he’s rolling over in his grave watching you from the heavens staring at tomatoes. Get to work.”
AJ looked down at the notebook, a hint of a nostalgic smile tweaking the corners of her mouth.
“Abby, you’re a genius.” Jack Walters was the only human being in the world to call Abigail “Abby” until AJ came along. Abigail smiled through misty eyes, and AJ leaned on a single crutch.
That was the last AJ saw of Jack’s garden tomatoes. Within weeks, she was spending all her time at the hotel, and soon, she was living there as well.
/> The grand opening was such a success, Abigail forgot for a moment how broken the poor girl had been. She may not need the crutches anymore, and the scars may be easier to cover, but as Abigail watched that figure hobble away from the cemetery and back to the hotel, she realized that girl wasn’t cured just yet. In spite of all that, Abigail could see that AJ was doing some good to this town.
Now, Abigail placed apple pie muffins in the display window and switched the light above the display on. It blinked “Open” into the foggy dawn, and Abigail sat down to rest.
Sam’s Deli Menu
Saturday Special: Sam’s Favorite
Pepper Jack Cheese, Sam’s Special Sauce (Honey, Mustard, Miracle Whip, Cayenne, and Dill Weed), and Thinly Sliced Turkey served on Honeyed Wheat Bread, Lightly Toasted. Comes with a large Iced Tea and Homemade Potato Chips.
The Bookshop Hotel
The building groaned, it ached, it was tired. Rafters fell, drywall crumbled. It had once been a glorious place, an establishment revered by all those who saw it and even some who didn’t.
Built by a wealthy family ages ago, the house had seen love, meals, fancy parties, babies, laughter, and tears. The house had been repainted, rewired, and had a telephone installed. Then it became a hotel. Tourists came far and wide to be a part of its history, and there were more parties, weddings, and celebrities.
The garden grew over time. Each spring, new plants had been added. The trees had grown taller and wider, the roots inching their way under the foundation and floorboards. As time grew on, the house found aches and pains—a little creak here, a little creak there. Loose nails, floorboards giving the rooms voices.
One day, the people stopped coming. Boards went over the windows and doors. Everything became dusty, moist, and rusty seemingly all at once, but over a long period of time. The rodents came first—field mice first in the walls and then right out in the open, discovering that they were never disturbed.
The spiders lorded over the chandeliers and baseboards. Stray cats and dogs made beds in the fireplaces while high school kids drifted in and out at night looking for a sheltered place to drink and smoke away from the prying eyes of their parents.
The building groaned in the wind, ached under rainfall, grew tired of neglect. Then AJ came, and things began to change.
Part Two
Sam’s Deli Menu
Sunday Special: The Breakfast Melt
Melted American Cheese on two Over Medium Eggs with Seared Ham between two slices of Buttered Wheat Toast. Served with Hash Browns and The Bookshop Hotel Cafe’s Breakfast Blend Coffee.
“I’m a great believer in luck, and I find
the harder I work the more I have of it.”
— Thomas Jefferson
Matthew
It turned out AJ didn’t need to wait nine months to hire another employee. Shortly after the new year, she looked over her books and discovered she had enough money set aside in the new employee fund to pay someone for twenty-five hours of work for two months. Surely someone would be interested in a small part-time gig if it came with housing.
Matthew had continued doing odd repairs here and there throughout the building on slow days, but for the most part, The Bookshop Hotel had remained surprisingly busy through the holidays and on into February. Most of the big-ticket sales were in various resale items of the antique variety rather than the book variety, but the shop never became a junk shop. AJ managed to keep it all about the books.
An antique traffic light had been the center piece for a children’s display of Dr. Suess, primary colors, and introduction-to-shapes books. It had only been there for a month when some tourist drove through and paid twice what AJ had, but half of what it was actually worth.
She raffled off quilts found in old shops and garage sales, manipulating customers into buying more than they bargained for from the home arts sections. The weekly raffle became more popular than the lottery in Lily Hollow, and many people bought other quilts AJ had on display when they didn’t win.
Matthew realized more and more that this tiny little blonde with a limp was more than a bookseller. She was in the event business, in the people business. She’d manipulated Nancy Harrigan into running a book club out of the shop’s garden. She’d managed to set up a pretty solid café arrangement with the local deli and bakery.
She’d made friends with her longtime rival, the English teacher at the high school, as well as contacted the theatre department head, and the two educators were now hosting poetry nights together in the café. Baking competitions were at an all-time high, and Abigail had even come in and served as one of the judges, so naturally, baking books were selling like hotcakes. These small-town business owners seemed to build these relationships so easily, without a second thought.
Pete’s Landscaping was continually praised as customers read the current mystery and romance novels in the garden and usually walked out with gardening books, one of Pete’s business cards, and hand-crafted pottery that AJ brought in from Maggie’s Pottery Store in Briar. Pete was scheduled to teach gardening classes in the garden once a month starting in the spring. The catch? Buy a gardening book of any value and book Pete to trim your hedges or mow your lawn.
AJ made everything appear seamless. It all fell into place with such little effort to outside eyes, but Matthew knew how much energy was actually put into it. And he knew they’d be hiring someone soon, so it shouldn’t have surprised him when AJ came back from a trip to Briar with a dark-haired gypsy trailing behind her ready to work, but it did.
“Listen—are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?”
Mary Oliver
Ivy
Ivy had been living out of her car for nearly six months. The little red Volvo was extremely cliché, but it was what she had. Before that, she’d been sharing a three-bedroom apartment with nine other people. Needless to say, after two months of that, it got crowded, and she had the urge to move.
After high school, all of her friends had run off to college, and she’d simply run off. A thought occurred to her as she twirled her unwashed hair around her finger while watching a tiny woman go into the third thrift store one day. She was a gypsy.
Ivy had been following her on foot since she saw her buy a sweater at one of the shops she frequented, a sweater she’d been moments away from selecting herself. Ivy had really wanted that sweater, but the tiny lady got to it first. It didn’t matter. Ivy was probably too long in the torso for it anyway. She had to be at least a head taller than the little blonde.
But before she had the chance to say anything, the little woman picked up a blanket. It was buried so far down a stack that Ivy would have missed it and couldn’t imagine how she had noticed it in the first place. This woman had the eye, a gift for discovering treasure where there seemingly was none. It was one of those ugly old knit blankets that Ivy’s grandmother would have made. The colors were nearly obscene. Pulled away from the pile, though, it was kind of awesome. This woman suddenly piqued Ivy’s interest.
She watched the woman buzz briskly through the store, drop fifteen dollars at the register for her massive bundle of exquisite but ordinary goods, and head to the next shop. Ivy was living out of her car and spent her time haunting thrift stores and coffee shops. She was looking for something to scream out to her to change her lifestyle, but she didn’t know what it was. Somehow, she imagined this crazy lady with a limp had the answer.
Four books, a box of miscellaneous junk, two lamps, and a Curious George fall-down doll later, and Ivy was hooked. She had to find out what this woman was up to. A resale shop owner? A private collector of junk?
AJ noticed the dark-haired girl stalking her through the stores, and she smirked a little bit. She knew the girl was curious but wasn’t sure why. When AJ got in her car to veer away from the thrift stores and head to the neighborhood estate sales, she saw the girl climb into her own little car and continue to trail her.
AJ took a turn and followed a few estate sale signs. AJ
always checked the newspapers and internet for sales. Lots of people parted with wonderful things for incredible prices at estate sales. When she pulled up to her first stop, she saw the girl was still there, parked a stop sign away.
That first stop turned out to be the jackpot. The woman of the house was moving to a retirement home in Florida and had decided to part with everything in the home she was leaving behind. “It’s already furnished,” she told AJ as she poked around the house. “All these framed paintings are thirty apiece.” AJ looked them over. The frames alone were easily worth a hundred.
“And everything must go?” AJ asked.
“Oh yes, everything.”
“I’ll take ten of the paintings for fifteen each.”
“Done.”
“And the books?”
The woman looked behind her at a full shelf of Easton and Franklin Presses as though she’d forgotten them. There were easily two hundred books there, floor to ceiling. “My husband liked the way they looked around the fireplace.”
AJ could tell they had never been read. “How much for all of them?”
“All?”
“All.”
“Five hundred.”
“I have four fifty cash.”
“Ok. My son will load them for you.”
“Thank you. It’s the Jeep.” AJ sat down on a kitchen chair while she counted out the bills. Her trip was over, but it had been perfectly beautiful. She couldn’t have found a better deal if she had hunted for years, and this she stumbled upon almost by accident.