A Short Walk to the Bookshop Read online

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Acknowledgements

  A SHORT WALK

  to the

  BOOKSHOP

  a novel

  Published by

  Aleksandra Drake

  Copyright © Aleksandra Drake

  A Short Walk to the Bookshop / Aleksandra Drake

  ISBN: 978-1-7335720-0-2

  No part of this work may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except for brief quotations for review purposes. This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real characters, places, or events is purely coincidental.

  Cover design by: Kira DeSomma

  www.facebook.com/AlekDrakeAuthor/

  Chapter One

  I fell in love with pine trees one Tuesday morning in late February. My new house was surrounded by them and the air was always scented with their pungent sap and the sickly sweetness of rotting pine needles on the ground.

  The trees were almost silent. They whistled sometimes, when there was wind, but there was none of the clamoring and clapping of a million leaves like with aspens. Aspens are loud trees. Chatterboxes and gossips with their network of connected roots. Pines are secret keepers, and they don't offer advice, not even if you ask them.

  I was standing on the run down back porch looking out at the wall of cedars that lined the back of my late-grandma’s small property. It was midday, and the sun was shining, at least intermittently, but the woods around the house were still flecked with inky black spaces between the trees. I was shivering with cold, but my hands were wrapped around an oversized green mug with a chip in the rim. It was one of the first things I had unpacked, along with the coffee maker that now stood solitary on the empty counter. It would be a long day.

  With cedar in my lungs, I pushed the sliding glass door aside.

  "Come on, Athena." I called gently, my voice ragged with disuse. The border collie poked her head out from behind a bush and bounded after me, rushing into the echoing house before me.

  By nightfall, I had the furniture more or less where I wanted it to be, and the bookcases stocked. Somewhere along the way, I had managed to lose the garbage bag I had stuffed with bedding, so I had throw blankets and couch pillows piled on the bed. After sleeping in a uhaul for two nights, I didn't mind it. I threw myself onto it, sending the blankets into puddles around my body, then settled in to call mom.

  "For Christ's sake, Sparrow. I've been trying to get a hold of you all day. You had me scared to death."

  "Sorry, Mom. I didn't get here until noon and I was in a rush to get settled before night fell. I'm calling now, anyway." The worry in my mother's voice was comforting. The truth was, I'd noticed that she had texted me a couple times and left a message, but ignored it. The house was so pristine and quiet. I didn't even put on music all day long. The sounds of barefoot steps and cardboard boxes scratching across linoleum floors had been the only things to break the silence and I had been enjoying the quiet.

  Speaking out loud on the phone now seemed vulgar, somehow.

  "How’s the house?" My mother asked. I could hear kitchen sounds in the background and her voice sounded a little strained. I could imagine her pinching her smartphone to her ear with her shoulder. It was a learned behavior from a decade ago when phones hadn't been so flat that she had never unlearned.

  "Are you making coffee?" I asked.

  She laughed. "Caffeine means nothing to me. You know this. How’s the house? Avoiding the question makes me think it's not good news."

  "It's fine," I said, my eyes lingering on the cobwebs in the ceiling corners.

  "Fine?"

  "A little bit bigger than I remember, I think. I like it. Anyway, I'm really tired. I'm going to go to sleep." I rolled over onto my side, reaching over the side of the bed to where Athena was. I rubbed the backs of my fingers over the soft fur along the ridge of her nose.

  "Alright," Mom answered. "Hey, the first night in a new place, especially when you're on your own, can be a little creepy. But you'll get used to it soon enough."

  "I know. Goodnight, Mom."

  "Goodnight, Sparrow."

  I tucked my phone under the decorative pillow and pulled the fuzzy throw blanket up over my shoulders. The heater had kicked on, filling the house with the smell of burning dust, but it still felt cold. The window across the room had no blinds, and I hadn't thought to buy curtains. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up on end as I stared out at the blackness beyond.

  In the morning, my eyelids creaked. I didn't know how many hours or minutes I had been asleep, but I was certain that the image of that black window square would be seared onto my memory forever. I watched as the barren bedroom went from blue-black to gray to yellow as the pre-dawn turned into day. With gratitude, I threw the blanket off of me. I listened to the gentle tapping of Athena's claws on the floors as I zombie-walked to the kitchen and flipped on the coffee maker and the lights, in that order. The light fixture above the sink was dusty and the light filtered through it was such a sickly yellow color that I almost turned it back off.

  "I have to go to the store today." I said to Athena, who tilted her head at me and waited for me to feed her. "I need curtains. And milk. Should we walk?"

  She crouched down low to the ground in excitement, looking more like the sheepdog she was than usual.

  I didn’t notice the snow until I went outside. The snowflakes were small and many, not very fluffy and very wet. I pulled my hood over my brow, but the dampness had crept under the collar of my hoodie within moments of stepping outside.

  "Athena, heel," I called. She gave up her investigation of the thick, wet foliage that lined the road and fell in line right next to me. She kept a wary eye ahead and behind us, and when I felt the familiar creeping panic started climbing up my spine, I stooped down slightly and touched Athena's head. She looked up and licked my hand comfortingly.

  Town wasn't far away, but the walk took longer than I anticipated. My socks were wet. I had wanted to walk because I wanted to assure myself that I still could. The long road trip by myself had been harder on my body than expected, and my legs still ached. I thought the exercise might make it easier to fall asleep that night. But as I squelched up the steep hill at the end of the street, even though I knew that the little market was just around the bend, I promised myself that I would just drive next time.

  As I approached the store, Athena tucked in closer to my legs. I made eye contact with the blonde woman at the register as I entered. The woman smiled.

  Milk. Bread. Peanut butter. Curtains. I repeated the list like a mantra as I walked through the aisles. I kept my head down as I walked, feeling conspicuously “new in town.” They didn’t carry curtains at the small market so I would have to improvise with a tablecloth. With a plastic bag and Athena's lead in one hand, and a cold gallon of milk in the other, I stepped out from the artificial brightness of the market and back into the damp street.

  As I was starting to walk back in the direction of home, a blue pickup drove
past me going in the opposite direction. My heart sped up and instinctively my eyes met the driver's. He had long hair held against his neck with a greasy baseball cap, and I didn't know him. I watched as he passed. When he was gone, my eyes alighted upon a blessed sight. There, across the street, nestled between a consignment shop and a dog grooming salon, was a bookshop.

  The sign, with its peeling green paint, hung over a bay window. Chapter One Bookshop. There was no display in the window. It only served to give a glimpse into the crowded but orderly shop within.

  I waited as another vehicle passed, then crossed the street without giving myself time to talk myself out of it. A bundle of Christmas bells on the door handle was out of season, but got the job done, announcing our presence to an older man who poked his head out from between rows of bookcases. For a flash of a second he looked confused, but then he smiled.

  "Welcome to the bookstore,” he said."Looking for anything in particular?

  I shook my head, trying to smile.

  "I'll leave you to it, then." He answered, disappearing from sight as suddenly as he had appeared.

  I left my gallon of milk by the register and told Athena to wait by the door before wandering aimlessly through the little shop. The dry dustiness of slowly decaying paper was a welcome respite from the permeating dampness outside. The bookcases were a uniform dark wood and they stretched all the way up to the ceiling, giving the space an almost claustrophobic feeling that was not entirely unpleasant. Mismatched stools were left here and there around the place for reaching the top shelves. There was no sound at all save for my own muffled footfalls on the worn carpet and the soft rustling sounds of the man working a few aisles down. I avoided him.

  The shop was well stocked for the most part. General fiction dominated, with history a close second. There was hardly a romance to speak of, however. And the children's section was mainly antique editions of classics like Peter Pan and Robinson Crusoe. Books that I could hardly imagine putting in the grubby, enthusiastic hands of a child.

  I didn't stay long. My jug of milk was warming on the counter. But I counted the discovery of the bookstore a win. I felt more at home in the town knowing it was there.

  "Thank you," I said into the quiet, retrieving my milk and dog.

  The man reappeared. "Thank you for stopping in."

  "I'll be back." I answered him. I lifted my shopping bag by way of explanation.

  "I'll see you then," he smiled.

  The walk home was faster and less nerve wracking than the walk into town, but I still breathed a sigh of relief when the house came into view. It was a dark little place, and the yard was overrun with weeds, ivy, and a multitude of slugs, but it was mine. It was hidden. It was safe.

  I unlocked the door and Athena ran in first, trotting into all the rooms and flipping the lights on with her nose. I followed after her, poking my head into each room before heading to the kitchen to put my things away.

  -----

  Diedrich couldn't stop thinking about mold. Why he had ever thought that it would be a good idea to open a book shop in a town that was walled in on all sides by the wet Washington forest, was beyond him now. The climate was anything but hospitable to mountains of old paper housed in an old, leaky building.

  The new face at the door was a good distraction for a time. New customers were uncommon enough to be noteworthy and, at least when she walked in, he wasn't thinking about mold anymore. No, then he was thinking about whether or not the whole place smelled like the currywurst he had heated up and eaten for lunch twenty minutes prior to her arrival. He couldn't smell it, but that didn't mean she couldn't. Would she be likely to patronize a bookshop that smelled like food, thus failing to deliver on the used bookstore promise of comforting old paper smells?

  The newcomer had brought a dog and a gallon of milk with her. Strange things to bring into a bookstore. But the dog was wearing a medical harness and she left the milk on the counter, so there was no reason to comment on it.

  She had disappeared into the quiet, making her way methodically through the aisles rather than making a bee line to any one section. She'd avoided the aisle he was in, which was fine, and he tried to ignore her as fastidiously as she ignored him.

  He was just about finished re-alphabetizing true-crime when Richard Olsen strolled in. The man didn't quite need to duck his head to get in the door, but it was close. His voice made up for the last few inches between the top of his head and the door frame.

  "It stinks like sausage in here!" he declared, slapping a shopping bag full of paperbacks on puddle of condensation where the girl’s milk had been.

  "Does it really?" Diedrich thought about the milk girl and her promise to be back.

  "Yeah. It reeks. I mean, it smells good, but it reeks. Is that from upstairs?

  "Microwave." Diedrich re-shelved the last misplaced book on that shelf and went behind the counter to tally up the store credit Richard could get for his bag of books.

  If she was on foot, and carrying groceries, it stood to reason that she lived nearby. Her interest in books was apparent by her promise to return and the methodical way she browsed the shelves. If she lived close by, and she liked books, but he had never seen her before (which he was reasonably sure he had not) she must be a newcomer to West Bend.

  "Ten dollars." Diedrich announced.

  "That all?"

  Diedrich shrugged. "Bills to pay."

  "I hear ya, brother," Richard said as he was wandering away in the direction of the thrillers.

  Richard was one of his most prolific readers, often going through whole stacks of mysteries in a week. It would be better for Diedrich if Richard was not also such a minimalist. The man, to preserve his aesthetic, brought books back to the store to sell them for credit almost as quickly as he bought them.

  He wondered what kind of reader the milk girl was. She looked of an age to be devouring black-covered Young Adult paranormal romances or dystopians about gangs of plucky teens saving the world. If she was, he would have to tell her about his book ordering policy, because he didn't keep much of that genre on hand. He knew his normal clientele.

  When Richard had gathered another armload of paperbacks and left, Diedrich settled in for the long wait between customers on that quiet Tuesday

  -----

  When I woke up, it was dark, but I had the feeling it had recently been less dark. Like a light had just been flipped off. My stomach turned and the pins and needles at the back of my neck came back. Without moving my head, I looked for Athena in the darkness. I heard her before I saw her. She was the gently snoring black mass near my bedroom door. That she was still sleeping soundly was meant to be a comfort to me.

  I am alone. I am safe. Nothing is happening.

  I repeated the old affirmations. Then I remembered hearing a sermon against the "vain repetitions" of the Catholics and, for some reason, the term got stuck in my head until my inner monologue sounded like "I'm alone. Vain repetitions. I'm fine. Vain petitions." And on and on.

  It would not do. In the mirror opposite me, above my dresser, I could see the reflection of the gap in my makeshift curtains through which the moonlight was streaming. I stared at the reflection of that gap until the urge to flee became so strong that my pulse was like a hurricane pounding in my ears. I saw a flicker of movement and in a flurry of motion I bolted upright and yanked the curtain closed with such force that Athena startled awake with a yelp.

  Her nails tapped on the floor as she followed me around the house. I half-ran to the door, unlocking and re-locking it. My skin crawled with the overwhelming urge to run as I went clockwise through every room, checking every window and door. My heart stopped every time I pushed a curtain aside to check a window lock, certain that there would be a sinister face looking in at me.

  When I was done, I still couldn’t sit down. I could taste the adrenaline, coppery and hot, as it coursed back and forth through my system with no outlet. I paced from the stove to the TV, my eyes darting from window to wind
ow, then training on the doorknob.

  Two times the handle turned, so slightly that I could have been imagining it. But no, it definitely moved. The trouble was that Athena didn’t notice it. With no corroborating evidence I was left to wonder if I was going insane. Again.

  I forced myself to sit on the couch, shaking the nervous energy from my hands. Athena sat next to me and rested her chin on my lap, looking up at me and pleading for me to pet her. It was supposed to calm me down, but sometimes forcing myself to do the things that I knew were meant to help me was the hardest thing. The panic in my throat was beginning its gradual descent into despair and tears pricked at my eyes.

  "Why am I still like this?" I asked the Athena, beginning the familiar routine of self pity again.

  She looked up at me, as if she would answer.

  I promised myself that I would call mom in the morning, tell her I wasn't ready to live alone after all, and have her drive up and collect me like the one girl at summer camp who gets too homesick after a week and goes back home.