A Short Walk to the Bookshop Read online

  "Did you...?" He asked, confused.

  She chuckled, twisting the ostentatious ring around her bony finger. "Charles and I renewed our vows. He uh..he got me an upgrade, after all these years. It's a bit much, isn't it?"

  Diedrich shrugged. He didn't know anything about wedding ring fashions. "That's lovely. Good for you two."

  "Yes well.." Her voice trailed off and she brushed her hair over her shoulder. After a moment she tried again. "Are you doing alright? It's impossible to get news about you, you know. No one ever sees you."

  "I'm doing just fine, Sheri. Are you doing alright?" He asked, noticing a slight edge to his voice after the fact and attempting to mask it with a belated smile.

  "We are okay. We miss her every day, sure. But it's okay now."

  "Good," Diedrich said, feeling chilly.

  "It's been twenty years," she said more quietly, her words filling the silent bookshop anyway.

  He knew that. His exhale was answer enough.

  "Are you seeing anyone?" she continued.

  Diedrich cleared his throat again and shifted in his seat. "Are we talking about my mental health or my dating life?"

  She tittered. "Either."

  "Well, no. I'm not seeing anyone."

  "Hm." She said, poorly masking her dissatisfaction with his answer. "Well, Diedrich I hope you know that Charles and I still worry about you, and we're around if you need anything. You know how to reach us."

  "Yes, I do," he said.

  "I only come by to remind you."

  "I know. Thank you," he said, though the reminder was enough to throw off his entire month. Catherine's mother was so pulled together -- professional, even-- in her resort-style outfits and her tasteful makeup. So different from how her daughter had been. And yet, they had many of the same mannerisms. The way Sheri crossed one knee over the other when she sat, the way she tilted her head to one side when she spoke. It was like the memory of a dream.

  "I have an appointment," she apologized, standing up and pulling her purse over her slim shoulder.

  He hoped his smile was a friendly enough goodbye, but when she got to the door he panicked and raised his voice to say goodbye and thank you as she left. She didn't respond and the door shut with a gust of cool wind that rustled the papers on the checkout counter.

  He picked up the garden book and again spread it over his knees, but while he looked at the pages, he wasn't really seeing them anymore. The close encounter with the memory of Catherine had shaken him, and he stared dumbly at the book. He remembered his coffee, assumed it was cold without checking it, and stood up quickly to dump it down the old sink in the tiny bathroom before going through the motions of making a fresh cup.

  When the door bells jingled behind him he swerved his head around to look at the front of the store, his hackles rising. But the female shape silhouetted against the door was markedly more disheveled than Sheri would ever be. Also, the service dog with her was a dead giveaway.

  "Afternoon, Sparrow. Welcome to the bookshop," he called across the small shop

  "Afternoon?" she said, stepping inside with her dog tucked in near her legs. She produced a phone from her back pocket, stared at it for a moment, then put it away.

  "Looking for anything in particular?" he asked, as was his custom.

  "Nope," she said as, apparently, was hers.

  "There's a fresh pot of coffee. Mugs are in the cupboard underneath."

  "Oh, thanks," she said, but her cheeks went red and she didn't make a move towards the coffee. She disappeared into the general fiction section and Diedrich felt a weight lift off of his shoulders. Her timing was perfect. A customer to make a bit of noise to disturb the thickening crust of solitude and uncomfortable memories, but not one who needed any attention, per se. Sparrow was a quiet, welcome presence. He listened to the sound of her climbing on a stool to pull down a high book, and then the softer sound of her sitting down on the floor and opening it up. Knowing then that she'd be settled in for a few minutes at least soothed him even more, and he read an entire paragraph about Himalayan blue poppies without distraction.

  It was half an hour later when she emerged with a small stack of books and inched closer to the coffee. Sensing her shyness he pointedly looked away as she poured herself a cup. He moved even further to one end of the couch so she could sit down, smooshing himself against the arm rest in the process, but trying to make it look natural.

  "You found some books?" He asked, nodding towards the stack on her lap.

  "Mm. I don't know anything about them, I just like the covers and the summaries sound alright." She said with perhaps the hint of a smirk.

  "I judge books by their covers all the time,” he admitted.

  "Do you?"

  Diedrich shrugged. "Sure. Everyone does. It's a perfectly valid strategy. A book's cover says a lot about the story inside."

  She arched a brow and he took it as a challenge, taking up the books from her lap.

  "See, this one is clearly historical fiction. That goes without saying. The close up image of the medieval gown and the woman's hands says it will be heavy on the romantic subplot though."

  "Oh?"

  "Women's hands or dresses being prominent on a cover almost always says romance."

  "You don't say," she said, stifling a laugh.

  "The colors are dark though, and it's a trade paperback rather than Mass Market. So it's going to be sad. This next one..." He slid the top book to the bottom of the stack. "Blue mountain landscape, minimalist typography. This one is high brow. Atmospheric. Depressing. I'm cheating here though because I've read this one."

  "What did you think?"

  "High brow. Atmospheric. Depressing. I loved it." He leaned back against the back of the couch.

  She laughed and seemed to relax in her seat, uncrossing her ankles and resting her hand on her dog's head which had taken up the free real estate on her lap.

  "This last one… Well I can't say anything about it other than it's old. And apparently about the civilization of ancient Macedonia."

  Sparrow nodded.

  "One of these things is not like the other."

  She laughed again and her cheeks went a little pink. "I smelled it and it had to be mine."

  "Oh yeah?" he opened the antique book and flipped through the thick, delightfully decaying and yellowed pages. He looked over the spine of the book and watched her as he sniffed, pleased at how she was smiling.

  "That's lignin. That smell of old books. It's a compound similar to vanilla found in all wood based paper, and when it breaks down it smells sweet."

  "Really?" She asked, gently sliding the book from his hands and bringing it up to her nose, inhaling delicately. "It does smell like vanilla. I never noticed. Lignin, you said?" He nodded. "I think I’ll remember that forever. Thank you."

  Oddly gratified by the statement, Diedrich found himself with nothing to say. Sparrow sipped her coffee and scratched behind Athena's ears.

  "Are you alright?" she asked suddenly. Diedrich's eyes darted up from her hand to her face.

  "Yes, of course. Why do you ask?"

  "It's nothing." She gave a faltering smile and looked askance. "I just thought you looked a little different today."

  "Truthfully, I had a small shock earlier. I'm fine now."

  "A shock?" Her slightly unkempt eyebrows rose in surprise and Diedrich noticed for the first time that she didn't wear makeup at all. There was a very slight dusting of freckles over her nose that wouldn't be noticeable unless looked for.

  "Not an electrical one,” he laughed.

  "Nothing serious, I hope?" She had crossed her legs again.

  "Oh no. No, I'm fine. It was nothing a little company couldn't fix, apparently."

  "The coffee is nice," she said and, as if to punctuate, she swallowed the last of hers. "Where should I...?" She lifted the now emptied mug.

  "Just leave it. I'll take care of it. Are you ready?" He said, nodding towards her books.

  She said yes
and they walked to the front of the store to ring her up.

  "And how much for the coffee?" she asked when he had punched in the prices of the books.

  "Oh. Please. Coffee is always free."

  "Are you sure?"

  "Yes. The coffee isn't for sale, I just like to have it available."

  Still she hesitated, but ultimately seemed to decide that insisting would be worse. "Thank you."

  "Let me know how you like those." He tapped the books before she scooped them up and they said their goodbyes.

  -----

  My stomach lurched. I knew I needed to eat, and if I called my mother for sympathy, the wizened woman would only demand that I eat lunch on the line while she listened. I was alone with my nausea. I sipped the cup of ginger tea I’d made and grimaced at the bitter root. I prayed that the disgusting tea would settle my stomach enough to attempt a sandwich a little later. I spent a few minutes nurturing an anxiety about stomach ulcers.

  I hadn’t slept the night before, and I wanted to go out with Athena and run some errands, maybe visit Diedrich, and generally get out among normal people. It wasn’t a good idea, unfortunately. While a break from the accustomed isolation was more than welcome in theory, I knew that the heart pounding thrill of small talk would only upset my stomach more. Plus, there was a fresh layer of snow on the road, so neither walking nor driving over that large hill would be easy.

  My eyes lighted on the civil war history I’d not started reading yet. My calendar on the fridge had only two entries for March. Mortgage payment due on the first. Book club on the 15th. I figured I would eventually need to actually read the thing. With a sigh, I settled on the couch with my nerves and my book and tried to start reading. My mind instantly revolted against the dry reading assignment. My brain slid off the sentences and I wondered when my attention span had shortened to the length of a four-year-old’s.

  I couldn’t even procrastinate by going on social media and scrolling mindlessly for an hour or three. I wasn’t allowed to have any kind of social media presence anymore. Old habits die hard, though, and I reached for my phone at the end of a page and flicked through my contacts. I could call mom and pretend I was sleeping fine, and eating without issue, just so i could listen to her talk about her day and maybe feel like I was home again.

  Living alone had been a calculated risk. Mom and I both knew that it wouldn’t be easy. I would struggle, and she would have to call me and check in on me often. I had wanted to do it anyway, though. Moving hundreds of miles away would be a clean break, and clean breaks always made me feel better. I still stood by the decision, at least during daylight hours.

  I called mom.

  “Everything alright?” She asked, and I wondered when that had become a standard greeting.

  “Hi, Mom.” I tried to sound chagrined instead of relieved. “I just wanted to say hi and see how your day was.”

  “I can’t be your only friend, Sparrow. I will regale you with the daily drama of the life of a government worker but only if you promise to say hello to at least one person today.”

  “It snowed.”

  “Tomorrow then,” she said, never one to accept excuses for long.

  “I’ll see how the roads are.”

  This she accepted reluctantly, and began her spiel about the vendetta she had against another woman on her floor at work. I think she knew that it didn’t matter much what she said, as long as she just kept talking. I did end up eating a sandwich with her on the line, angling my face away from the phone as I chewed. Even after hanging up, the lunch stayed in my stomach. I felt better, the nausea staying away until nightfall. In the meantime, I made a respectable dent in the assigned reading. For the next few days, it was just me, my anxiety, and the American Civil War.

  Chapter Four

  In mid March, there were three days when the sun shone bright and pretended that winter was over. One of those days was the first meeting of the book club at Chapter One to which I had been formally invited. I could do nothing else all morning in anticipation of the meeting. I went over my notes about the book. I made a mental list of things to say. I considered pretending that I'd forgotten about it completely.

  But I did go.

  The first hour of book club passed with me hardly needing to say a word. I nibbled on crackers and cheese and patted Athena. After an hour they had given up on keeping up an appearance of actually being a book club. Not once did I need to look at the notes I’d made on my phone. They had moved on to talking about anything other than the books, copies of which lay forgotten on the large table which Diedrich had brought out again.

  Richard was talking about a movie he had seen but Stephen was more keen on hearing about the woman he'd seen it with. I was trying to pay attention, but behind me the sun was setting. The lighting in the room was going from the dark orange of late afternoon to the pale blue of twilight, and up here in the mountains, twilight only lasted a few minutes before the world was plunged into forested darkness. With every passing moment the bookshop grew darker and my heart rate increased.

  Three times I opened my mouth to say that I needed to be heading home, but three times the conversation whipped past at its typical breakneck speed, leaving me, silenced, in its wake. Time swept me forward until darkness fell completely and Diedrich had to switch on extra lights. The men kept on talking.

  I knew that walking home in the dark would be hell. Even sitting there in the warm glow of incandescent lighting and friendly conversation, I could feel in my bones exactly how it would feel outside. I fidgeted in my seat, certain that I looked as scared as I felt. No one seemed to notice except Athena, who sidled closer to me.

  Now that I was past the point of no return in terms of the sunset, I managed my stress by throwing myself with reckless abandon into the conversations. Anything to keep myself from thinking about the dread building in my stomach, making me feel like I may lose my dinner.

  The men welcomed me into the conversation as if I had been involved in it all along.

  As Stephen stood to leave, the dread in my stomach got deeper and deeper. I didn't want the loud, hearty talking to come to an end. I didn't want the quiet and shadows to press in.

  Richard lingered a bit, thankfully, chatting with me about how I liked the club and how I was settling in to West Bend. He stood up to help clear the chairs, but a sudden phone call drove him out into the night with little more than a nod and a wave to Diedrich and me.

  I looked pointedly around at the store. There were still chairs out of place and things to be put away.

  "They left without straightening up..." I said blankly.

  "Last one out does the cleanup. I'm not surprised they left without telling you that pertinent tidbit of information," Diedrich said, gathering paper plates.

  "Boys. Do they ever grow up?" I asked, making my voice more casual than I felt.

  "You don't have to stay," he said. I followed him anyway, folding chair in hand, to the back room.

  "It's no problem." How could I tell him that I was terrified of walking home alone and my only plan was to put off the inevitable for as long as possible? "But you know, there's plenty of room here, why do you bother moving the table back and forth? You could just leave it out."

  Diedrich straightened up and looked at the layout of the back end of the shop as if seeing it for the first time. "Oh."

  I had to chuckle at the deadpan way he said it. "Since you do the thing with the coffee. People might stay a bit longer with more seating. And it's less work for you."

  "That's a good point. I hadn't considered. Maybe I will give it a try. I’ll need nicer chairs."

  He must have noticed me glancing anxiously at the darkened windows. He scratched the back of his neck and shifted his weight.

  "You brought a coat, didn't you?" He asked. “I notice you typically walk here.”

  "It was sunny when I came." I replied, rather weakly.

  "How far away do you live?"

  "The green house on the other side
of the hill. I just walked." Please offer to take me home. Please offer to take me home. Chivalry, man.

  "Beverly Anderson's house?" He asked, bushy eyebrows raising.

  "She was my grandma."

  Diedrich's face cracked into an unusually wide smile. "I can't believe I didn't see it until now. Yes, you look like her. She used to come here often. In her last few months I brought books to her house."