As she walked toward the dog spa, Jared and I made our way back to my store, silently choosing not to discuss what had just happened. As Annette had said, it was all a little too much to make sense of at the moment.
Inside All Booked Up, things were steady, and Marcus was talking with a young girl about his deep affection for the Captain Underpants books. She seemed delighted by the idea of a villain named Professor Poopy Pants, and I was pleased to see that her mother, although slightly disgusted, didn’t object when the young girl said she wanted to get the first two in the series. I expected they’d both end up loving them.
Our newest college student hire was working the register, and things seemed to be well under control. Since I wasn’t allowed to work today, I had an idea of what else we could do. “Do you want to sit in here and look at books and magazines with me like we’re customers?” I asked Jared.
He looked over and smiled. “I love that idea. I’ll get us two decaf lattes, and you find the spot?”
“Deal,” I said and headed right to the place I imagined myself reading when I had a chance to daydream a bit. The two wingback chairs next to the fiction section were some of my favorites, and when I rounded the corner and saw them, I was thrilled to find them empty. I quickly laid my scarf on one of them in the universal symbol for “reserved” and went to grab a few magazines I knew Jared and I would like. This felt like such a treat.
One of the ways I had survived some pretty dark days in my life was by going to a local bookstore, grabbing a stack of magazines and books, and sipping a latte while I perused them. I hadn’t always had the money to buy, and while I could have browsed—and often did—at the library, there was just something about being out amongst people and their store energy that lifted my spirits a bit. Throw in a latte, and I was in heaven.
So when I opened my own store, I’d committed to allowing my customers that same privilege, encouraging it even with the comfy chairs and little signs that mentioned that browsing was excellent. Sure, a book got damaged with a coffee ring or a torn page sometimes, but I didn’t mind that. Books were objects that were both frail and rugged and were meant to be used. So what if they got used before they were paid for? I was confident that the atmosphere of the store encouraged people to buy a great deal more than they would if they had to treat the books like museum objects until they’d paid. Those sales more than made up for damages.
And here I was, a copy of Southern Cottage in my lap and my feet on a stool. I could hear the shoppers talking about books, and the scent of coffee from Rocky’s café filled the air. It was lovely, and for the first time, I was just in the midst of it as another reader instead of the owner. Delightful.
When Jared joined me, he picked up Fine Woodworking and began to read. I’d learned my fiancé was not much of a browser about anything. If he was going to give his time to something, he was going to do it with intention. I wasn’t that way myself, but I admired the trait in him. As I watched him read for a few seconds, I wondered what delightful projects might adorn our home soon and felt the tingle of excitement about our life together zip through me again.
A few minutes later, when I was deep into studying the photos of a delightful cottage garden with stepping stones surrounded by moss, someone said my name. I looked up to see Toggle there, her arms full of art books.
“Sorry to bother you,” she said brightly. “I just wanted to say hi.”
I smiled at the artist, even as a pit of concern formed in my stomach. “Hi, Toggle. How are you?”
She sighed. “I’m okay. You know, it’s been a hard week here in town.” She looked out the front window. “But this impromptu fair is fun. I even picked up a cooler so I can put it on my fire escape in case the cats need it.”
“Oh, you live downtown?” I asked, feeling Jared shift just slightly in his chair. He knew what I was doing, and he didn’t love it.
“Oh yeah, just a couple doors down. Max rents me the apartment of Chez Cuisine.” She smiled. “The smells that come up the stairway are so good.”
I smiled. She wasn’t wrong. Max, the restaurant’s owner, and I had an interesting history, to say the least, but despite his sometimes gruff demeanor, he had a good heart. I’d noticed that today, he’d actually cooked up fresh fish and chicken to put in the bowls outside his place—no canned food there.
“How cool,” I said, even as I wondered why I hadn’t known she lived there before today. “Well, we’re neighbors then,” I said.
She smiled. “We are.” Her face grew more serious as she turned to Jared. “Sargent, do you have any more leads on who killed Penelope?”
Jared looked up as if he was slightly startled to be pulled into the conversation. He was a lot of things, but a good actor, he was not. Still, Toggle didn’t seem to notice. “Um, oh no, nothing I can share, I’m afraid.” He gave her a small smile and then looked back down at his magazine. He knew how to close a conversation, that was for sure.
Toggle turned back to me, a furrow between her brows. “Well, I’m sure the person responsible will be found,” she said. “Anyway, I just wanted to say hi.” She waved with one hand below her stack of books and headed toward the café.
As soon as she was out of earshot, I said, “So, we’re pretty sure she came over just to ask you that question, right?”
“Probably,” Jared said, “but way to go, Magnum, on getting the dirt on her residence.”
I rolled my eyes. “Please, I do not have a Ferrari or a mustache. I’m much more of a Columbo.”
“People do underestimate you,” he said as he leaned over and gave me a peck on the cheek. “I’m glad I’m past your bumbling ruse.”
“Me, too,” I said and settled back to read some more.
A few minutes later, the crew from the street fair came in, and Jared and I joined them over in the café after leaving our magazines and books on the library cart for someone to reshelve. “I want the full customer experience,” I told Jared when he said he’d be happy to put them back.
Everyone was buzzing with energy when we sat down in the circle Dad had made from Rocky’s chairs. Mom stood to debrief everyone. I looked over at Lu, and she just winked. Sometimes, the best thing to do when my mother was involved was to have no ego about your work. Clearly, Lu understood.
“Thank you, everyone, for all your hard work today.” She glanced over at Lu. “And a special thanks to Lu Mason, our fearless leader.”
Lu gave her a nod and shot me another wink. Apparently, my mother also did not understand situational irony.
“I have not done the formal tally, but my quick count says we raised just over $1000 to support the St. Marin’s Cat Colony.”
“Oh, it has a name now,” Henri said from her seat by her husband. “Fancy!”
“Well, we had to call it something,” Pickle added. “Money for strays just doesn’t have the same ring to it.”
The group chuckled before Mom continued. “And that, of course, doesn’t include the donations that will come in from the shop owners. I expect we may double that total.”
Mart led us all in a small round of applause. “And how did the food and cooler donations go?”
Bear smiled. “Very good. We got over forty coolers and have already given most of them out to residents.” He turned to me. “If it’s okay with you, Harvey, we told people they could get a cooler here over the weekend if they wanted one.”
“Totally fine,” I said. “I’ll let everyone know.”
“And we have about two hundred cans and twenty-five bags of cat food. You should be set for a couple of months, Sheriff,” Pickle added.
Tuck smiled. “Excellent. Thank you all.” He turned to Jared. “You don’t mind if we store all of that in your office, do you?”
Another round of laughter passed through the room. “Actually,” Cate said. “I was going to offer to keep the cat food at the co-op and make it a permanent display in the lobby to encourage people to keep donating. Sort of like activist art,” she said with a smile.
“Even better,” Jared said loudly and received a chuckle for his quick response to defending his territory. “And maybe you can keep the coolers there, too? That way, people can keep donating, and you can keep distributing. If you don’t mind, Harvey?”
“Not at all. Why don’t we keep a couple here so that people can get them if they come this weekend, but send the rest with Cate for her installation,” I added, happy not to have even more stuff in our back room. “And maybe Marcus can do a display in one of our windows, using a bit of the food and a cooler to help with the continuing donation drive?”
“Good idea,” Mom agreed. “I’ll get the nonprofit status set up ASAP.”
I looked at Lu again, and this time, she just rolled her eyes. Of course, Mom would do that. Of course she would, Lu’s face seemed to say, but not with any vitriol.
“Alrighty then,” Mom said. “I think that concludes our business. If you could all help us tote coolers and food, that would be great. Then, go home to rest up, everyone. Our festivities start in earnest tomorrow.”
“I thought they started yesterday with the shower,” Lucas said into my ear as he passed, a witty but wise man not saying that to my mother.
I bumped him with my elbow and began putting the chairs back.
“Um, no,” Elle said as she literally tugged a seat from my hands. “No work. None. Go home. Rest.”
With a shake of my head, I thanked her. Then Jared and I waved to Marcus, hooked the two pooches to their leashes, and slipped out the back door to his truck. I had to admit, it felt kind of good to leave everything to everyone else for a change. “Let’s go home and eat popcorn and watch something stupid,” I said after we’d lifted the basset and the hound, who feigned inability to jump because her brother did, into the back seat.
“You read my mind.” He started up the truck and drove us home.
The next morning, after watering all the potted plants to be sure they were healthy for tomorrow but that we didn’t have puddles all over the porch and patio for the ceremony, I installed myself back in my reading chair and finished Pan’s beautiful but sad book. I suppose I could have chosen something super light and fun for the weekend of my wedding, but I found more serious literary books helped focus my mind when life threatened to be stressful. Pan’s work certainly did that. I was going to be recommending it to everyone.
Jared had gone for a run—an activity I would never understand—and now that he was home and showered, we needed to get prepped for the rehearsal dinner. Max had offered to host it at Chez Cuisine, and Jared’s parents had been delighted with the idea. Despite the fact we were in our forties and this was my second marriage, all the parental units had insisted on keeping the traditional roles in terms of payment—so the Watsons were covering the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner, and my parents were paying for the wedding. Jared and I had tried to take those expenses on ourselves, but we lost that fight early on.
And their desire to pay came with a desire to manage the details themselves, as was reasonable. We’d told them our preferences in terms of Max’s menu—“So much mushroom risotto,” I’d insisted—and we stressed that we wanted everything to be fun and casual. Mom had balked a bit at the fact that we’d included “Dogs and children welcome” on our invitations because she was worried it would be disruptive. Then Jared pointed out that disruptive was kind of the point. She didn’t like it, but she gave us that one.
The one thing she wouldn’t give up, though, was the desire to have the rehearsal in midafternoon so that we could “test the light” for photos with the same sort of daylight we’d have at the three o’clock ceremony the following afternoon. No amount of suggesting weather interventions or work schedules would budge her from this stance, so on this one, we caved and had to prep the house for everyone to arrive at 2 p.m. “You must have time to get everyone in place,” Mom had said when she’d insisted everyone come an hour early.
Jared and I decided to make the most of that hour when we had lots of help and asked people to assist in getting the backyard set for the ceremony. This request then prompted Mart to suggest everyone come at noon and that she and Symeon would provide lunch. So now, at 10 a.m. on the day before our wedding, we were hosting a party for thirty-five or so people in our own home. I would definitely have been completely stressed out by that fact twenty years ago, and that stress would have made me resentful of the work I had to do.
But now, with more wisdom and financial means, I had found my way around the stress and the resentment—I had hired cleaners and insisted that Mart have the lunch catered. We were not going to be making deli trays and vacuuming this weekend. Nope, the cleaning team who kept up my store so beautifully had been gracious enough to let me hire them to come and make the house shine. And at 11:30, sandwich trays from our local gas station’s deli—which everyone knew had the best sandwiches around—would arrive, along with drinks, chips, and their special cookies. As best I could help it, no one, including my mother, was going to be stressed out this weekend.
For the time before everyone came, Jared and I readied our boxes with our gifts for our wedding party and put them in his truck. Then we laid out outfits for the four of us—Mayhem was wearing a pink scarf this evening, and Taco had wedding antlers to sport. And we were ready with an hour to spare.
“Let’s walk in the garden and enjoy it before it becomes a stage,” Jared said.
“I love that plan.” I slipped on the rubber gardening shoes Jared had gifted me for my birthday and headed outside. The air was cool, but the sun was rapidly warming the air. It was going to be a perfect afternoon, and the forecast for tomorrow was perfect. I never counted the weather chickens this close to the water, but it looked like everything would be ideal for an outdoor wedding.
And the garden, of course, looked stupendous. Jared had been cultivating this garden for years now, and it showed. The plants were mature and mostly perennials. We’d added a few impatiens and begonias for color, and since we’d been very attentive with cover cloth after we put the begonias in early, they were filled out and blooming with reds, oranges, and peaches.
We’d decided early on that our color for the wedding would be green, and because there are so many greens in any garden, we just went with various shades. Mom acquiesced after a small conniption fit, and I was so excited to see what the women in my party chose for their dresses since we had also let them choose the style they wore. We were well past the delusion that a traditional bridesmaid dress would be re-worn, so I told them to pick a green dress they loved and gave them each money to do so.
While I was ankle-deep in the pachysandra, hunting down rogue bits of ground ivy and clover, Jared’s phone rang. He answered, and his tone quickly went from relaxed to police. “I’ll be there in five minutes.”
I stood up with a handful of ivy in my hand. “Something happen?”
He nodded. “I have to go, Harvey,” he said as he took long strides toward me. “I’m sorry.” He gave me a soft kiss. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
I waved the ivy at him. “As long as you’re back by the time Mom starts the rehearsal. I can cover for you until then, but there’s no hope if you mess up Mom’s plans.” I tried to keep my tone light because I knew this was part of law enforcement life, and I knew Jared felt guilty about it.
But as soon as he left the yard, I sat down in the grass and let myself be very sad for a long minute. It was the day before our wedding, and my fiancé had just left me without explanation. Rational me understood. The part of me that had been deprioritized in a profound way earlier in my life was devastated and terrified.
Eventually, though, I got up, finished weeding the areas that needed it the most, and headed back inside to shower and get ready for my guests. But first, I texted Mart and let her know that Jared had been called away by work.