The Stonefield Fire Department would like to remind everybody that permits are required for all burning on your property, including campfire rings. And using Photoshop to change the dates on last year’s permits won’t work because they keep records. The chief’s official comment was “we weren’t born last night.” You can find their office hours on the town’s website.
—Stonefield Gazette Facebook Page
“So what is Old Home Day all about, anyway?”
Molly laughed, until she realized Callan was serious. They were sitting in the café, though not at her favorite table because Daphne and a prospective client had beat them there. They’d even met up in front of her house earlier than usual so they could take their time having coffee together before he opened the library and she went with her father to clean several of the old granite headstones in the cemetery.
It was one of the many side hustles her parents engaged in because not enough people died in Stonefield and the surrounding towns each year to support the funeral home. That was good, of course, but it also meant jobs on the side. Amanda wrote articles for trade publications and when things were particularly slow, she sometimes picked up serving hours at a fancy restaurant her friend owned in the city.
“I’m serious,” Callan insisted. “I think Mrs. Denning spent more time lecturing me about Old Home Day than she did anything else.”
“It’s very important.”
“It’s a used book sale.”
She shook her head. “It’s not only a library fundraiser. Old Home Day is when we get a parade and kettle corn and we get to buy lots of used books. A lot of people look forward to the sale all year.”
“I do like kettle corn.”
“Who doesn’t?” Molly took a sip of her coffee. “I guess like over a hundred years ago or whatever, young people were moving away from small towns looking for work or fun and stuff. So somebody who was presumably in charge of something made a holiday that was to encourage the people who moved away to return to their hometowns for a day of celebration.”
“There’s a lot of missing information in that sentence, but I get the gist. Do a lot of people who’ve moved away from Stonefield come back for the day?”
She laughed. “Not really. The ones who do come back to visit usually do the Fourth of July or Labor Day so they have a long weekend.”
“It’ll be a workday for me, I guess. I haven’t really had time to find a high schooler willing to volunteer as a page until I can push a wage for them through the budget committee.”
“Yeah, Mrs. Denning had trouble keeping volunteers. Maybe because she didn’t really like teenagers. Or kids. Or most adults, really. We’ll be able to watch the parade together, though.”
As soon as she said the words, she realized making plans for them as a couple that far out probably wasn’t a good idea. But Old Home Day was only a couple of weeks after Gwen’s wedding. Even if they’d done the breaking up part of the deal by then, they could still watch a parade together. They’d probably still be friends.
“I brought your coffee to go,” Chelsea said, appearing at Molly’s side with a very large to-go cup for Callan. “I put it on your tab.”
“You get a tab?” Molly asked. “Chelsea, you barely even know him!”
“Hey!” Callan protested with mock outrage.
“Oh, so you can date him, but I can’t extend him credit?” Chelsea said.
“I’m your friend and I don’t have a tab,” Molly pointed out.
“You have very expensive taste in caffeine. Callan doesn’t and rather than go through the system for each small transaction, it’s easier to run it once a week.”
Once Chelsea walked away, Molly gave Callan the sternest look she could muster. “You’re not allowed to have that in the library.”
His laughter turned heads, and she couldn’t help but laugh with him. She still couldn’t believe she thought he didn’t have a sense of humor when they first met. He did, and it complemented hers rather nicely.
“I don’t take my coffee around the books,” he said. “It stays in my office.”
“So I can bring my drink in and put it in your office and then when I’m looking at books, I can just pop in every time I want a sip.”
“You’re not authorized personnel. Sorry. Do you have time to walk with me to the library?” he asked, and she looked at her phone.
She did, though she couldn’t stay very long. Not only did he have work to do, but her dad would be waiting for her. It wasn’t as though there was a scheduled time to clean the gravestones, but her dad liked to tackle the big jobs early in the day. And even though they couldn’t technically be late if there wasn’t an appointment, he’d probably still lecture her on her “utter lack of respect for the concept of time.”
“Sure,” she said, and the smile he gave her in response was genuine.
As he threw away their garbage and she gave Chelsea a goodbye wave as she served a customer, Molly couldn’t help the warmth of pleasure that seeped through her.
The coffee date had been plenty to satisfy the town’s curiosity about them. And maybe her walking him to work would add a little extra oomph, but she could tell by the way he’d looked at her that there was more to it than that.
Callan Avery actually enjoyed her company.
He let them in the back door of the library, mostly because the lockset was newer and the keys for the front doors tended to stick. After flipping on just the light over the circulation desk, he prepared himself to broach the topic he’d been thinking about a lot lately.
How to end their relationship.
But Molly had already wandered off and was looking around the stacks. “There seem to be a lot of empty spaces on the shelves. Did Mrs. Denning not tell you that when people return their books, you’re supposed to reshelve them?”
He chuckled, the cheeky look she gave him taking any insult out of her words. “I’ve started weeding the collection, so I think it’s going to be a banner used book sale this year.”
“You might need more quilts.”
He sighed, remembering how insistent Mrs. Denning was that the residents of Stonefield expected the used books to be displayed face-up on quilts across the library lawn. It made for an inviting display, and nobody liked to look at the spines in boxes. It was the covers that drew people in. Since he was new, he was going to try it her way this year rather than inflict too many changes on the town, but if he came up with a better way, he’d try that next year.
Assuming this charade didn’t blow up in his face and drive him out of town on a wave of humiliation, of course.
“She wasn’t really clear on what to do with books left over, though,” he said. “Will recycling take them?”
“Throwing away books is very sad, Callan.” She wandered back to the circulation desk, where he was sorting through the notes he’d left himself before locking up last night.
“Nobody hates it more than I do, Molly, but if a book is so past its prime it’s weeded out of a library’s collection and then it goes unwanted at a fundraising used book sale, it’s time for it to be recycled into paper or to-go coffee cups or something.”
Her eyes lit up at the mention of coffee. “Oh, now I’ll be wondering if my coffee cups used to be books. Maybe a passionate romance novel or a science fiction adventure.”
“Or a book on how to invest in the stock market from 1986,” he said, and she groaned. “You don’t find many unwanted romance novels.”
“Yes, but—oh!” She slapped his arm. “Didn’t Mrs. Denning tell you about Flea Market Guy?”
“Um, no? I assume that’s his job and not his name, though.”
“I can never remember his name. Anyway, Flea Market Guy will probably show up right before the book sale ends and he’ll give you a lowball offer for whatever books are left.”
“And did Mrs. Denning usually accept Flea Market Guy’s lowball offer?”
“Of course. What else would she do with the books? And a few dollars is better than no dollars.”
“That solves that problem,” he said. “But I don’t—”
“Wait. I almost forgot. Make sure you keep your eye on Flea Market Guy when he’s loading up the books, though. Mrs. Denning caught him with one of the quilts once and he said it was an accident, but those are a lot more valuable than a 1986 stock market guide in a flea market.” She grinned. “Unless you’re a time traveler. Maybe if you could go back in time, you’d want to invest in some of the super-valuable companies from our time, but if you’re from now, you might not know how the stock market worked back then. You could read that book and go back in time and then become like a mega-billionaire.”
He really loved the way her mind worked. “Maybe I should set it aside, then.”
“You should see if there’s a book on how to build a time machine and bundle them together for a big price.”
“Or take them home and learn how to become a mega-billionaire myself,” he pointed out and he was rewarded with one of her joyful laughs.
“I’d tell you take me with you, but I’d probably get distracted and hit the dials and we’d end up in 1886 instead and I’d have to wear a corset.”
“Worth it to be rich, though, right?”
She thought about it for a few seconds. “I think if you tried to invest in Apple in 1886, you’d just end up with an orchard.”
“Good point.” He shook his head, finding it hard to believe he was enjoying talking about investments and time travel. “On a more serious note, I have to unlock the doors in a few minutes, but I’ve been thinking about this arrangement of ours.”
He was surprised when she scowled and crossed her arms in front of her chest. “I hope you don’t think a few trips to the Perkin’ Up Café and cheeseburgers at the diner will be enough. You’re supposed to be my plus-one at Gwen and Case’s wedding, remember?”
Her temper rose almost as quickly as her excitement levels, but strangely, she was quieter when she was mad than when she was happy. She had a very expressive face, though. “Of course I remember. I wasn’t talking about ending it right now.”
“Oh.” Her arms fell to her sides and her face brightened. “So what about it?”
“We should have an idea of when we’re going to have our breakup. Just so we’re on the same page and all that.” And having a calendar date to keep his eye on would help keep him focused on the pretense and not on his relationship with Molly. He hoped.
“Not really a go-with-the-flow kind of guy, huh?” she teased.
“No, I’m very much not that guy.”
“Okay, so after Gwen’s wedding.”
“But not right after,” he said. “Weddings are pretty joyous occasions, so we should let that ride for a while. Like, at least a week.”
“A whole week of joy?” She laughed. “Okay, but breaking up a week after Gwen’s wedding means a week before Old Home Day. And if we break up then, everybody will be talking about it.”
He frowned, resisting the urge to pull up the town’s website and check their calendar of events alongside his own, the library’s and the Sutton family’s. There was a possibility if he had to work around all of those schedules, he’d end up spending the rest of his life with this woman. That was not the plan, though he was starting to think maybe that wouldn’t be so bad.
“I think after Old Home Day is best,” she said in an uncharacteristically quiet voice. “There’s no week of joy after that. Everybody just goes back to their lives, so it’ll just be the regular amount of gossip.
That meant he’d be fake dating Molly for almost two months before they were done. It was a long time to build a relationship, pretend or not, and considering they weren’t even halfway through it, he knew it was going to be hard to call it quits. They’d be good friends with established habits by then, if nothing else.
It was the nothing else that worried him, which is why he’d wanted to set an expiration date. He might even circle it in red on his calendars so he’d have something tangible to look at if the line between pretend and reality started blurring on him again.
His phone’s alarm sent the sound of a doorbell through the library and he sighed. “Time for me to open.”
“I’ll unlock the doors on my way out,” Molly said. “But before I go, Mom asked me to invite you over for herbed chicken tonight.”
“I do like herbed chicken.” It was a sweet bonus to their arrangement. “Are you sure it’s not imposing?”
“Of course not. They love having company. And I warned you they’d invite you over a lot.”
“It’ll make it easier to renovate my kitchen,” he pointed out, and she laughed.
“I’ll see you tonight,” she called as she undid the bolts on the old wooden doors and stepped out into the sunshine.