Goodnight June: A Novel by Sarah Jio

Margaret struggled with sister relationships. I take a deep breath. I can identify with Lucille. I felt betrayed by my sister, and rightly so. But Ruby didn’t make an intentional choice to hurt her sister. Amy did. For a moment I feel the familiar anger rising up in my chest, and the sadness of losing someone I loved. Past tense. Ruby and Margaret may have wanted to make amends with their sisters, but no, I would never. Sometimes you have to close the door, and lock it.
    With burning curiosity to know more about this friendship between the two women, I quickly pull the next few books off the shelf and search for more letters—none—before scanning the upper and lower shelf for any signs of pages tucked inside, which is when I hear the sound of the jingle bells on the door. Did I forget to lock it?
    “Hello?” I say quickly, standing up. “Is someone there?”
    I see Gavin and instantly feel relieved.
    “Sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean to startle you.” He’s holding a couple of takeout boxes. The scent of garlic and basil wafts in the air. “I thought you might be hungry, so I brought over some lunch.”
    I look at the clock and realize that it’s almost noon and I’ve had nothing but espresso today.
    “Thank you,” I say, walking toward him. The letters are still in my hands, and I quickly tuck them in my back pocket.
    Gavin looks around for a place to set the food down, finally settling on the only available surface: a tiny children’s table flanked by two pint-size blue chairs. He grins at me. “This OK?”
    “Yeah,” I say, smiling as I cram myself into one of the minuscule seats. He does the same, and we both can’t help but laugh at ourselves.
    He opens up the first box and hands me one of the plates under his arm, then pulls out a cloth napkin wrapped around a fork, spoon, and knife. “Hope you like pasta puttanesca,” he says.
    “My favorite, actually,” I reply, grinning. “How did you know?”
    He points to his head. “I’m kind of psychic when it comes to food pairings.” He’s wearing a crisp white shirt, unbuttoned at the collar, and a pair of dark straight-legged jeans. “Show me a person, and I can find the perfect meal for them. It’s all in the face.”
    I grin. “Oh, is it?”
    “Sure is. See, when I met you this morning on the lake, you looked a little sad. I would have served you spaghetti pomodoro then.”
    “Spaghetti pomodoro?”
    “Yeah,” he says. “Spaghetti works wonders for curing the blues.” He nods. “But the puttanesca, that’s for new beginnings.”
    I busy myself with my napkin as Gavin looks around the shop and smiles. “But if you had come to me and told me you had a bad day, that things had gotten stressful, then I’d make you Bolognese sauce.”
    I can’t help but smile. “And what do you make for harder cases?” I consider Ruby and, according to the letter I just read, the prospect of her broken heart. I also can’t help but think of the way my own heart shattered five years ago. “What about broken hearts?”
    “Now,” Gavin says, “those are harder. But I find that in most cases, eggplant does the job.”
    I let out a little laugh. “Eggplant?”
    “Nothing better,” he says.
    I smile as he dishes a helping of pasta onto my plate, then dip my fork in to take a bite.
    “Wow,” I say. “It’s very good.” I dab the napkin to my mouth. “Do you cook, or run the business side?”
    “I do a little of everything, my business partner and I. Cook, wait tables, bus tables.” He grins. “It’s what you have to do when you run a small business.”
    I nod, thinking of a little Italian restaurant in Queens that I had to close down. The owner was just like Gavin, a jack-of-all-trades. He was sprawled out on the floor, fixing a faulty oven door, when I came in armed with legal papers.
    “Then I give my compliments to the chef,” I say, shaking off the memory.
    His face twists into a look of discomfort for a moment before his smile