“Everyone knows you’re the life of the party.” True enough, which was why Lindsay had her own, selfish reasons for wanting Miss Honi there. Gatherings of Grant’s business associates tended to be dull affairs—green Nazis, for all their zeal, were a fairly humorless bunch, she’d found—and with Miss Honi to keep it lively, Lindsay wouldn’t have to work so hard.
Miss Honi was trying not to show it, but Lindsay could tell she was pleased to be asked. “That may be, but come party time these old bones are gonna need a kick start, ’cause it don’t look like I’ll be getting any rest before then,” she bitched good-naturedly, watching a customer, a young woman in jeans and Polar fleece, approach the register with a stack of books in hand.
Miss Honi hurried off to ring up the purchase, and Lindsay went back to arranging her display. It had been a slow day so far, not that you’d know it from the number of people browsing the aisles or lingering at the café tables in back. The trouble was, she knew from long experience, a lot of those customers would leave without buying anything. The Blue Moon Bay Book Café was that sort of place: It encouraged reading for reading’s sake, not just to sell books. If someone wanted to spend the whole day parked in an easy chair or at one of the tables in back with a book or their laptop, there was no one to discourage him or her from doing so. In the children’s section, the more popular titles were as well thumbed as library books. But Lindsay wouldn’t have it any other way.
Grant often chided her for not being more hardheaded when it came to business, but she couldn’t part with the notion that books were for everyone, whether or not everyone could afford them. As a young girl, before she’d gone to live with Ted and Arlene, where would she have been without books? Her library card had been her lifeline and books her lone escape. Caught up in her imaginary worlds, she would see, looking out the window of the motel, not the flat gray parking lot below, its cars gleaming under the relentless Nevada sun, but the misty, windswept moors of Wuthering Heights or Jane Eyre . She would see caped figures on horseback riding to the rescue where disreputable-looking men in baseball caps and toe-sprung cowboy boots lurked. She could even convince herself that one day she and her sister would escape.
That dream had come true for one of them at least.
At the same time, Lindsay couldn’t ignore the cold, hard facts. She had bills to pay and expenses to meet. Not only that, when her lease came up for renewal in December, it would probably mean an increase in rent. There was no question that if she were to accept the Heywood Group’s latest offer, it would solve her financial worries. Not just in the short term: She’d be set for life. She could open another bookstore in addition to this one with that kind of money.
But at what price? The house and property she’d inherited from Ted and Arlene were all she had left of them. How could she give that up? Mornings, watching the sun come up over the mountains to the east, she was reminded of her dad and the leisurely hikes they had often taken, with Ted, an avid birdwatcher, pausing frequently to press the binoculars into her hands as he pointed up at some bird perched in a tree. In the evenings, watching the sun sink into the ocean, she would think of her mom, Arlene, and how she had loved to stroll on the beach, picking up seashells and bits of beach glass that were still displayed in decorative bowls and jars around the house.
“From the time I was little, I knew I would one day live by the ocean,” Arlene had told her once, smiling at the irony of it—she, a girl from Minnesota for whom the ocean had been but a lesson in geography until a trip to the seashore with her parents when she was ten. They’d been standing on the beach in the little cove below their house, watching the waves pound into shore as a storm brewed.
Miss Honi was trying not to show it, but Lindsay could tell she was pleased to be asked. “That may be, but come party time these old bones are gonna need a kick start, ’cause it don’t look like I’ll be getting any rest before then,” she bitched good-naturedly, watching a customer, a young woman in jeans and Polar fleece, approach the register with a stack of books in hand.
Miss Honi hurried off to ring up the purchase, and Lindsay went back to arranging her display. It had been a slow day so far, not that you’d know it from the number of people browsing the aisles or lingering at the café tables in back. The trouble was, she knew from long experience, a lot of those customers would leave without buying anything. The Blue Moon Bay Book Café was that sort of place: It encouraged reading for reading’s sake, not just to sell books. If someone wanted to spend the whole day parked in an easy chair or at one of the tables in back with a book or their laptop, there was no one to discourage him or her from doing so. In the children’s section, the more popular titles were as well thumbed as library books. But Lindsay wouldn’t have it any other way.
Grant often chided her for not being more hardheaded when it came to business, but she couldn’t part with the notion that books were for everyone, whether or not everyone could afford them. As a young girl, before she’d gone to live with Ted and Arlene, where would she have been without books? Her library card had been her lifeline and books her lone escape. Caught up in her imaginary worlds, she would see, looking out the window of the motel, not the flat gray parking lot below, its cars gleaming under the relentless Nevada sun, but the misty, windswept moors of Wuthering Heights or Jane Eyre . She would see caped figures on horseback riding to the rescue where disreputable-looking men in baseball caps and toe-sprung cowboy boots lurked. She could even convince herself that one day she and her sister would escape.
That dream had come true for one of them at least.
At the same time, Lindsay couldn’t ignore the cold, hard facts. She had bills to pay and expenses to meet. Not only that, when her lease came up for renewal in December, it would probably mean an increase in rent. There was no question that if she were to accept the Heywood Group’s latest offer, it would solve her financial worries. Not just in the short term: She’d be set for life. She could open another bookstore in addition to this one with that kind of money.
But at what price? The house and property she’d inherited from Ted and Arlene were all she had left of them. How could she give that up? Mornings, watching the sun come up over the mountains to the east, she was reminded of her dad and the leisurely hikes they had often taken, with Ted, an avid birdwatcher, pausing frequently to press the binoculars into her hands as he pointed up at some bird perched in a tree. In the evenings, watching the sun sink into the ocean, she would think of her mom, Arlene, and how she had loved to stroll on the beach, picking up seashells and bits of beach glass that were still displayed in decorative bowls and jars around the house.
“From the time I was little, I knew I would one day live by the ocean,” Arlene had told her once, smiling at the irony of it—she, a girl from Minnesota for whom the ocean had been but a lesson in geography until a trip to the seashore with her parents when she was ten. They’d been standing on the beach in the little cove below their house, watching the waves pound into shore as a storm brewed.
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