“Don’t you have a dryer?” Isabel said.
“It’s better when it dries outside. It smells like the marsh.”
“Do you want to see what I never showed you that day I ran away?” Isabel asked.
She’d forgotten her shoes, and she now realized she was in paint-splattered pajamas that had belonged to her father, but she was done forgetting now. She was remembering everything about the way she used to feel.
“I do,” Johnny said.
He put on high boots and loaned her a pair, and they headed through the marsh, which was so muddy a person could sink to their knees if they weren’t careful. Once or twice, Johnny grasped Isabel’s arm when it seemed that she might be sinking. She brought him to the hidden rookery of the herons where she and Sophie and their mother used to go, their secret place.
“How did I never see this before?” he asked.
As it turned out, Isabel remembered how to climb a tree. She went into the huge nest of reeds first, then reached out her hand and Johnny caught it and climbed into the nest as well. You could see to the ocean from here. You could see Main Street and the ferry building and the fields of lupines.
“If you had brought me here instead of running away after you lost your mother, our whole lives would have been different,” Johnny said, and Isabel really couldn’t disagree.
Isabel went into the bookstore early on opening day, just to make certain everything was perfect. Or near to perfect. Or just terrifically good. She set out the cups and spoons and plates that had belonged to their mother, and looked over at the books now in neat rows on the new shelves Mr. Hawley had recently built. There were chairs to sit in when you paged through books you might want to buy, and in the small room in back was the younger readers’ section. It was practically perfect, but it needed something more. Before the morning light had broken, Isabel painted the walls and turned them into marshes, and the tables and chairs were turned into pieces of the ocean, with starfish and sharks and seals.
One hundred and thirty-three people attended the opening, along with six dogs, not including Hank. Violet kept count. Some were neighbors; some were summer people—all of them bought something. The cupcakes and brownies and slices of cake went quickly, and Sophie was stationed at the espresso machine, and everyone was delighted to see her, for she’d been hidden away for weeks. Johnny bought six Robert Parker mysteries, and his father bought an old book of maps of New England, and people seemed to realize they had to pay for the books they wanted rather than just borrow them.
“We’re not exactly rich,” Violet said at the end of the day. “But we’re getting there.”
Isabel had noticed that her niece had hidden away Andrew Lang’s fairy books, for she planned to read them when she was done with Mary Poppins. Once she began reading an author, she didn’t like to stop, a trait she may well have inherited from her aunt, who had read those same fairy books one summer, one after the other, still wishing for more when she was through.
That night, when Isabel went to tidy up, she noticed a last pile of books on the floor behind a chair, likely left there from her father’s time. He had loved the store so. It had saved him when the girls’ mother died, and if he hadn’t paid much attention to finances, well, who could blame him? Isabel moved the books and saw that there on the wall was a hinge that had been obscured by the books, and a very small door that she’d never seen before. She crouched down to open it. Inside, there was a small blue notebook, and when she peered in, she found a page meant for both sisters. Isabel recognized the handwriting, even though it had been years since she’d seen it. Their mother’s.
How Much Do I Love You?
I love you more than pancakes, more than ice cream, more than pickles, more than my life. I love you more than dogs or cats or diamonds or gold, more than anyone else in the world. I loved brushing your hair every night and walking you to school. I told you every story you knew.