Soon after, their granddaughter Cassie Donovan started working at the bookstore, to help Grandma Bea out. Of all the children and grandchildren, Cassie was the only one who loved Bookland the way Bea and Marv did. Cassie tried to comfort newly widowed Bea during her shifts at the store, but Bea didn’t need to be comforted.
“Marv is still here,” she insisted. “His ghost is here with me. Just like Catherine’s ghost came back to be with Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights.”
And so Bea continued to insist the ghost of Marvin Donovan haunted Bookland. Whenever a pen rolled to the ground, Bea would pipe up, “Stop making trouble, Marv!” On one occasion, Cassie saw with her own eyes a child’s backpack knock a book off the shelf, but Bea persisted in scolding Marv about “messing with the inventory” for a good five minutes.
It was sweet. Bea thought Wuthering Heights was the greatest love story of all time, but Cassie knew the greatest love story of all time was between Beatrice Muller and Marvin Donovan. And when Bea suffered a cardiac arrest five years after Marv died, in nearly the exact same spot where they’d found him, it only cemented in Cassie’s head that there would never be a love as strong as the one between her grandparents.
The romance between Bea and Marv is a lot to live up to. That’s why Cassie hasn’t been on a date in so damn long.
But tonight she’s going out with Joel, and it’s going to be great. Except Cassie hasn’t been on a date in so long, she’s not sure what the conventions are anymore. Are jeans and a nice blouse appropriate? Must she wear a dress? How much makeup is the right amount of makeup? And why is she obsessing over this?
“You need more makeup,” Zoe tells her in no uncertain terms when they’re getting close to the time when Joel will arrive to pick her up. Zoe has agreed to close the bookstore. It’s been a busy evening, for some reason, and they can’t afford to close early. She needs the money desperately if there’s any chance of the store not going under.
Cassie frowns at Zoe. Zoe is the definition of “too much makeup.” Her inky mascara is lined with several extra millimeters of black, giving way to purple. The effect makes her eyes pop, but also sort of makes her look like she got beat up.
“Maybe just a little,” Cassie concedes. She hates that she cares. She hates that she tugged one of her few sexy dresses out of her closet and slid into it for the purpose of her date. She’s supposed to be focusing her energy on Bookland, not on some hot doctor.
“Definitely.”
Cassie’s purse hangs off the back of the chair behind the desk. She digs through it and retrieves a tube of lipstick.
“No, not that.” Zoe’s nose crinkles like Cassie just tried to paint her lips with excrement. “Please don’t use that color.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“It’s lip-colored lipstick. What’s the point?”
“It’s natural.”
“Oh, God.” Zoe rolls her eyes. “Look, do you want me to make you look hot or not?”
Not. Cassie wants to tell her coworker that she’s going to go on this date as herself, and not jump through hoops to look like someone she’s not. After all, Joel isn’t putting on makeup right now. But then she remembers the tingle that went through her when his fingers brushed against hers. “Okay, fine.”
Fortunately, there’s a lull in customers during which time Zoe is able to quickly fix her makeup. It takes fifteen minutes, and when she holds up Zoe’s compact, she’s scared of what she’ll see. But it turns out, Zoe did a brilliant job. She looks entirely different in the best possible way. Like herself, but a prettier version of herself.
Zoe beams at the sight of her handiwork. “Didn’t I do a great job?”
“You did,” Cassie admits.