A notification pinged on the store email, and I woke the computer up to check it.
My heart stopped.
Liya抯 paycheck payment had bounced. There hadn抰 been enough money in the account last night. My stomach knotted itself over and over as I rushed to transfer money from my savings back into the store account. She hadn抰 said anything today so maybe she hadn抰 noticed yet. I transferred her the amount manually and prayed she wouldn抰 notice the first failed payment.
I guess I wouldn抰 be taking a salary for the foreseeable future.
Disappointment bled into my stomach and I pressed my mouth into a tight line, scrolling through the accounts. My dad owned the building so there was no mortgage to pay, and we could thank the low property prices in Queen抯 Cove in the nineties for that, because there was no way we could afford it today. Utilities, Liya抯 salary, taxes, fees for our credit card system, they added up to a total which exceeded our sales.
This was my mom抯 store, and I was running it into the ground. My dad trusted me to carry on her dream, and whatever I was doing, I wasn抰 enough.
Rocks churned in my stomach as I thought about how much she loved this store. She passed when I was sixteen from an aneurysm. She was folding laundry. I was at a friend抯 house working on a school project, and my dad found her. I shot a glance over to the blue squashy chairs where I would sit as a kid, reading and listening while she raced around the store, thrusting books into customers?hands and talking as fast as she could. She loved books, she loved people, and she was lit from within with charisma, light, energy, and fun.
My mom was the life of the party. She used to throw them all the time here in the store, just for fun. Just because she could.
I smiled to myself at the memory.
One day, you抣l find your true love, just like Mr. Darcy, she would tell me, excitement lighting up her eyes.
My gaze flicked to the white shopping bag, still sitting on the blue chair. There were no customers left in the store, so I strolled over, brought it over to the desk, slid the box out, and lifted the dress up once again.
It was dazzling.
My mom would totally wear a dress like this.
And if she saw me now, hiding in the bookstore, letting it fail, wasting my life? She抎 be so disappointed.
I let out a long sigh, toying with this painful idea.
What would she do in this situation? She抎 do everything she could to make the store successful again. She抎 go out and find someone to fall in love with.
When my mom was thirty, she had it all梐 partner, me, a business she loved, and a great life. The store was hers, and my dad trusted me to run it.
I couldn抰 let them both down, even if she was gone. I had to find a way to turn the store around.
2
Hannah
揑抦 home,?I called when I stepped in the front door of the little house I shared with my dad.
揌i, honey.?My dad was in his favorite chair in the front room, reading John Grisham抯 latest. 揋ood day at the store??
I shot him a tight smile as I kicked my shoes off. 揟h閞鑣e stopped by to say hello.?
He didn抰 notice me dodging the question. 揟hat抯 nice.?
揑抦 going to finish up some paperwork.?
When I got to my bedroom, I slid the white shopping bag Th閞鑣e had given me under my bed as far as it would go.
Then, I took a seat at my desk, opened my laptop, and tallied the sales for the day.
Four sales.
We hadn抰 even covered Liya抯 salary today. I sighed and stared out the window at the trees behind our house. Another month in the red. That was eleven. Eleven months in a row, we had been losing money. I thought about the shop the way Wyatt must have seen it today梬orn, ugly carpet, faded wallpaper, books stacked everywhere.
The store couldn抰 survive in our tiny town any longer. Panic clawed at me. It was only a matter of time before I ran out of savings and my dad found out how the store was really doing.
That was the way she wanted it, he said whenever I hinted we抎 see more sales if we made a few changes. Your mother put everything into that store.
His tone always made it clear: if we changed the store, we were erasing her memory.
We hadn抰 made any changes to the store since the day she passed. The same artwork hung on the walls. The same dusty maroon carpet lay on the floor. Bookshelves stood where they were installed years ago. Even our website was from the nineties. It was a joke of my mom抯， when I was a teenager, that we had such an old website. No one had used it, anyway.
But that was fourteen years ago. Now, people used websites all the time.
On my laptop, I opened a browser and typed in the website address. It loaded and a tinny, tinkly music played, a Victorian tune that sounded like something from the 1800s. Pemberley Books appeared above a picture of my mom at the front desk, surrounded by books, smiling from ear to ear.