And that, as far as Sadie was concerned, was that.
After they ate, Raquel wouldn’t let her go home, forcing her to walk down Main Street with her, arm in arm.
“Face your fears,” she said. “Just a little stroll, and then you can go home and bury your hands in the dirt like I know you’re going to.”
“I’m going to bury your head in the dirt,” Sadie said, her eyes roving everywhere, scanning faces as she hoped and feared a particular one she might see.
Meera Shaan waved as she swept the stoop outside of Shaan’s Salon. The gold threads on her peach-toned sari winked in the sunlight like little promises. Mrs. Shaan had been trimming and setting Gigi’s hair since they opened shop several years ago, after they moved from Aurelia.
“Tell your daadee that the tea she gave me for Akshay has been helping him sleep much better,” she said with a grateful smile. Her ten-year-old son, Sadie knew, suffered from severe obsessive-compulsive disorder, and his anxiety kept him up at night.
“I’ll tell her,” she promised.
They passed Delvaux Candles & Curiosities, the sign outside swaying slightly in the wind. If you tilted your head just right, you’d swear the three candles burned into the old wood flickered like they’d just been lit.
And then Sadie felt the pull as they neared Poppy Meadows Bookstore. She heard pages fluttering, calling to her. It was a siren song, one she usually couldn’t resist. The sign in the display window was painted with an open book that had bright orange California poppies sprouting out of the pages. The logo had always made her think of falling into a book the way Alice fell down the rabbit hole. Behind the glass, there were books in white enamel bird cages and hanging from the ceiling by invisible strings.
“No way,” Raquel said, dragging her by the arm as Sadie’s feet slowed down. “Time ceases to exist for you in bookstores, and I am not sitting by for three hours while you get hot over books you have no intention of buying.”
“But they need me,” Sadie argued. Her hand was on the door, although she didn’t remember reaching her arm out. “Even if I don’t buy them, they need to know they’re loved. That someone wants to look at them. Caress their delicate pages.”
“You are so weird,” Raquel said, sighing and following her inside.
Sadie inhaled.
“Your anthropomorphism knows no bounds,” Raquel added as Sadie waved to the books.
“Shh, you’re going to offend them.”
“Hello, ladies,” said Mr. Abassi from behind the counter. Sadie had grown up with his rich voice welcoming her into the shop, the brightness of his white crestless pagri dimmed only by his even more brilliant smile.
“I am glad you stopped in,” he said in his light accent. “Your Nanni would not take payment for the arthritis salve she gave me, so I set this aside for you.” He pulled a book from underneath the counter, and Sadie gasped as she read the cover: An Illustrated Guide to Rare Floriography and Its Uses. She’d been drooling over the intricate watercolor designs again just last week but couldn’t justify yet another addition to her ever-growing collection.
“Mr. Abassi, you really don’t have to,” she said, but her eager hands were already reaching for the book.
“Please,” he said, “it’s the least I can do. I do not know what Poppy Meadows would do without Gigi Revelare.” He waved them out of the shop with a farewell in the form of “Khuda hafiz.”
“That wasn’t so bad, was it?” Sadie asked, her fingers trailing over the embossed flowers on the cover.
“Not this time.”
“Am I allowed to go home now?”
“Feeling better?”
“Marginally,” Sadie admitted, kissing her best friend on the cheek.
On her drive home, Sadie finally released a long breath it felt like she’d been holding ever since the grandfather clock went off that morning. She pulled into the driveway and cut the engine, the silence snaking around her.
The Revelares’ three-bedroom home sat further back off the street than the others in the neighborhood. It was nearly antebellum, with its sweeping front porch and white pillars, though the lemon tree out front had wide reaching branches that made it look more suited to an African plain than California. And no matter how hot the days got in the summer, the shade underneath would cool you until you were nearly shivering. Rumor had it that sucking the juice from a lemon off the Revelare tree could show you what you wanted most in the world.
Sadie had tried it dozens of times growing up, her cheeks pinching at the sour-sweet taste, but all she ever saw was the house in front of her.