But she’s still talking.
“Before I ask my questions,” she says, “I need to tell you something first. Something I haven’t told anyone. Because if I’m going to demand honesty from you, I should probably start by being honest myself.”
“Okay,” I say carefully. “I’m listening.”
She takes a deep breath and stares out at the water.
“Before the bookstore,” she says, “I was an insurance claims adjuster.”
I blink. “You were a what?”
“Insurance claims adjuster. For fifteen years.” She laughs, but it’s hollow. “I sat in a beige cubicle under fluorescent lighting that made everyone look like they had a liver disease, and I told people their water damage wasn’t covered. That their roof replacement was ‘outside policy parameters.’ That their deadgrandmother’s jewelry wasn’t worth what they thought because they’d failed to update the appraisal.”
“That sounds...”
“Like a special circle of hell designed specifically for people who secretly wanted to spend their lives surrounded by books?” She picks up a shell and turns it over in her hands. “It was exactly that. My ex-husband loved it, though. ‘Great benefits,’ he said. ‘Stable. Recession-proof.’” She pitched her voice lower, mocking. “‘You can always get a job in insurance, Jess. Nobody gets laid off from crushing dreams.’”
“He sounds charming.”
“He was a delight. Eight years of marriage to a man who thought ‘impractical’ was the worst insult in the English language.” She throws the shell toward the water. “I wanted to open a bookstore. From the very beginning, I told him that was my dream. A little shop filled with romance novels, book clubs, a place where people could find the stories they needed.”
“And he said no?”
“He laughed. The kind that makes you feel about two inches tall.” She mimics the sound, bitter. “Said, ‘That’s cute, Jess, but let’s focus on something realistic.’ And I believed him. For eight years of marriage and another five years after the divorce, I believed him.”
The sun is fully up now, painting the world in shades of gold and pink. The ocean sparkles like someone scattered diamonds across the surface. It’s the kind of morning that poets write about, and I’m sitting next to a woman who spent years being told her dreams were worthless.
“You want to know the worst part?” She pulls her knees tighter to her chest. “I used to read romance novels at my desk. During lunch breaks. I’d hide them inside manila folders labeled ‘Quarterly Reports’ so no one would judge me.”
Despite everything, I almost smile. “That’s either genius or deeply sad.”
“Definitely both.” She glances at me, a ghost of humor in her eyes.
“What changed?”
She’s quiet for so long I think she’s not going to answer.
“There was a woman,” she says finally. “A widow. Her husband had just died—heart attack at the grocery store, completely unexpected. One day he was buying bananas, the next day she was picking out caskets.”
I wait.
“A week after the funeral, a storm came through and collapsed part of her roof. Not the whole thing—just enough to let the rain in to ruin the bedroom ceiling and destroy some of his clothes she hadn’t been able to pack up yet.” Jessica’s voice goes flat. “She’d missed only one payment. Three months before her husband died, they’d had some financial trouble and the premium was late. Eleven days. That was enough.”
“Enough for what?”
“For me to have to call her and tell her she wasn’t covered. That the roof collapse wasn’t our problem because of eleven days three months ago.”
The weight of it settles over us.
“She cried,” Jessica says quietly. “Not the angry kind of crying. The exhausted kind. The ‘of course this is happening, why would anything good happen to me’ kind. And I sat there in my beige cubicle with a Tessa Bailey novel hidden in my ‘Quarterly Reports’ folder and thought: I cannot do this for one more day. I cannot be this person anymore.”
“So you quit.”
“The next morning. I walked in, gave my two weeks, and watched my supervisor’s face cycle through about fifteen stages of grief.” She smiles faintly. “Apparently I really was the bestemployee in the department. They offered me a promotion. The corner cubicle with the window that actually let in natural light. As if sunlight would make denying claims more palatable.”
“But you left.”
“I left. Cashed out my investments—I’d put my divorce settlement away for years, just letting it grow while I worked up the courage to touch it—and I signed a lease on the boardwalk.” She looks at me. “The space where my bookstore is now? I walked in and burst into tears. The realtor thought I was having a mental breakdown. I told her they were happy tears.”
