He nods. “If you like.”
Well, don’t sound so excited about it,I want to say.
I walk to the front door and turn to regard the store, imagining the possibilities. In my mind, the sad particleboard shelves fall away, their dull movie boxes banished to a corner. Hunter joins me, notebook ready.
“In an ideal world,” I say slowly, like I’m casting a spell, “I’d have bookshelves all around the walls. Built-ins.”
“And a rolling ladder, right? Like inBeauty and the Beast.”
I blush. “I said an ideal world, but yeah. A girl can hope, right?”
“The great thing about being a carpenter is that I can turn those hopes into reality. Especially if you already have all the materials in the hardware store.” He talks as he sketches. “Pretty lucky that you inherited two more stores that have most of the supplies you need, right?”
I find the little dictionary in my pocket, rub my finger over the snap. “Yeah, very lucky.” Then I refocus on the task at hand. “Sothat’s a side wall and a back wall of built-ins. Then I need freestanding shelves at regular intervals. Starting about here”—I move to a place that would offer lots of room for displays up front—“and ending here.” I walk along the line the shelves would take, following the run of the wooden boards to where the shelves would end, toward the back wall. “So that’s probably four sets of shelves.”
“You know, if I built them on casters, you could move them around if you hold events or if you just wanted to change the store up a bit,” Hunter says. He runs his measuring tape along the floor. “If they were nailed down, they’d be twelve feet, but if we wanted them to move, we’d do six-foot shelves and put them together. The casters would lock, though, so it’s not like the shelves would be drifting around and knocking over customers.”
It does not escape me that he saidwe,and I like that. It makes it feel less like I’m a prima donna demanding work and more like we’re doing something together, building something new and exciting from the wreckage of Maggie’s old life. Like we’re dreaming this store into existence. I need to keep him in that mode, the one where we’re a team—not the one where I’m the scion of his family’s worst enemy.
“That’s a great idea! I would love to be able to reconfigure things.”
“And where will the movies go? I know the locals depend on this place. The nearest movie theater is twenty miles away, and the population skews older and less tech-friendly.” The look he’s giving me suggests there’s more at risk than just where to put some moldering VHS boxes. This…is important to him.
“Of course. I honestly think they could be shelved spine-out like books and just take up a corner. Maybe get some newer releases, too.” As I walk the perimeter of the store, I realize thatthere’s one cheap white particleboard shelf against the wall that’s out of alignment with all the others. It has only four VHS boxes on it, so I grab it by both sides and try to rock it away from the wall. “What’s this?”
Hunter walks over and considers it. Biceps straining in his flannel, he picks up the whole damn shelf and pulls it away from the wall to reveal…
A door.
My curiosity skyrockets, and I immediately go for the doorknob. It’s locked, but I have Maggie’s big key ring, so I pick the keys that look most likely to fit the brass knob and go through them one by one.
“Did you know about this?” I ask.
“Nope. I did a little work for Maggie, but she was very private and never seemed to want to do any upgrades. She had me stop by to replace the light tubes when they blew out, and she had me drywall over that door upstairs, but otherwise, I got the feeling she didn’t want me in here.”
Finally the key turns, and I open the door like a kid hunting for Narnia. It’s an office—and it looks like it hasn’t been used in a century. The dust spell is definitely not in force here. There’s a heavy old wooden desk, several file cabinets, a dozen cardboard boxes, and a rolling chair that’s got to be from the sixties.
And sitting in that rolling chair, coated in dust, is a human skeleton.
23.
I don’t scream,but I do make an unflatteringeepnoise and jump backward, directly into Hunter’s chest. He immediately moves so that we’re not touching.
“Is that what I think it is?” I ask.
“It’s a skeleton,” he confirms. “But I don’t think it’s real. If it were real, wouldn’t there be junk on it? Or at least a puddle of gunk underneath it? Or a stain on the carpet?”
I take another step back.
We’re not touching, but…we’re almost touching. His body is warm and solid behind me.
I do not mind it.
And he’s right.
If there had been a dead body in here, it would be gooey. Chunky. Probably clothed, as most people don’t die naked in the office.
Probably not sitting in a rolling chair, coated in dust.
