Her own book. Eveline's copy, the one she'd referred to during book club.
The spine was cracked, the pages dog-eared. Notes in the margins in Eveline's neat handwriting.
Emery couldn't bring herself to read the notes. It hurt too much to see Eveline's thoughts on words she'd written, back when they'd been strangers, before everything had gone so spectacularly wrong.
She placed it back in the box next to the succulent, which was already looking a bit droopy. So much for impossible to kill.
Her phone buzzed. Jax again, checking in for the third time today. Emery ignored it. She didn't have the energy for Jax's relentless optimism, her insistence that Emery should “fight for what she wanted” like one of her own romance heroines.
But this wasn't a romance novel. There was no grand gesture that could undo the damage she'd caused. No dramatic declaration of love that could make Eveline forget weeks of lies.
“How's Abe doing?” she'd asked Ollie before he'd left.
“Better,” Ollie had said. “Coming home soon, they think. Tough old guy.”
That was something, at least. Abe was getting better. One thing in this mess wasn't completely terrible.
Domi had called yesterday, demanding to know when Emery would have her rewrites done. Emery had gritted her teeth and said inside a week. She had bills to pay, she had readers to please, taking a stand on happy endings just wasn’t sustainable, no matter how strongly she might feel about them.
“Great,” Domi had said.
The book was good. She knew it was. Maybe the best thing she'd ever written. But what did that matter now? The inspiration for it, the bookshop, Eveline, was gone from her life. The irony wasn't lost on her. She'd written her most successful book about a love story that had crashed and burned.
Emery took the potted succulent out and set it on the windowsill. Maybe with some decent light it might survive. She left the rest in the box. The mug, the cardigan, the poetry books, they were just reminders of what she'd lost.
What she'd thrown away, really. Because she could have told Eveline the truth at any point. Could have come clean weeks earlier. Instead, she'd kept quiet, let the lie grow until it was too big to contain.
She made a cup of tea she didn't want, just to have something to do with her hands. Then she put her knees up to her chest and let the tears come. Not just for Eveline, but for the shop, for Maya's pastries, for Zara's enthusiasm, for Abe's stories. For the place where, for a brief time, she'd felt like she belonged.
She cried until she had nothing left, then curled up on the sofa and pulled a blanket over herself, too tired to make it to bed.
???
Eveline straightened a stack of books that were already perfectly aligned. The shop was empty. Again. Third time this week she'd gone more than an hour without a single customer.
Two weeks since that night. Since Emery, no, since Emerald Pearl, had been revealed as a liar. Two weeks of falling sales and rising dread.
“They're boycotting,” Zara had told her yesterday, trying to sound neutral. “Mrs. Hampton says they're shopping at Barton's now. Supporting Emerald Pearl there instead.”
Eveline had just nodded, as if it didn't matter, as if the shop wasn't bleeding money, as if she wasn't lying awake every night wondering how long she could keep the doors open.
“Maybe if you called Emery,” Zara had suggested tentatively. “Tried to work things out?”
“There's nothing to work out,” Eveline had snapped.
Zara hadn't mentioned it again, but Eveline had caught her exchanging worried glances with Maya, who still brought pastries by even though they mostly went uneaten.
She moved to the counter and opened the spreadsheet. The numbers confirmed what she already knew. Without the romance readers, without the book club, without Emery, The Turned Page was struggling. Another month like this and she'd have to dip into her savings.
She closed the app. Zara had gone home hours ago. The shop was silent except for the ticking of the old clock on the wall. Abe’s chair was still empty by the window.
The last time she'd been betrayed by a writer, she'd run away. Left Paris for London, started over.
Where could she go now? What corner of the earth could possibly be far enough away from this particular pain?
Nowhere. The shop was her heart. She couldn't abandon it, not after all these years, not with Abe still recovering, not when she'd finally built something that mattered.
But she hated how every inch of the place reminded her of Emery. Emery arranging displays. Emery laughing with customers. Emery knocking over stacks of books and blushing as she picked them up.
