“I was telling the truth about loving Amelia’s work—and helping bookstores. I went to one of her readings in Chicago before she got ill, and we got to talking afterward. She mentioned how hard it was to run a bookstore, and she spoke sohighly of you. She even told me we’d get along. And it turns out she was right.”
Miguel’s eyes are as wide as an owl’s. “You knew who I was when we met? When you first called the store?”
“I did,” she says simply. “I hadn’t thought twice about my conversation with Amelia until I saw an article online about her passing and…I only wanted to help in some small way and had no idea so much was riding on that one event. I thought maybe she’d have mentioned me to you—I told her that she and my Amelia Mae shared a name, and she said it couldn’t possibly be a coincidence. But then you were so surprised when I introduced myself, and things just…happened the way they did.”
His face has gone pale. “Why didn’t you tell me that? I would have wanted to know you’d met Amelia. But now that it’s coming out like this…”
I start pacing between them, though I’m not sure what I’m trying to accomplish. I wish the other Amelia were here to help me. Because she was right: They’ve just made things unnecessarily complicated. And I don’t know what to do aboutit.
“Have you ever been rejected for who you are? It wasn’t just publishing that told me I wasn’t enough, Miguel,” rasps Fiona. “I wanted to be a mother more than anything, and my ex pretended like he wanted that for me, too—only to leave me in the lurch when that happened. Even now, I’ll meet someone who becomes a friend, but as soon as we start getting close and I tell them about the losses I’ve encountered, they retreat because they’re only interested in the sunny version of me. People say they want authenticity. The reality is, they want it in the smallest possible doses and exclusively when it’sconvenient for them.” Fiona rises from her chair and stands in front of Miguel, so they’re eye to eye. “I liked you from the get-go. And you liked me, too—no matter what you think now, I know I wasn’t imagining the spark between us. And even though I felt terrible about the circumstances that led to us meeting, I’ve waited an awful long time to feel the way I feel when I’m around you. But now I can’t help but wonder if you’re just like everyone else.”
“I’m not,” he says, but his voice lacks conviction.
“No? It occurs to me that you didn’t rush to compliment my genius once after I told you I wrote your favorite novel.”
“Fiona—”
She cuts him off. “Nor are you embracing me right now and telling me it’s all right that I couldn’t tell you until I was ready. Because it’s not all right, is it? You liked the illusion of me. Maybe even parts of me that fit your preexisting narrative. But you don’t want the whole package—and you hate that you’ve just seen it.”
“That’s not true at all.”
Except it must be, because he still hasn’t put his arms back around her, and he’s not comforting her, either. He’s just standing there like he’s frozen from tip to tail.
Fiona shakes her head sadly. “I’m going to go. We should have left this morning. Or maybe days ago.”
His shoulders slump, and he stares across the yard instead of looking at her. “Okay.”
What is he talking about? This is the opposite of okay! He’s supposed to begrovelingright now. “The hero, no matter how tortured, how racked by guilt and suffering he might be, has to fight for his love’s love,” Amelia said one time when shewas helping another writer with her work. Really, if I learned anything from her reading her books aloud to me, it’s that the hero must care; he has totry.
But Miguel must be all out of caring. Because when Fiona grabs her tote from the back of the chair then walks down the driveway and out of our lives, he lets hergo.
Thirty-Three
Miguel doesn’t get in the shower to cry. He doesn’t slap and mutter at his computer, either, and he doesn’t call Miriam or Dane. Instead, he sits on the sofa, staring at the papers on the coffee table and radiating pain. And no amount of my nosing him or sitting on his feet makes him speak. It’s like Amelia’s memorial all over again, except worse.
Because this time it doesn’t have to be this way.
He’s still silent the following morning. In fact, he doesn’t even tell me we’re going to the bookstore when he loads me into the car.
“Off to the stockroom,” he grumbles to Riley when we arrive. “Keep an eye on Harold.”
She gives him a curious look but doesn’t try to engage him in conversation. Natalie’s at the register, so Riley and I busy ourselves sorting and shelving. I feel terribly blue, but I’d rather be blue here, so at least there’s that.
We’ve just approached the new and improved Romance section when she starts talking to herself. “It’s working, but I doubt it’ll be enough. We probably need months of solidromance sales to turn things around. I wish he’d listened to me sooner.”
Oh, so she’s speaking to me.Go on,I tell her.
“I asked Brenna, and she said we’re already up eleven percent.”
Riley spoke with Brenna? On purpose? But even that doesn’t really lift my spirits.
She continues. “That’s pretty good for a single week, but it’s always busy at the beginning of August, so maybe it’s nothing. I don’t think so, though.”
A few kids have just wandered in and they rush over to the graphic novel section. Once Riley makes sure they’ve found what they’re looking for, she returns to me. “Oh, buddy,” she says, squatting to scratch my back. “It’ll be awful if I have to do it.”
What’sgoing to be awful? I lift my ears and wait for her to goon.
She gives me a quizzical look. “I swear you understand what I’m saying sometimes.”
