Oh. My. God.
Lucky Karras.
He grew up. Good. And I do meangood. How did he get so big? He looks intimidating … and sort of angry. Don’t thinkHey, old pal o’ mine! How about a hug?is the appropriate response.
He was pretty mad at me when I left town. That was five years ago. And not my fault. Surely, he’s not holding a grudge. I wish I would have had time to brush my hair. I didn’t know I was going to be getting out of a moving truck and seeing … Lucky 2.0.
Mom the Obvious, however, doesn’t notice the electric stare-down that’s happening right in front of her very face. She also doesn’t recognize him and is all jokes and fake chagrin. “Oh, sorry. Notyou, though,” she calls out to him lightheartedly. “I’m sure you aren’t a demonic minion.”
“Clearly you don’t know me,” he says in husky voice that sounds like smoke and gravel—one that’s changed along with his body.
“But I’d like to. Winona Saint-Martin.” She sticks out her hand, but he doesn’t take it.
“Know who you are,” he says, switching his cool gaze to her briefly.
And as he walks past me, he slows long enough to murmur, “Hello, Josie. Welcome back to the portal to hell.”
Then he tosses the book onto the printing press and strides out the shop’s front door.
I exhale a long, shaky breath.
“Yikes,” Mom says. “Already driving away customers. My mother will be so proud.”
Evie waves a dismissive hand. “That’s just Phantom.”
“Who?” Mom says.
“Lucky Karras. Remember the Karrases? His parents used to own the tiny boat-repair business a block away? They bought the big boatyard across the street. Father’s a boat mechanic. Mother runs the business.”
“That’sNick and Kat Karras’s kid?” Mom says. “Josie’s Lucky?”
A warmth zips up my chest. “He wasn’tmine. We were just friends.” Good friends.
“Did you recognize him?” Mom asks without giving me a chance to respond. “I don’t think he recognized you.”
“He did,” I say, a little dazed.
“He’s been camped out here, watching the window for your U-Haul,” Evie murmurs, giving me a suggestive smile behind my mom’s back.
“Really would have liked to be warned about this before we showed up,” I say through pinched lips.
“Last time I saw him,” Mom muses, oblivious to Evie’s comment, “he was a snotty-nosed little punk with a head full of black curls. When did he grow up into a dark and disenchanted Holden Caufield?”
Evie snorts a short laugh. “A couple years after you guys left town? I call him Phantom of the Bookshop, because he’s in here all the time, brooding in the back.”
“I thought the Karrases moved?” I say, still stunned.
“They did,” Evie says. “Like I said, their business moved across the street.”
That’s not what I meant. I thought they moved out of town—gone. I had no idea he still lived here. All the times we’ve been in and out of Beauty for the occasional weekend over the past few years, I’ve never once seen him or heard about the Karrases.
“He was in that fire before we left town,” Mom says. “At the lake house.”
“His scars … ,” I murmur. The last time I saw him, it was about a week after the fire, and he was bandaged up, in the hospital, awaiting news about surgery. I remember his parents being worried, whispering with doctors when I’d come see him every afternoon at Beauty Memorial during visiting hours, but they said he’d be fine.
Mom and I left town in such a hurry, I never got to say goodbye.
“He had a lot of skin grafts,” Evie says. “I don’t know … Ithink it changed him, because he sort of withdrew after that. He’s been in and out of a little trouble ever since, but—”
