Then Oakley heard about their plan, and she insisted on driving up too.
So they had driven up one morning. It didn’t particularly surprise Laurie to find Chris sitting there, waiting for her on the front porch – but when he saw Halia, he skulked off to his van and drove away.
Oakley arrived a few minutes later. She looked almost disappointed that she had missed out on her chance to stare down Laurie’s husband, but she helped with the packing anyhow.
The three sisters made quick work of boxing up all of Laurie’s books, and she collected a few more odds and ends that she had left behind: the rest of her clothes, some kitchen gadgets that Chris never used, a few framed photos of her family, and her favorite quilt.
She grabbed a few of Mia’s things too, but she didn’t empty out her room. Halia’s warnings against parental alienation weighed heavy on her mind, and she didn’t want it to look as if she’d made a clean sweep of their daughter’s things.
Sooner or later, Mia would have to spend time with her dad. And so Laurie took most of her daughter’s favorite things but left the rest; Chris wouldn’t know the difference.
They got lunch in Waimea, said goodbye to Oakley, and then drove straight to the Madeira place. Carrying her things into the little wooden house, Laurie felt an immense sense of relief.
She had a place of her own. A safe haven.
She was free.
Kekoa was there – was healwaysthere? – and he grabbed a box from the back of the car.
“Woah. What you got in here, bricks?”
“Books,” Laurie said.
“You still a big reader?”
She nodded and then cleared her throat.
Despite his teasing about the contents of the cardboard box, he stood there holding the heavy load like it weighed nothing at all.
“Do you like to read?” she asked.
“I hated it as a kid,” he admitted. “I could never sit still long enough. Then I discovered audiobooks. We go through tons of them, me and ‘Io both.”
She waited for the wince that usually came after someone realized they had just mentioned audiobooks to a woman with severe hearing loss – but he just grinned at her, completely unselfconscious.
“I remember when we were kids, you were always walking around with a big stack of books. I always thought you’d grow up to be a librarian or something.”
Laurie smiled. “Maybe I should have.”
“What did you do instead?”
“A few useless degrees,” she said with a shrug. “I work online now. Proofreading, mostly.”
“Well, I hope you like working here.” He glanced at the house and then looked back at her. “Doesn’t it get lonely? Working on a computer all the time?”
She stared at him for a beat, surprised by the frank question.
“Sometimes,” she admitted. Then she smiled and remembered, “When I was a kid, I always wanted to have my own bookshop.”
“You did?”
“Yeah! I would love it. I mostly read library books as a kid, and the few books that I did own were so precious to me. I used to imagine sitting in my own little bookshop, just reading the day away between customers. I thought that when people did come in, they would be patient and look at me when they talked, because readers don’t go through life in a big rush. And then we could talk about the books we’d read, and the authors we loved…”
She realized that she was rambling, and blood rushed to her cheeks as she cut herself off. It had been ages since she’d remembered that old fantasy.
“So why don’t you?” Kekoa asked.
“What?”
