Page 49 of Love Walked In

CHAPTER THIRTY

Mari

How had Dorothy felt the day after she’d come back from Oz?

Sure, she’d woken up that first morning in Kansas and said with a big smile, “There’s no place like home!

” But what about the next morning, and the next?

Had she felt disoriented? Like some unseen woodworker had carved away pieces of her, glued on new ones, so that she no longer fit in her old, worn groove?

I’d been back in Loch Gordon for six weeks now, and I couldn’t just blame the jet lag anymore for how off I felt. That had gone away in a few days, but the uncertainty, the discordance, had stayed.

In spite of my feelings, or maybe because of them too, I latched hard onto my old routines, the ones that had defined my days before London, before Ross & Co.

, before Leo. I started every morning with an hour’s jog out to the Hermanos Reyes Winery and back, brilliant green vines marching tidily up the hillsides, the roses at each end that signaled the health of the soil blooming salmon pink and sunshine yellow.

I’d shower and dress, then go for my oat latte with hazelnut syrup that Walker would start making when he saw me come through the café door.

But when he’d texted the first week I was back, to ask if he could come by and “hang,” I’d said sorry, that I just wanted to be friends. I told myself it was because I was adjusting after a while away, that I was going through a phase where my own touch was enough.

I didn’t let myself think it was Leo’s touch I craved. Leo wouldn’t ever kiss me again like every one was the last, wouldn’t ever run his hands reverently over my skin.

Now California spring light flooded through the Orchard House windows.

We had just opened, and a few locals had come in first thing to pick up books they’d ordered.

The tourists wouldn’t arrive for another hour or so, as they came into town looking for lunch after their first wine tastings of the day.

I rubbed my hands across the warm varnished redwood of the store counter.

Life was back to normal, everything the same.

The dust motes drifted, the air smelled like paper and glue and French roast, Suzanne muttered in the office about the Department of Defense spending her hard-earned money on killing machines. It was nice. Peaceful.

It was like I hadn’t cried silently for four hours over Canada on the flight back.

It was like I didn’t miss Leo like I would miss the blue in the sky, the pink in the roses, the sugar in my coffee. I could go on without them, I could survive, but something fundamental was missing.

My phone buzzed, and I forgot the missing piece of me for a moment as I smiled at the new WhatsApp message.

Jamie had texted me a picture of Danny plastered in mud after a rugby game.

My dad wasn’t all up in my business, which I appreciated, but he texted me every week to tell me what he’d read and ask what books I loved, and we’d scheduled a Zoom for this weekend.

I’d go back to London someday, to get to know him and Annika better, to spend quality time with Graham and Danny and Tim. Not for a while, though. I needed to let everything settle, let the memories of the past three months get farther away in my rearview mirror.

“An end of an era in bookselling,” The Guardian had blared in the article I’d seen a few days ago, announcing the closure of Ross & Co.

, the building’s sale to commercial developers.

It had the usual odes to Alexander, his prowess, his charisma.

But nothing about the Ross family now. What their future would be.

From the record player, Billie Holiday cried into the empty bookstore, “In my solitude, you haunt me.”

Her voice, full of warmth and smoke and winter light, dragged my mind back to that bookstore basement in January, a siren song of stillborn dreams, lost love.

Why had I ever thought this song was cozy? It was the saddest fucking thing I’d ever heard.

I rubbed my face hard. Being on my own wasn’t safe anymore. I was unarmed against everything the world had to throw at me. There was a gaping hole in the wall I’d put up, the one Leo had smashed open, and I couldn’t rebuild it. I didn’t even know if I wanted to.

Enough. I stalked around the corner to the record player, shoving the cover up.

“If you break that record, I’ll make you pay for it,” Suzanne said behind me, her many-ringed hands on her hips.

I yanked my hand back from the needle. “Sorry.”

She stomped to the front door and shut it with a jingle. The “Closed” sign made a firm snap against the glass as she turned it. “I’m tired of you apologizing. Honestly, what happened to you?”

A reasonable part of me knew she was right to be frustrated.

I’d told her a little about what happened with the shop, and a lot about meeting Jamie, but I’d kept everything about Leo to myself, like I was pressing a hand over a cut and refusing to look at how bad the damage was.

I automatically shook my head. “Nothing. Don’t worry about me. ”

“Bullshit. You’ve been walking around with a storm cloud over your head since you got back from London. I’m tired of pussyfooting. Tell me what’s going on.”

“I’m fine,” I said, keeping my voice bland.

She raised her thin eyebrows. “Don’t kid yourself, chickie. That crappy old mask of yours does the trick with other people, but it’s never worked on me.”

As I continued my stubborn silence, choosing to die on this particular hill, Suzanne stared down at the counter. “I made a mistake,” she finally said.

I straightened. “What kind of mistake?” I asked carefully. “With the tax forms?”

She snorted for a second. “No. I made a mistake telling you I was going to give you the store.”

A spike of panic made me blurt, “But I love it here. You can’t give it to someone else.”

She put her hand up. “When I promised this to you, it meant you didn’t have to take any risks.” She said more gently, “And you won’t jump unless you’re pushed, chickie. It’s not in your nature.”

“But this is the life I want,” I begged. “I want to be like you, more than anything.”

She reached out and pressed her purple-manicured hands to my cheeks.

“But I chose this after I ran a marathon. I have had a glorious life, and while there are days I look back on and cringe a little bit, I wouldn’t trade a single one.

You, Mari? You’re giving up before you’ve even jogged a mile. What are you so afraid of?”

The ground was crumbling underneath me. “I’m not afraid of anything. I like it here. I like…” The tears started falling down my face. I wasn’t even sure what I liked anymore, I just knew I wouldn’t be secure anywhere else.

Suzanne tugged me into her arms for a hard hug, and I buried my face in her velvet-covered shoulder.

“Oh, sweetheart,” she said softly. “I made a safe place for you when you needed it the most, when you were just a kid. Your shithead stepfather didn’t take care of you, even though he was all you had.

He was frozen from the inside out, and you needed warmth and affection. ”

I nodded. “And you gave that to me. This is home. This is what I wanted to come back to.”

She shook her head. “But that doesn’t mean you can’t take risks. That doesn’t mean you can’t love someone else, and let them love you.”

The truth was written across her face. “You know about Leo,” I realized aloud.

She smiled a little. “The Rosses and I have never had secrets from each other.” She raised her hand when I protested. “I know, Leo hid the truth from you, the way your mom hid the truth about your real father. But did you tell him how hurt you were, what you needed?”

Ice formed in my stomach. “No. I didn’t. I just… shut down.” Because when things got hard, all I knew how to do was run and hide.

“Maybe you should let him talk to you. Then decide. From everything I know about him, he’s a good boy and he wants to do right by you.”

I gulped. “Why didn’t he just say what he’d done?” I asked plaintively.

“Because I didn’t know what I wanted at first,” a totally-out-of-context voice said behind me.

I whipped around, and Leo was standing in the bookstore doorway, hands in his pockets like it was a normal thing for him to be six thousand miles from home.

“I’d been sleepwalking for so long, and I had none of your confidence,” he continued, ignoring my agape mouth.

“And then later, when I was awake, because I’d fallen in love with you, I was terrified you’d end things if you knew. ”

“What are you doing here?” I blurted, stunned.

“Trying very, very hard not to be a coward,” he said, all seriousness.

“Did you arrange this?” I asked my boss.

Suzanne shook her head, smiling. “No.”

“But you knew,” I accused.

She shrugged lightly. “So what if I did? Is that really what matters to you right now?”

I looked again at Leo, my eyes and heart ravenous for him. He was still allergic to color, in his black jeans, T-shirt, and Converse. His hair was a total mess, a spray of raven feathers streaked silver. Skinny and intense, dark sunglasses covering his whiskey eyes, his mouth a firm line.

He carefully took off the sunglasses and put his browline glasses on. “How is it so bright outside? It’s like you have ten times as much sun as anywhere else in the world.”

“That’s California for you,” Suzanne said with abundant cheerfulness. “Speaking of California, I feel a pressing need for an avocado sandwich and green juice from that place in Healdsburg. I think I’ll say hello at Copperfield’s, too. Mari, you’re in charge for the rest of the day.”

“Thanks, Suzanne,” Leo said. “Judith sends her love.”

She patted his arm as she passed him, shouldering her battered woven purse. “Just be good to my chickie, huh? That’s all the gratitude I need.”