Page 61 of The Messengers of Magic

Chapter Forty-Two

S tepping into the bookshop, Adelaide glanced around the corner, hoping to catch another glimpse of the shadowy figure she’d seen in the window.

But, as always, only stillness greeted her, dusty quiet and soft shafts of morning light slanting through the front glass.

She sighed, brushing off the flicker of disappointment, and hung her jacket on the hook near the door.

That’s when she noticed it: a new letter, its corner poking through the tarnished copper flap of the letterbox. Her heart fluttered. Lifting the lid, she found not just a letter, but a thin leather-bound book tucked beside it. She drew them both out and unfolded the sheet of paper.

The familiar typewritten script stared back at her as she smoothed it out. She read the words aloud, her voice echoing softly in the empty shop.

“Seeing how the bookshop is yours now, I thought you might want to know a little bit about its past while creating its future. I think you’re just what it needs. This place seems to sing with you in it.”

A smile touched her lips. She folded the letter back up carefully and tucked it into her back pocket, planning to add it to the growing collection stored in a box at the cabin.

There was something about Ewan’s letters, something that didn’t quite match with the man she’d spent late nights laughing with over chips and pints.

On paper, he reached her in a way his spoken words never had.

Perhaps it was the romance of it all, the clandestine charm of finding typed notes in a creaky old letterbox, as if plucked from another time.

She wanted to ask him about them, but was afraid that if she did, it might break the enchantment of it all.

It was the sweetness that surprised her. But she understood. Some people only revealed their true selves through ink. She’d seen it before, with her mother.

After her father’s death, the house had fallen into silence.

Her mother had packed away her grief like a set of fragile teacups, tucked out of sight, too delicate to touch.

As a girl, Adelaide hadn’t understood. She’d wanted to know his stories, his favorite songs, how they met, something from before she existed. But nothing ever came.

It wasn’t until after her mother’s passing that the truth began to surface.

In drawers, behind old sweaters, buried beneath years of silence, she found the letters.

Piles of them. Pages softened by time and stained with tears.

Her mother had written to the man she’d lost, again and again.

Adelaide had spent her childhood thinking her mother had never let herself feel it.

But she had felt it, all of it. She’d just hidden it away, kept it secret, tucked deep where Adelaide wouldn’t see. She’d done it to be strong. For her.

A sadness crept over her at the thought of her mother’s heartache, and she pushed the sorrow to the back of her mind.

With a deep breath, she walked over to the wingback chair near the window with the book in hand and sat.

The leather was cold against her legs as she curled into it, the book resting on her lap.

She opened the cover. It wasn’t just any book. It was a journal. The first page was dated September 12th, 1931, with a name, Rowland, scribed at the bottom.

Her heart sank into her stomach. This was Rowland’s journal. She ran a hand over the edge of the page, a strange reverence stirring. How did Ewan come to have this? But that question could wait. She turned to the next page.

The early entries were scatterings of thoughts and sketches, plans to turn the building his uncle had left him into a bookshop.

He wrote with warmth about his childhood love of books, how he used to imagine a life spent surrounded by them.

That was the dream, and this place would be it, his own literary haven.

Further in, the entries became more detailed.

Floor plans, shelving ideas, notes about window light.

He wrote about meeting a man named Roger, who had helped him find a book dealer in London.

The purchase of all the books has cost him his inheritance.

“I’ve never felt poorer in coin,” one entry read, “but richer in purpose.”

She ran her finger over that line. This place had been built with love.

As she turned the pages, things began to get more interesting, more personal.

Rowland began writing about a woman who had opened a small tea shop across the way.

Adelaide didn’t need a name to know who he meant.

The way he described her, her smile as radiant as the summer sun, a glance that could undo a day’s weariness , left no doubt. Carolyn.

The sweetness of it pulled at something inside her. She had only ever known Carolyn, shaped by loss, by grief, by years lived alone. But here was a version of her that shimmered with youth, light, and laughter.

Rowland hadn’t found the courage to introduce himself to Carolyn, not yet. Instead, he’d just been admiring her from afar, tiptoeing toward the edge of something precious. She turned the page to the next entry. December 19th, 1931.

The last several weeks have been spent alone, and I feel more isolated than I have in a long time.

I had hoped that moving to Scotland and opening the bookshop would help me connect with new people, especially after losing so many friends during the war.

But even surrounded by customers, I feel utterly alone.

I’ve tried to build up the courage to ask Carolyn if she would like to go out with me, but I feel as though she is out of my league.

Such a beautiful woman wouldn’t be interested in a man like me, broken from the war, with a limp that never fully healed and scars that run deeper than the ones on my body.

Today, I wonder if it would have been better if I had perished with my friends on those blood-stained battlefields.

She closed the journal and set it aside on the windowsill. She felt like an intruder. Rowland hadn’t just shared his thoughts, he’d laid bare his pain. She wasn’t sure she had the right to read more.

Had Ewan read this? Did he know about Rowland’s grief and war-haunted sorrow? If there were deeper, more intimate confessions hidden within those pages, she wasn’t sure it was meant for anyone else to read. And how had he come by the journal at all? Had he found it here, in the shop?

She moved to the counter, her thoughts now clouded by unsettling questions when they should’ve been focused on the task at hand.

She picked up the coffee decanter Iain had given her and poured herself a cup into one of the mugs she’d borrowed from the shop and took a slow sip.

She reached for the box of donuts. It was open.

Had it been like that when she set it down earlier?

Her gaze flickered to the far corners of the shop, then back at the box, then she smiled. Had it been the ghost?

She was all but convinced now. The Feather Thorn was indeed haunted. And the stories around town didn’t seem far-fetched anymore. Odd happenings, vanishing shadows; it was the only explanation that made sense. Yet, the idea didn’t scare her.

If anything, it felt… reassuring. Like Rowland was still here, watching over the place he’d built. She chuckled to herself. Her very own Casper the Friendly Ghost.

“Help yourself to a donut,” she said to the empty room, taking one from the box. She broke it in half, dipped it into the steaming coffee, and took a bite.

Still, the journal occupied her thoughts. It sat on the windowsill like a beacon. Her conscience tugged one way, her curiosity the other.

No , she decided, I need to focus . She turned her back on it and found the phone book she’d borrowed from Carolyn.

Time to get back to work . Flipping through its thin yellowed pages, she found the number for the book dealer in Edinburgh and placed an order.

A mix of children’s titles: The Polar Express , Chicka Chicka Boom Boom , Anne of Green Gables , and a few adult titles that she’d loved that summer, purchased for the library in Glastonbury: The Remains of the Day , The Bonfire of the Vanities , Lonesome Dove .

With luck, they’d arrive before she opened at the end of November.

She turned her attention back to the children’s section.

The layout might have worked thirty years ago, but nowadays, children need space to sprawl, to play, to be loud.

She pictured a reading rug, a few low chairs in the corner, maybe a basket of wooden toys for restless hands while parents browsed.

The corner wall wrapping around the door had always felt dim, a pocket of gloom at the edge of the shop. Not a place for children. She’d chosen a mint green, reminiscent of frost-covered ivy, the perfect pick-me-up for the area.

Pulling her paint supplies over to the corner, she took down the old portrait of a wood duck that would not be going back up, and two small tapestries so worn and grimy, their patterns had all but disappeared.

Those, too, she set aside for the bin. She stirred the paint, poured it into the tray, and rolled out the first stripe.

The wall brightened with each stroke of the pale green, transforming the dark space into something more cheerful.

As she worked, she began to sing, “Just What I Needed” by The Cars. Fitting, really. The Feather Thorn had been just what she needed, a project, a purpose to pull herself out of the depths of sorrow and self-pity.

The paneled wall gleamed by the time she was done. The nook had taken on a new life, fresh, soft, and inviting. A perfect spot for a mother to curl up with a book and a giggling child.

Satisfied, she cleaned her brushes, packed away the paint, and poured herself another cup of coffee. Ian had been right; it was definitely more than a-two-cup kinda day. As she perched on the edge of the counter, nibbling on an apple turnover, her gaze kept drifting back to the windowsill.

There was no use fighting it. She’d tried to resist, but the pull hadn’t gone away. If anything, it had grown stronger. Maybe there were answers in those pages, about Rowland, about the shop, about whatever lingered within its walls. Maybe that was reason enough to read on.

She stood, crossed to the wingback chair, and settled into the worn leather seat. Then she opened the journal and began to read.