Сьюзен Виггз - The Lost and Found Bookshop

He sat on the bed. “No, thank you.”

She wished there were something she could say to comfort him, but she couldn’t think of a single thing. “I’ll be upstairs,” she said. “Holler if you need anything at all.”

Leaning down, she kissed him on the forehead, then lingered in the doorway as he sat motionless for a moment. Then he cupped his face in his hands and his shoulders shook. She had an urge to go to him, but there was something private and unreachable about him. A moment later, he carefully took out his hearing aids and set them in a box on the nightstand.

Natalie quietly left the room. She returned to the shop, took down the placard announcing the memorial, and put it in the recycle bin. The mounds of flowers and tributes around the door could be dealt with in the morning.

As she turned to make her way up the hall stairs to the apartment, a knock at the door startled her. Someone else offering condolences? Another vegan quinoa casserole or batch of cookies?

Glare from the inside lights obscured the visitor. He or she was in the main entrance to the shop rather than the residential entryway next door.

She unlocked the door and came face-to-face with a person she scarcely recognized. Dean Fogarty was older now, but still tall and well-built, his blond hair faded though styled with an expensive-looking cut. Back in the day, when Natalie’s mother had been swept into an illicit romance with this man, he must have been quite a looker.

“Natalie,” he said. “I read about Blythe in the Examiner . I’m . . . what a shock. I’m so sorry.”

She wanted to be alone with her heavy, exhausting sadness. No, she wanted her mother. And that made her even sadder. With a vague gesture, she invited her father in.

They didn’t hug or shake hands or touch other than with a glance. Their status was too undefined for anything more. When she was a little girl, Dean had paid her the occasional visit, but even then, it felt awkward, as if they were strangers forced together in a too-crowded space.

“Do you want to sit?” She indicated the shop’s coffee nook.

“Thank you.”

She took the cover off a plastic dish. “Help yourself to cookies. People have been bringing food over for days.”

“How are you doing?” he asked.

She’d been in a fog since the moment she learned of the crash. But he was not the person to share her burdens with. “Still in shock,” she said. “I’m trying to focus on my grandfather now.”

“I’m glad you and Andrew have each other. I’ve never been there for you and your mother. I wish I had been. You both deserved better.”

Natalie hesitated. Now? she thought. You want to unburden yourself now? Oh, dude . . .

“Mom did,” Natalie agreed.

“I’ll always regret that I never found a way to have you in my life,” he said.

“Yeah, kind of hard when you have a wife and three kids at home.”

He winced. “I was so fucking stupid. I have so many damn regrets.” He paused, then asked, “Did she . . . did Blythe ever speak of me?”

“Let’s not do this,” Natalie said. “Let’s not make this all about you. You could have asked Mom anytime in the past three decades. What do you suppose she would have said—that you’re the guy who banged her and gaslighted her about wanting to spend the rest of your life with her? She didn’t pine for you, Dean.” Guys wanted to imagine their exes pining for them.

She studied his face, still aging-movie-star handsome. Begging for absolution. Yearning to believe he had not done the damage they both knew he’d caused. Natalie was too exhausted to summon bitterness now. “Look, if you’re here for some kind of redemption, it’s not mine to give. Mom found her happiness. She loved the store, and judging by the turnout at her memorial, she was surrounded by friends.”

“She was a fantastic person, and I know she was a great mother to you.” He flexed and unflexed his hands. Looked around the shop at all the trinkets and tributes people had left.

Natalie sensed that he wanted to talk more. She didn’t. “It’s been a long day,” she said.

He took the hint and got up. “Could we . . . maybe get coffee sometime?”

“I’ve got a lot on my plate,” she said.

“I get it. Take care, Natalie,” he said.

“I will.”

She stood motionless as he let himself out, disappearing into the shadows. The man was walking, talking proof that relationships were nothing but uncertainty. The only thing certain about a relationship was that it would end. Could be that was the reason her mother never bothered getting into one in the first place.

Natalie’s earliest memory of Dean Fogarty was just after she had turned five. Her mother had said a man named Dean was coming to meet her. Dean was her father.

“Is he coming to live with us?” Natalie had asked.

“ No. God, no. You don’t have to meet him, baby. Only if you want to.”

Natalie had shrugged, unsure of what she wanted, but curious. So she said okay. He had a smiling mouth with very white teeth, and serious eyes that didn’t smile at all. He brought her a birthday gift bag, even though her birthday had been the week before. She had accepted it with a bashful thank you . He and her mom exchanged tensely murmured words, and he’d thrust something into her hand. After he’d left, she looked at her mother and saw that she was wiping away tears. “Why are you crying?” she asked. It frightened her to see her mother cry.

“I had such a lovely father, growing up. I wish you had a father like Grandy.”

“I do have Grandy. I don’t want Dean to come back. He makes you sad.”

“No, baby, he doesn’t. I just want to make sure I’m enough for you.”

You were enough, Mom , she thought now. I hope you knew that. I hope I was enough for you.

A few years after that visit, she’d joined the Little Kickers Soccer League. At the first practice, she’d seen Dean Fogarty again. He was, to her horror, one of the coach’s helpers, and his son was on the team. Getting through that first practice was agony, and when she got home, she told her mother she was never going back.

“I don’t like seeing him with his real kid,” she explained.

“You’re a real kid,” her mother had said.

“It’s not the same,” Natalie said.

Blythe had gathered her into a hug and whispered, “It’s not the same. It’s better. It’s better with just the two of us.”

“Does his other family know about us?”

“Do you want them to?”

“No!”

She never went back to the soccer league. Through the years, Dean came with gifts and a smile that was soft with regret, and eyes hungry with wishes, like the shop cat just before feeding time. Natalie tried to think of him as something more than a benign stranger, a customer stopping in for the latest bestseller, but she was never able to picture him as her dad.

Now the scent of flowers hung as heavy as old remembrances in the air. Natalie massaged the back of her neck, aching with sadness and fatigue. She dimmed the shop lights and set the security system. There were two entrances to the building: the grand foyer leading to the shop, and a street-level private door where the mail came in, with a stairway leading to the apartment where she’d lived as a girl.

Natalie used to envy her friends who lived in actual houses with big yards and swing sets and garages filled with scooters and bikes. Now that San Francisco’s real estate market had exploded in value, this ramshackle old structure was probably one of the most desired addresses in the neighborhood. With its historic charm and detail, the Sunrose Building, as it was called, was undoubtedly candy corn for real estate developers. The name of the building apparently came from a detail at the roofline—a winking sun. The bookstore’s sign and logo incorporated the image. The shop’s signature bookmark, printed on the old letterpress and given out with every purchase, bore the image with the slogan An Eye for Good Books .