Сьюзен Виггз: The Lost and Found Bookshop

“I hope I can say the same about Grandy. Ever since he broke his hip, he hasn’t been the same. Maybe I’ll head down to the city tomorrow and pay him a visit.”

“I bet he’d love to see you.”

Natalie got up and carried their glasses to the patio bar. “And on that cheery note, I’ll let you get back to your family. I need to head home and spend some time figuring out what to do about the people who hate me.”

“Stop it.”

“I’ll try, Tess. I won’t let it get to me.”

* * *

As she drove back to town, Natalie repeated the words like a mantra. Don’t let it get to you.

The mantra didn’t work, so she switched on the car radio and sang along with Eddie Vedder while the sunset panorama of the countryside swished past. The song “Wishlist” had her compiling her own list of wishes. A different job. A different attitude. A different life.

“More on our breaking news story . . .” An announcer interrupted the next song.

Annoyed, she reached over to switch the station but stopped when she heard “Aviation Innovations.” That was Rick’s company.

“The FAA is investigating a crash of a small plane registered to Aviation Innovations in Lake Loma this afternoon,” the announcer said. “Both the pilot and passenger were apparently killed on impact. The names of the deceased are being withheld pending notification of the families.”

Natalie listened with gathering dread and a guilty sense of relief. It was Rick’s company, but the victim could not have been Rick. He was flying solo today, a test flight. She pulled off to the shoulder of the road and called him. No answer. Then she sent a quick text message to him. I just heard about the crash. I’m sorry. Anyone you knew?

There was no reply, so she continued driving. It had to be someone he knew. It was a small company, after all. She might even know the victim. She and Rick had socialized with some of the other pilots, going on wine-tasting flights and scenic tours. She found herself wondering if life with Rick was really so bad. He was steady. Predictable. Reliable. Everything she valued.

On impulse, she turned off the main road and drove to the Aviation Innovations headquarters. The parking lot was jammed with official vehicles and people rushing around. She looked for Rick in the crowd—a squeaky clean–cut all-American guy with big shoulders, a clipped haircut, and a nice smile.

She didn’t spot him amid the personnel swarming the main building and the hangars. Then she spied Miriam, his assistant, sitting on the front steps, talking on her phone.

Miriam looked up and saw Natalie. “I’ll call you back,” she said into her phone.

“Hey, I just heard,” Natalie said. “I came to see if Rick got back yet.”

Miriam took hold of the stair rail and drew herself up. “Natalie . . .” The woman’s face was as white as the puffy clouds sailing over the Sonoma hills.

Natalie stopped in her tracks. Dread dawned in stages—confusion and disbelief, then flat-out denial. “It wasn’t Rick,” she said. Her voice sounded harsh, almost mean. Probably how she sounded at work, come to think of it.

“Oh, Natalie. It’s terrible. Horrible. I’m so sorry. I can’t even . . .” Miriam reached for her hand. “Come sit.”

Natalie flinched and snatched her hand away. “I don’t need to sit. I need . . . I . . . I . . .” She had no idea what she needed in this surreal, unbearable moment. She took a gulp of air. “He said he was going to be gone for the day. Yeah. Said he wouldn’t make it to my party at work. He was on a test flight. Oh God, did he crash during the test? Did . . . did—”

“It . . . It wasn’t a test flight.”

“Then he’s okay?” Natalie was desperate for that to be true.

Panic glinted in Miriam’s eyes. She seemed to have trouble meeting Natalie’s gaze. Then she took a deep breath. “He, um . . . He had a passenger.”

“I heard that on the news, yes.” Natalie’s mind raced. Oh God. Rick.

His parents lived in Petaluma. He had a sister there, too. Natalie had met her just a few weeks back—Rita? No, Rhonda. “Should I go see his folks?” she asked Miriam. “Is someone with them now?” Her heart hammered furiously. Her hands were clammy, her lungs aching for air.

Rick was gone. How could he be gone? They had dinner plans tomorrow night at the French Laundry in Yountville. She’d been agonizing over the talk they needed to have about the fact that the relationship didn’t seem to be working. She had been wondering which one of them would step up and end things.

How could he be gone?

“Natalie, I really need you to sit.” Miriam put a hand on her shoulder and steered her to the blond limestone steps in front of the low, modern building. Her touch was firm, yet Natalie could feel her hands shaking.

“Yes, okay. I’m . . . I guess everybody’s in shock . . .” She noticed a few others casting glances her way, whispering.

“He had a passenger,” Miriam said again. “She died, too.”

“Oh. Well, that’s terrible.” Her mind was racing. Running away from something too awful to grasp. She. Another woman? Was Rick cheating?

Not anymore , she thought. And then hated herself for thinking it.

Miriam turned to her. Held both her hands in a firm grip. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know how to . . . oh God. The other passenger was your mother .”

Time stopped. Everything stopped—breath, heartbeat, the turning of the Earth, the wind through the trees, the swarm of approaching personnel. Natalie forced herself to listen to Miriam’s explanation, struggled to take in the words while at the same time feeling everything inside her rise up in furious denial. This couldn’t be happening, but as more people drew around her, she felt the devastating electric shock of certainty.

She stared at the woman who had just said her mother was dead, but she really couldn’t see anything through the blindness of shock. And then it came, a pain so excruciating that she was flash frozen in white numbness, shot through the heart.

3

“Grandy.” Natalie spoke her grandfather’s name softly, with as much gentleness as she could muster. “It’s time to go.”

As she stepped through the door, Andrew Harper rose from his favorite wingback chair in his tiny apartment at the back of the bookstore. He could no longer navigate the stairs in the old building and had moved to the new space from the upstairs apartment where he’d lived nearly all his life. The small ground-floor studio had been reclaimed from a storage room. The hurried arrangement wasn’t ideal, but it spared her grandfather from having to leave his lifelong home. Though the space was cramped, there was a picture window with a view of the tiny rear garden, now bright with the last of the season’s hollyhocks and roses.

Curving a hand over the top of his cane, he turned to her. A sweet smile lifted the corners of his mouth. “Ah, there you are, Blythe. I’ve been waiting for you. How nice you look. Is that a new frock?”

Natalie’s heart swelled as she crossed the room to him. Grandy had always been an immovable fixture in her life. From earliest memory, he had been present, restoring old books in the basement or chatting up customers in the shop. In the evening, he read stories aloud to her while she snuggled up to him, breathing in his comfortable scent of shaving lotion. She had learned wisdom and kindness through his gentle example.

And now he needed her. In the past week, he had frequently mistaken Natalie for her mother. Maybe the grief was too enormous to bear, and his failing mind had embossed Natalie’s face with her mother’s features. Though several days had passed since the shattering news, there were many moments when he refused to accept that his daughter—his only child—was gone.