Сьюзен Виггз: The Lost and Found Bookshop

Now that Natalie was here, she could see how full her mom’s hands had been as Blythe tried to look after Grandy. Somehow, Natalie would have to take over his care. He insisted he could manage on his own, but she wasn’t so sure. There were appointments to be kept with his doctor and various specialists. Meds to be dispensed. Meals to be prepared. Housekeeping to be done. Looking around, she spied a half-dozen projects that would make the room nicer. A bright coat of paint. A bookcase within reach. Maybe do something about the hulking old radiator that reluctantly groaned to life in winter.

In the light from the garden window, her grandfather looked wonderful to her—tall and dignified, timelessly handsome in a tailored suit and crisp white shirt she’d stayed up late ironing the night before. She knew he wanted to look his best for the service. He tugged ineffectually at his necktie. “Help me with this, Blythe. I can’t . . . I don’t know how . . .” His words evaporated into a cloud of confusion.

“Let me help.” Standing in front of him, she looped the tie in a Windsor knot, something Grandy himself had taught her to do years before. The tie was vintage Hermès, a brilliant silk print in a sundial pattern. It was probably something her mother had found in a resale shop with her unerring nose for high-end fashion at low-end prices.

“It’s me, Natalie,” she said, her throat raw from crying. “Natalie. Your granddaughter.” It felt strange and horrible to have to explain who she was to a man who used to know her better than she knew herself.

“Of course,” he said agreeably. “You look just like your mother, only sometimes I think you’re even more beautiful. And my lovely daughter would be the first to agree with me.”

“Today is her memorial,” she reminded him, finishing the tie with a gentle tug. The idea was still too enormous to grasp. She felt as if she were swimming through a fog of grief and guilt, just trying to stay afloat. If only she hadn’t assumed her stupid company party had warranted a visit from her mother. If only she had been honest with Rick instead of waiting for him to conclude that their relationship had run its course. Instead, she had orchestrated the demise of her mother and a good man in his prime.

“There’s a car waiting out front.”

“A car . . . ?”

“The memorial,” she said again. “That’s why we’re all dressed up.”

He touched his necktie and gave her a blank look.

“Mom died, Grandy. I came as soon as I found out, and I’ve been here all week.” After learning the stunning news at Rick’s office, Natalie had jolted herself into a strange, mechanical fugue, getting into her car and driving straight down to the city to be with her grandfather. Though she scarcely remembered the drive, she kept reliving the moment she’d had to tell him. His face had lit up when she’d come through the door, and for a few precious seconds, she’d let him delight in a visit from his granddaughter.

Then she’d said the words that still didn’t seem real— Mom died in a plane crash.

Grandy had been uncomprehending, just as Natalie had been. Blythe couldn’t be gone. How could she be gone? How could she be stolen from the world, just like that?

It had taken several explanations before the understanding and deep horror penetrated his denial. A crack opened up—an earthquake. A great, unbreachable fissure. She could hear his poor heart shatter into pieces.

They had wept together, torn to bits by their shared grief. Days later, she still felt the aftershocks of the emotional devastation.

Andrew’s memory issues made a terrible situation worse. He had begun losing bits of himself—short-term memory, fine motor control, rational thinking. The doctors characterized the dementia as a mild form. Intermittent. Early stage—the awful implication being that it would progress. Increasing memory loss, disinhibition, hallucinations. Natalie’s mother had said Grandy got scared and confused sometimes, and other times, he seemed like his old self. He’d lost weight and suffered from headaches, tremors, and fatigue, which the care team couldn’t explain.

Natalie had not been prepared for how hard it was turning out to be. It made the current situation a fresh horror to him every time he forgot his daughter had been killed and had to be reminded. Did he feel the same wave of shock and grief all over again? Did he have to keep feeling that fresh pain? She couldn’t imagine having to experience the initial overwhelming stab of that first detonation of news, again and again.

Andrew took a breath. His face didn’t change. He scarcely moved. But his dark eyes reflected such an inexpressible sadness that Natalie flinched. “I know,” she whispered, taking his hand and leading him to the door. “It hurts all the time. Every waking moment.”

“Yes,” he said. “The pain is a reflection of how much we loved her.”

“You’ve always had a way with words.”

“Blythe said it runs in the family. She’s been reading Colleen’s journals.”

“Colleen. You mean your ancestor, the one who died in the 1906 earthquake?”

“The grandmother I never knew. My dear father was just seven years old when he lost her and was sent to an orphanage. He rarely spoke of that day, but I believe it haunted him all his life.”

Lately, Grandy had clearer memories of the distant past than he did of events that occurred five minutes ago. “I didn’t know about Colleen’s journals.”

“Blythe found them not long ago. I don’t know what she’s done with them.”

It was possible that the journals were a figment of Grandy’s imagination, since all they knew of Colleen O’Rourke Harper was that she’d immigrated from Ireland, had one son—Grandy’s father, Julius—and disappeared when the earthquake struck. The family history had been altered forever by a mysterious twist of fate.

Was that what happened to you and Rick, Mom? Natalie wondered. A twist of fate? Or had Natalie herself orchestrated it when she’d invited her mother to the company party? Every day, she wished she could snatch back that moment.

She paused at the hall tree by the door as her grandfather went through his familiar going-out routine. First, the soft, wispy neck cloth. Then the overcoat, the black fedora, and finally the cane. No umbrella needed today. It was foggy and damp but not raining. The bright yellow leaves of early autumn were decoupaged against the pavement.

He held the door for her and she stepped through. “Do you want the wheelchair?” she asked.

He hesitated, looking down at the chair, his face creased with pain. “No,” he said. “I’ll walk into my daughter’s memorial and stand to speak at the podium.”

The dignified response tore at her heart as she slowly led the way down the narrow hall, past a storage room stacked with books, through the back office, and then into the bookstore showroom.

When she was a girl, Natalie used to start each day by skipping through the shop, calling good morning to her favorites as she passed them—Angelina Ballerina, Charlotte and Ramona, Lilly and her purple plastic purse. Then she would let herself out to catch the bus to school. Now a big portion of the shop was littered inside and out with tributes and notes of sympathy from the many people who had known her mother.

The front door was hung with a Closed sign and a printed announcement of the memorial. a celebration of the life of blythe harper.

Why was it called that when the last thing a grieving daughter wanted was a celebration?

She opened the door and cleared a path through the piled tokens that had been spontaneously left there—bouquets of flowers, dog-eared novels and memorabilia, candles and handmade sketches and cards. The Lost and Found Bookshop had been a fixture on Perdita Street for as long as Natalie had been alive, and the sudden demise of its owner had inspired a huge, loving, and immensely sad reaction.