The stories we carry 1

You are listening to the audio production of The Stories We Carry by Robin W. Pearson, published by Tindale House Publishers. This book is read by Megan Tusing to Eddie Tuck and Roll.

Come, let us return to the Lord. He has torn us to pieces. Now he will heal us. He has injured us. Now he will bandage our wounds. Hosea 6:1.

Come and see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could he possibly be the Messiah? John 4:29.

This small garden is half my world. I am nothing to it. When all is said, I plant the thorn and kiss the rose. But they will grow when I am dead. And Spencer, part one, dog-eared pages.

Chapter 1.

It was Glory's childhood friend who introduced her to Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, her all-time favorite book. She determined to become one of the Logans, bold and full of sass, for she surely loved as fiercely as they did, and she wanted to protect her family just as much—her big brother in particular. Her only brother and hero. The difference was they played for keeps, and Glory had lost big time.

Her bestie was also the first to redefine the word drunk to give it a brand new, sinister definition when she'd hissed it. Her breath hot in Glory's ear and smelling nutty and cinnamony like the waffle cone they'd taken bites of. Instead of "she'd drunk a whole glass of Kool-Aid," Glory's friend made it a noun, and a proper noun at that, with a name and a familiar face: Glory's larger-than-life brother, Davis. Ten years old at the time, just a year older than her favorite character.

Glory had no idea what that word and its consequences looked like. Her churchgoing mama and daddy never would have allowed such a person or activity to abide in their home, let alone anything other than the kind of alcohol they dabbed on their daughter's skinned knees. But once her classmate had whispered its meaning, Glory had dropped both scoops of her prized ice cream and their friendship. The girl had just enjoyed the telling a little too much, even to Glory's inexperienced mind. After all, a dog who brings a bone carries a bone. Something Mama had made clear, though the woman hadn't explained much else.

Now six months shy of sixty-four years old, Glory knew that the man staggering across Spring Church Road was toing something other than bones toward the maple tree chair and blanket he considered home. He led her to wonder yet again what had become of her brother. Because her ten-year-old self was right. Her folks hadn't permitted anything but tea-totallers in their holy and sanctified existence. Wondering and worrying were about as close as the middle-aged Glory would ever come to praying for Davis, or for herself, or anyone else. Both were wasted efforts that took her to the same dead-end street.

It was working that drove her to the answers she needed. Yet she couldn't help but hope that perhaps her brother had managed to scratch out a living in some other small North Carolina town like Glory's, that he'd come back to himself, and used that grin and winsome nature to help him turn things around. Hoping was all she'd had the courage to do. Her guilt kept her from finding out if he'd ever become a hero to somebody else.

"Oh, there's Verell with the kids. Where they been all this time since school let out? I'm glad to see his daddy ran a comb through that poor child's head. They walk right by the barber shop every day. Wouldn't take no time to pop in."

Realizing she'd been absent-mindedly fiddling with the tattered edges of the page resting in her poem, she looked down and again read, "The shadows gave chase at our first step as we hurried through the moon's evening light. Our pulses throbbed and our hearts they leapt at the beauty only childhood perceives. We didn't know to seek wisdom's former ways before the matters end or takes its beginnings. We revel in the now, lost then in youth's haze. And those moments, they were better than these."

No, there was no way her brother could be on this side of the dirt. Or was there? Eyes almost shut against the tears that threatened, Glory peered through her lashes into the late afternoon sun. Her brain barely registered the man as he stumbled around the corner and disappeared behind By the Book. Her home that doubled as her bookstore.

Sitting there in her favorite position in her decades-old business, she set one label after another on her metal scale, offsetting its weight against her guilt before dismissing it in favor of another, more pernicious, heavier name to call herself—something more fitting for what she had done, for all she had left undone, what those forthright characters from Roll of Thunder would never have done, though it was so like them to revel in the now and make the most of each moment.

Gloria imagined her once-upon-a-time best friend flipping her ponytails over her shoulders, cupping her hand over somebody else's ear, and muttering, "Poacher! Thief!" She wondered what other names she would call me if she knew.

"Liar, impostor, honey bun, Glory." Eli's voice, nearly swallowed up by the thousands of volumes on the surrounding shelves, elicited a sigh of gratitude from deep within her. She welcomed the distraction her husband tended to present, and she shed the self-condemning words like old skin, though her heart still felt tender and exposed. This painful habit of name-calling would reclaim her thoughts the next day, and the one after that, the moment she took up her afternoon roost by her front window.

"Fredding had become her daily ritual, the moment Eli had broached another scary word. 'Leave, Baby girl, where are you?' His baritone ricocheted off the plastered walls of the back stairwell, connecting their third-floor living quarters with the first two floors that comprised their store. 'I'm where I always am this time of day. You want to know where I am, Eli? I'm where I'm going to stay.'"

Her thoughts always slipped into the vernacular from her childhood when she was deep in conversation with herself—another longtime habit of hers. She cocked up a bejeweled ear to make sure her husband wasn't close enough to hear her and muttered, "Now, don't come down here talking more of your nonsense," before shaking her head. But Glory smiled a little because this game, their game, was more fun than the one she'd been engaged in when she was sitting by her lonesome.

That man. She tucked the poem back into the book she'd torn it from, but it no longer fit perfectly, and the feathery light paper's corners extended past the others. Using the glossy, squared tips of her fingernails, she pressed a braided red cord deep into the gutter until only the fringed end of her handcrafted bookmark protruded from between the pages like a telltale splotch of blood.

When Glory closed the precious book with a soft thump, it seemed to exhale, and she took an appreciative whiff of long-ago days. Her mouth puckered as she tapped along the gold-stitched diamonds crisscrossing the hardcover, as if she was about to blow a kiss to the author, and she tsked, "But I'm not playing with you, Eli Prior." Setting her bracelets a-tinkling, Glory rested a silk-draped arm along the back of her chair and clasped the scarred, black cloth-like cover to her chest. The sense of freshly brewed coffee and warm something or other. "Is that more snickerdoodles?" wafted from the kitchen and back and mingled with the mustiness of the first edition that was dying at about the same pace she was.

Winking at her faint reflection in the wavy, 100-year-old window pane, she vowed, "Mhm, I see you there, and you're not going nowhere either." Despite what Eli might say about it, Glory couldn't say whether it was her primity old self or the sprawling historic tutor that had sheltered her and her books from many a storm. Regardless, Glory Prior meant every word. No way was she going to part with this place. It was who she was. Resolved.

Glory's vermilion-colored lips compressed as she smoothed the orange, gold, red, and blue fabric of her muumuu across her narrow, well-arranged lap, and gazed at their children, as she and Eli dubbed their inventory. When it first struck her years ago that these books would be her only babies and grandbabies, and nephews and nieces, it had landed as a gut punch. The passage of time had nearly wrung the pain from this designation, and these days she suffered only a quick yank of her heartstrings. No prolonged ache made the organ thud instead of beat in her bosom against the book she was now pressing to it, and it merely took a moment or two to resume its normal rhythm. Thank goodness she had Eli now, and he was good in plenty.

Glory listened to the faint thumping of her husband's steps in the back of the house where he must have headed after coming downstairs. Eli was up to his usual antics, which accounted for the tempting smell of cookies. Their baker, Oilia, would have a fit when she came back to work and found he'd been clippity-clopping all through her kitchen. Even though Glory considered the not-so-old troll both friend and family, the woman brooked no interference when it came to whipping up goodies; Oilia took her work for the bookstore's cafe to heart.

"You'd better leave your cousin's domain, or she'll have your head. If you know like I know, you'll join me by my window, my dear." She always said "dear" that way when it came to her precious Eli. By this time of day, Glory found herself near or on this pale yellow two-seater, its burgundy and green stripes worn to a soft sheen. She'd staked a claim on the overstuffed chair two decades earlier in the back of downtown Cheapskate, a thrift store around the corner that carried the castoffs from the town's few well-to-do families. The moment she'd laid eyes on it, she'd known its unusual L-shaped back would fit just so, wedged into the corner of her bookstore's large front room. For longer than Glory could remember, the sofa provided the ideal vantage point for her to peek through the triple-cased window without being seen by folks on the other side of the glass. Perched on its oversized, tufted cushions, she kept time by monitoring the birds or passersby who and whatever happened to be crossing Church Road. She didn't have to look at her watch to know when no Emmy was locking up Pearline's jewels on her right, or when that man with his bottle would be making his way from Hillman's in the middle of town with his free plate. "Let's see. Today is Wednesday, so it must be barbecue and cole slaw to hunker down for the rest of the evening. I should take him something sweet before we turn in for the night. Whatever Eli is cooking up," she decided.

At last, Eli's footsteps clumped from the rear, his voice hitching a ride to each heel-toe. "I'm bringing you a cup of coffee. I need you to try it." Glory crooked a silver-streaked brow. "Now, you know better than that. I thought you were brewing some for yourself. First he tries to take the store from me, and now my Earl Grey. This man must be losing his ever-loving mind."

Eli sent a throaty chuckle ahead of him as if it would extract a piece prior to his arrival. Since her husband had started working with her full-time after he'd sold his marketing firm, Eli would squeeze in beside her some days, his coffee mug propped on a crossed knee that was grazing hers. If folks had a mind to mill through the aisles and rooms of By the Book at this hour, she'd leave her husband to hover over their guests, straining shelves, dusting archways, and asking pointed questions to direct their search. All so she could wrap up business by 6 p.m. sharp, and send them home with the perfect read. If pressed, she advised them to return Saturday, when she and Eli closed later at 8:00. On weekdays, they locked their heavy front door at the same time as the bank, along with the other stores and offices on either side of this old section of Spring Church.

If By the Book was empty, and she had a moment to herself on a late afternoon such as this one, she lounged in her corner, half of her attending to a book, and the other to the window. She liked being up front, especially since it was getting a might harder to hear the tinkling of the ancient bell triggered by the opening of the door in the entryway. Whoever ignored the prior store hours, brandished on the plaque mounted on the brick wall, and depressed the antique brass latch on the weathered oak door deserved to be greeted right off. So Gloria positioned herself like an eagle in its roost, ready to swoop down and take care of business—her business.

Situated in one of the largest and quirkiest buildings still standing between the Ebenezer Baptist Church at the top of the street and the courthouse at its end before it curved to the more commercial areas of Gilmore. The floorboards creaked, informing Glory that her husband had at last crossed the threshold between the hall and the front room where she sat. She wedged the book under her cushion and angled away from the window to give Eli and his suspicious brew her full attention. Her eyes widened when they landed on the cup, clinking against the matching saucer in his large hand.

"Good gracious, darling. I know, I know. But I need to ask your taste buds a question, seeing as how particular they are. If we're going to serve that coffee cake this weekend, we need to provide the right accompaniment." Eli's right hand extended the coffee to her. The other palm balanced two small plates barely big enough to hold the hefty squares of cake. Reaching out both her hands to carefully accept his offering to the merry tune her bracelets played, Glory snorted. "Snickerdoodles after lunch and cake before dinner? What is this world of mine coming to? There was a time when I only snacked on cucumber slices and tomato sprinkled with black pepper and salt. These hips of mine don't know what to do with you and Oilia. And I take it mama's favorite cup is the right accompaniment."

Over a half-century ago, her mother had saved up a month's worth of coupons from the Wind Dixie supermarket and picked out a porcelain six-piece play setting—cups, saucers, dinner plates, and bowls—along with a chafing dish. All decorated with light green vines and hints of blue. They'd sat on the top two shelves of her parents' chiffer, and her mama would bring them out every Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas to grace their secondhand kitchen table. Dileia insisted on washing them herself before wrapping them in brown paper and returning them to the safety of her bedroom.

One hot July afternoon, Glory had pulled up a chair to her parents' wardrobe and sneaked a cup from its tucked-away place. Her brother was out with friends, and she'd grown tired of entertaining herself. As she took a sip of her imaginary tea, her mama had caught her unawares with a tap on the shoulder, and the cup had slipped from the tips of Glory's fingers. "Those idle hands can't do wrong and get by," Mama had clucked, ever ready with an axiom, and able to mix and match them skillfully. "What's done in the dark?" She'd hummed the rest like the church mothers rocking in the front pews. Glory had squinted into the dust motes, dancing over her mama's shoulder, and tried to decipher her meaning. Nothing much got by Dia or that god of hers, no matter the time of day.

Despite Glory's protests and promises to reattach the handle with a blob of Elmer's rubber cement, Mama had dropped the precious cup in the trash bin in the kitchen, her eyes glistening, and her mouth a straight line. Glory had held on to the one remnant of those holiday dinners more tightly than she'd gripped that grocery store porcelain years ago. And here was her husband, daring to serve her some coffee, of all things, in one of the few tangible memories she'd managed to salvage of her childhood.

Her hands trembled a bit, and the steamy, light-brown liquid sloshed over the side of the cup into the saucer. With a grace and agility that belied his size, Eli quickly set down the plates of cake on the deep window sash behind Glory, and squeezed into the empty space to her left. He enveloped her frail frame and steadied her hand with his warm one. "You all right? I can get you a different one."

"No, hun. I was just thinking Dileia Gibson must be having a fit wherever she is, seeing me drink out of this," she laughed, wondering if her mama had ever shed tears over her daughter's brokenness or the cups.

"Wherever she is," Eli murmured, his eyes thoughtful as he repeated her phrase. "Can't bring yourself to say heaven, can you? Or hell." Glory no longer counted herself among the praying persuasion. Still, she was well aware of her options. "But what I can do is bring myself to try this coffee of yours along with a bite of cake." She adjusted its position to avoid the chipped edge and took a small sip. "Huh? I will say it's not mud."

Her husband abruptly withdrew his arm. Glory threw her head back and let out a laugh that was twice as wide and half as long as she was, and short-lived once she saw his expression. She grasped his knee and waggled it back and forth, mindless of the coffee splashing into the saucer. "Baby, I'm just teasing you. You know I love myself some Earl Grey, but this coffee has given it a run for the money." Still smiling, she slurped from the saucer first and then from the cup, unwilling to waste a drop of his loving effort, though it didn't hold a candle to her tea.

"What is that? Hazelnut tickling my tongue." Eli looked as though he'd grown and harvested the beans himself. "I knew I could rely on those buds of yours."

"Yes, it's hazelnut. I think it'll taste good with the cake, and imagine how it'll smell in the shop. Books and brew. We're not serving beers, love. But I see your meaning." She hid her moue of distaste and set the cup gently on the deep windowsill, exchanging it for the second plate he'd brought her. That cake would ease the taste in her mouth along with the memories that were more bitter than the coffee grounds.

"Eli, I'm surprised you're looking for ways to help the business." Glory took a bite and choked down her resentment. He reached for his own cake, his knee bumping hers.

"Why? Because I'm trying to get you to retire. That doesn't mean I don't want to have some fun while it lasts. To ensure the success of the bookstore." Eli picked out a pecan with his fork.

"So, we can command a better price if we sell it." Glory's fork clanked to the plate, appetite dissipating.

"No, because this is my child, too. And I'm only asking you to leave it for a while. Later, we can sell it." That word again. "But you didn't birth this baby. I did. It's the only family I have."

Eli stopped chewing. Glory huffed, regretting her words, and searched for a way to stem the flow from the wound she'd inflicted. She wrapped her fingers around his wrist, hoping her softened tone and gentle touch would dab at his sore spots. "What I meant was it was the only family I had until you came into my life."

"Came back into your life. You mean we've been married almost five years now, Glory? Didn't it become our baby when we said our vows?" He slipped his free hand into hers. Glory squeezed his fingers, studying the wisps of gray hair growing on his knuckles.

"But I reared By the Book by myself for thirty of these past thirty-five. That's a lot of years of nursing and tending to and rocking this baby to sleep all on my own. And you're trying to make me let it go. What kind of mother would I be if I sold By the Book on your say-so? That would be the worst of times." She picked up his unfinished copy of A Tale of Two Cities he'd stowed on the windowsill and waggled it. But her attempt at a joke seemed to fall short.

"But what kind of wife will you be if you hold on to it? This store is killing me, Glory. You've got to make a choice. The fully grown baby or the baby-step daddy." Eli plopped the last forkful of cake into his mouth, obviously pleased with himself and his argument.

Chapter 2.

Eli and Glory had exchanged vows on a sunny January day, a few weeks before her fifty-ninth birthday. He'd nipped her on the ear and purred, "I fell for you way back in kindergarten, but it took fifty years for you to fall for me." He'd pressed her so close to him, it raised more than a few eyebrows in their small, out-of-the-way area of the state. But many folks were extremely happy for the older woman who'd once called herself gloriously single when she'd suggested they read Agatha Christie's Miss Marple series during her woman's book club. Little did they know it was resignation, not pride, that had inspired her declaration. And it was gratitude, not rebellion, that had motivated her to pull Eli even more tightly to her on their wedding day.

"Right there in front of God and everybody," Reverend McCcluskey was heard to say, looking put out with his Bible in his lap. He had the best view of all the prior carrying-on from the front row of white wooden folding chairs. The minister had no professional duties to perform, since Glory had procured a local magistrate to do the honors, despite Eli's fervent request to ask a local preacher to marry them.

"Why? I'm as much a stranger to a man wearing a robe as I am to a man in a suit," Glory had responded curtly, as they'd nailed down their plans. "But I have it on good authority there's another man who knows you quite well, and I'd like him to marry us." Eli pointed toward heaven. "Well, you can ask him to come. He can sit on either side." Glory ended the discussion with a kiss, then hunted down and secured the highest and most scenic spot in Gilmore, North Carolina.

Instead of exchanging vows at the altar of the Baptist church, or that belonging to another denomination, Gloria and Eli had erected a flower-covered arbor overlooking the other hamlets in the neighboring foothills, including Hickory Grove. They'd welcomed friends, guests from By the Book, and the remaining members of Eli's family—at least who he'd known about at the time. She'd welcomed one and all, even the man who'd sought shelter behind her home. He'd showered at a local gym and found a seat six rows back. Celebrating her marriage to the love of her life was worth setting a few tongues to wagging.

"Can you believe she's wearing what did she call it? Caramel. No, she said it was cinnamon. I knew it was a color named for a food. But why not white like other brides?"

"It's called cayenne. And it's because I'm not like other brides," Glory had retorted when she heard all the chatter. She had every right to wear white, but she relished the hullabaloo over her chiffon gown that floated in layers to brush the sparkly high heels strapped around her ankles. It served to bring more people to buy the book. They just had to take a gander at the wild woman who'd snagged the dashing widower and married him outside in January of all things.

Sitting beside her husband that afternoon in front of the bookstore's wide window, Glory set their plates beside the coffee cups and reminded him of her words. "I'm the kind of wife who holds on to who and what I love. And that includes this store run by, you know me. Why can't we travel more and leave By the Book in Oilia's capable hands? She's run her own bakery storefront, and she hasn't started her food truck yet. I bet she can manage it, especially with her twin's help. Why must I sell the whole kitten-kaboodle?" She caressed his cheek and kissed him, planting a glistening bright splotch at the corner of his mouth. "You wouldn't be jealous now, would you?"

He turned his head and caught her lips as she pulled back. "Of some brick, timber, and stone. Of course not. We talked about this for two years before we got married, so it shouldn't come as a surprise, Glory—our eventual move. Aside from developing an allergy to this musty old house and the pain in my knees from climbing three flights of stairs, I simply love my family more than these stacks of paper and this mound of brick. Don't you?"

Glory waved a hand as if shoeing a fly. "Hush now, spouting all that nonsense. We in the literary world would call that hyperbole. You're just being dramatic. And this other family you're talking about is still hypothetical. While my family members, the ones you're living with, are very real. What's real is the new path I want us to forge together, instead of simply walking side by side in our old ones." The book lover and Glory couldn't help but admire his metaphor, even as she turned a shoulder to him and stacked their abandoned dessert plates and saucers for him to carry. This freed her hands to take his cup and, more importantly, hers to the kitchen. Her mama's treasure deserved her full attention, and if it was possible, she would have borne it with both hands.

Slanted toward the window, she spied a hand turning a sign on the door of the day spa across the street to read, "Sorry, we're closed," and pulling down the shade. "It's not even 5:30. Her wife was feeling poorly over the weekend. I sure hope nothing's happened." While she hated to break her afternoon window-gazing routine, Glory thought it best to avoid further discussion of putting her place on the market. She strode toward the back of the store with lifted chin and long, straight back, her vibrantly colored muumuu billowing around her ankles and her slides flapping against the soles of her feet. How could she talk about something that was out of the question?

Eli wasn't so quick to follow. Glory plopped a thick wedge of cake onto a paper plate and sealed it with a double wrap of plastic. She kept a stack of disposables for the man she'd come to call Dude, so he could easily throw everything away when he was done without having to bother with holding on to it for her sake. He had enough concerns without carrying hers, too. He didn't always stay there between By the Book and Pearline's Jewels. It depended on the weather and the season, how far his bottle took him, or the direction his mood blew. Glory often wondered who his people were, and whether or not he stayed with them on the days when he could walk a straight line, and his eyes were clear, whether Dude missed them, or they missed him. He was a good-looking man of some age, she had yet to determine. Since her hair had turned almost completely silver in her 40s, she knew better than to assign a year to the gray streaking through Dude's mustache and a beard that resembled barbed wire. All Glory knew about the lean and lanky fellow who'd stumbled into town a year or so before she married was that he had a sweet tooth, and that like her, he loved to read—when he wasn't sleeping off the other things she knew about him. His love for spirits, what he apparently carried with him in a brown bag, the kind her long-ago friend had whispered about. And the right reverend probably preached on every Sunday. Just as Glory couldn't identify whatever he put to his lips, she never knew what to call him. So she named him Dude without the "the" and with a capital D out of respect. From time to time, he even answered to it.

Glory tucked a thick paper bag under her arm, barely able to press it to her side with her elbow before she tapped across the terracotta tile floor to the heavy steel door in the back of their large, commercially outfitted kitchen. After disengaging the lock, she opened it wide enough to slip out to the rear porch. She stood there a minute, her backside against the door, soaking in the warm evening air and a few seconds of alone time. After nearly six decades of enjoying her own company, intertwining her days and nights with somebody else's was taking some getting used to. Even if that somebody else was her precious Eli, who she'd waited for all her days without knowing it. Whenever she sat alone by the front window or immersed herself in a favorite book, a part of her felt she was stealing time from him, especially since he'd retired a smidge too early by her thinking. She'd never prevented him from joining her in managing a business she could run with her painted pinky toe and her eyes covered with a silk handkerchief, but she hadn't asked him either. Not that she minded her husband's help, his keen insight. Eli came up with reconfigurations, as he called them—ideas that she'd never considered, and they were much appreciated.

Glory sighed. But still, the small back porch peered into a small patch of grass and an alleyway. Behind the area, a shoulder-high fence ran from one end to the other of the row of buildings in this part of Gilmore, named after the family who'd owned the approximate 700 acres it was situated on. Many said the founders built the town between a rock and a hard place with its view of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The mayor had erected the fence as part of his beautification project a decade ago to hide the railroad tracks, a graveyard, the stoneworks, and broken-down abandoned houses. Tree branches curled over sections of board, and people had hoed and dug and seated and painted, personalizing their property, whether they rented or owned, lived or worked in it. During their courtship, Glory had enlisted Eli to build large planters to the right of the back door. On the left, under the gnarly, outstretched arms of a red maple tree, Dude had set up for the night.

When a mosquito landed on her hand, she slapped it, making the plate she carried wobble dangerously. As she moved her foot to steady the dish, the door swung closed with a decisive thunk. She tugged on it despite knowing it locked automatically from the inside. Immediately, she pictured her keys hanging on their hook. "Shoot."

"Is that for me?" Mercy. Glory's free hand tried to restrain her racing heart as she whirled toward the low voice behind her. The book fell to the pavement with a splat, but she caught the cake for the second time. As she squatted to scoop up her battered copy of How Green Was My Valley, she heard the creek and crinkle of movement and the scraping of approaching feet.

"Let me help you." One grizzled hand reached for the book, and the other extended a palm. Glory took a second to notice clean, barely-there fingernails before gazing up into limpid hazel eyes that looked like they'd seen more than they should have, but held no grudges over the who, why, and how of what they'd witnessed. She smiled and accepted his dry, wrinkled poem. "Hey there, Dude. Thanks for the lift." She chuckled and pointed to the 500-page book. "It took me some time, but it's a good one. Eli and I are going to watch the movie tonight and see how well it matches up. I'll let you know." He nodded and, seemingly assured that Glory was firmly upright, he let go. She gave him the plastic-sheathed cake and watched him return with his dessert and his reading material to the Adirondac-style chair the prior had provided him the previous summer.

Based on expert advice and lots of research, Gloria had concluded that it made sense that everybody had a birthday, so they should manufacture and therefore recognize Dudes. With a firmness that brooked no argument, she'd declared, "He's family."

"Oh, more family?" Eli had had the audacity to ask. She had laid an evil eye on him and continued threading purple ribbon through the 3-in-wide wooden slats on the back of the seat. It took some of Eli's gentle persuasion to convince her not to glorify the gift the way she tended to, and simply set it up by the fence. "We don't want to scare the man off. He's a person, not a deer," she'd grumbled, but acceded to his removing and putting away the strip of satin before helping him tote the chair outside when they'd heard Dude was cooling off at the community pool. Neither of them said a word about their present, including the birthday boy, when he ventured back a day or so later. He just sat down, receiving it with the equal measure of fanfare with which it had been offered.

"I wonder if I'd make him uncomfortable if I walked over." The door behind her swung back against the brick exterior of the house. Glory turned to see Eli framed in the light of the kitchen. "Are you all right back here? You've been gone a minute." Eli rubbed the back of his neck and flicked a glance over her shoulder. Glory figured she'd stolen enough time from him. It wasn't like they were some old married couple with more years spent together than apart. They were just old, and they could count their time as a legally bound twosome on one hand. But still, she sighed again. And with a last look at Dude, who was reclining in the dusky shadows of the quivering leaves of the maple tree, she left the fresh air behind.

Chapter 3.

Glory used her spoon to lift out the string and let the tea bag drip on the inside of her mug. Grateful to start another day with a steaming 10 oz serving of black tea, she closed her eyes and lowered her face to let the steam tickle her chin.

"Still sniffing chai. Oilia's voice sounded drier than the cloth she'd rung out. My flavor's more effective than that." Glory staved off the sting of the baker's sarcasm with laughter. Her eyes concealed behind closed lids, lightly dusted with a gold shadow that matched the iridescent accents in her midnight blue dress. Her way of attaching an "un" to the day's usual. She turned a deaf ear to Oilia's persistent ministrations around the pitted concrete bartop in order to settle herself into the week ahead. The sharp-tongued other woman could always spot water and crumbs that to most people were invisible or non-existent, always needing something to do.

"How's your weekend?" Oilia shook her cloth over the waste basket. Seemingly satisfied with the patter of debris, she stood on tiptoe and started scrubbing another section. She and Eli were distant cousins. Their family ties stretched so thin they could have married each other without raising an eyebrow. Yet they were close enough that when he'd heard she needed extra income to support her food truck business, he automatically offered her and her son Jason and daughter Mallerie positions at By the Book. Glory hadn't needed to be convinced to hire them. Not that Eli had asked. They'd needed another full-time host in the store after the last one had quit suddenly and inexplicably. Plus, by hiring Oilia, By the Book could provide more than coffee, tea, cold drinks, and cookies, and encourage people to make Glory's home their home and her books theirs, too.

At first, Glory feared that bringing on Oilia and her new menu posed a danger to her precious merchandise. Eli's reconfiguration had addressed that problem by adding shelves of donated and old books around the cafe area to allow patrons to eat and read without damaging new products. What made Gloria's hair stand on end were the comments that tagged along in Oilia's sidecar, especially regarding her churchgoing habits, or lack thereof.

"Y'all make it to church?" Oilia scrubbed at a spot in front of the covered glass dish holding wax versions of their rotating specials of Queen Yammon, cheddar and chive biscuits, butter pecan scones, and pimento cheese squares. "Why are you always stirring that same pot, and it's barely 7:00? Put down the spoon, Oilia. Sunday was the time for sermons, not this beautiful Tuesday morning. I'd appreciate it if you let me enjoy the start to my week."

When Glory had opened By the Book, most proprietors recognized the Sabbath by either closing their doors altogether or opening them in the early afternoon. She had established Tuesday through Saturday work hours, allowing her a two-day weekend while showing respect for all the churchgoers. Though times and piety had changed, Glory never had. The bookseller reared back her shoulders and raised her head to her full 5'9". Gathered her cup and saucer and rounded the counter, anchoring her foot under the bottom rail of a tall stool. She pulled it back to sit at the end where she'd left her pen atop her leather daily planner. An orange and yellow sun glued to its cover beamed at her, inviting her to commence her daily routine with the right mindset, beginning with sipping tea between bites of whatever pastry Oilia had baked the day before, while perusing her schedule for the week. To give the tea more time to steep and cool, much like her current temper, Glory unclipped the pink band around the planner and opened it. She hooked a glossy nail tip under a marked tab and flipped to the date, hoping that if she kept her head down, Oilia would return to the kitchen, her usual spot at this time. This was her me-time, and she surely wished she could get to it in silence.

"Where is my cousin this morning?" Swipe, swipe went the cloth. "Exactly where I said I left him. Sleeping on the wrong side of the bed—his side where he usually is at this time of day. You know, Eli, there's something about Tuesdays when it comes to my husband. He's never been an early bird." Oilia bristled, apparently to defend her family's honor.

"Maybe." The way Glory elongated the word conveyed that her concession didn't indicate approval. "But he moves like a turtle on our first official workday. You shouldn't expect to see him raring to go before 9:30, thirty minutes after I've unlocked the front door." Glory knew Eli burrowed under the covers for more than an hour after she'd closed their bedroom door with as soft a click as she could manage. Long after her goodbye kiss had evaporated from his forehead, he'd drag himself to the sitting area in their bedroom to complete a puzzle, check his email, or do whatever he did there, then mosy downstairs to the kitchen for a cup of strong coffee and a bleary howdy-do with Oilia. By the time she raised the green shade covering the door's egg-shaped glass, the spa across the street and Dollars to Donuts, the coffee shop down on the corner, had been serving guests for several hours. While Eli's hustling days were long behind him, Glory usually sprang out of bed. On Tuesdays, after two days of unbroken together time, she beat the worm to work. She meant to hoard those precious hours for a rainy day when she was feeling particularly overwhelmed by the needs of others, including the one who'd placed a ring on her finger. Glory was grateful their personalities and habits complemented each other, like two straight perpendicular lines forming a right angle, what she discovered during their long talks before they got married.

Before Eli introduced the subject of leaving the store. Sensing movement, she glanced up to find the baker facing her across the two ft of glazed concrete between them. Her arms crossed over the bib of her striped gray apron. Glory started counting down from 20, knowing Oilia wouldn't take that long to launch into a diatribe of her own making, or one inspired by her cousin and that wife of his. She spooned out her tea bag, let it drain, then set it in her saucer.

"Sixteen, fifteen, fourteen, thirteen, twelve. I asked about his whereabouts because it is the first Tuesday of August. Aren't we supposed to review the inventory and the menu for September? I need to do my shopping and start prep. October will be here before we know it, bringing the festival right behind it. You like to do things up for the two people who might wander into the store for the first time. And you'll be giving me more than eight weeks' worth of work. Not to mention, I have to outfit my truck. Every year I tell you two we should stop waiting until it's nearing fall to plan. And every year I find myself telling y'all the very same thing."

Glory's mellow contralto cut off Oilia's higher, more strident notes, aiming to derail the redhead's train of thought. "Yes, I know all that. We'll get to the menu and the inventory, but I like to feel." Her ideas flitted about like butterflies around her head, and her hands moved in similar fashion, trying to catch them. "Lead. Mhm. That's the word. Lead. Books are creative. They inspire thoughts and ideas. And when it comes to that festival of theirs, I think that's how people should feel. Lead, inspired, changed." In fact, she slapped her hands together, her bracelets clinking against each other. "That should be the theme."

Oilia was digging into the niche in the back corner where the wraparound counter didn't quite reach the wall. She retrieved the broom, then froze with it balanced against her shoulder, its rounded wood tip in line with her ear. "What should be the what glow?"

"The theme for the festival." This time, Gloria ignored Oilia's shortening of her name. She propped her chin in one hand and gazed out the window overlooking the cafe, past the clouds and the recently awakened sun that was struggling to gather the strength to pierce them. "Why do you care? You refused from the get-go to involve yourself in your bookstore in the town festival. Have you changed your mind? And if you haven't, then why bother yourself with whether or not there's a theme?"

Glory rolled her eyes, the drumming of her fingers communicating her excitement, her only response to Oilia's interrogation. This would be the seventh year—a jubilee year, her mama had once taught her—for the annual townwide celebration of Gilmore's food, enterprises, produce, and crafts. Anything local and homegrown, from lemonade stands run by elementary students to hand-blown glass made by local artisans. Most of the stores along Church Road held special sales and giveaways and decorated their windows and businesses. The three-day event culminated in a carnival held at the fairgrounds, a few untilled acres belonging to Willard Farm on the outskirts of town.

A few years after he erected the fence, the mayor had sought out the bookseller on his way home from church. Eli, actively engaged in courting Glory, led him upstairs, where she was rearranging the stacks and pretending not to bask in her new beau's attention. "We need By the Book for the festival. This place is a Gilmore mainstay. How would the young people describe it? Iconic. That's what it is." She'd peered at him over her oversized maroon spectacles, thinking he could be selling snake oil.

"You know I don't like attention, Mark. I'm just trying to run my little old place and live in peace." Gilmore's out-of-the-way nature had appealed to Glory when she'd moved there as a young woman. There was small chance of anyone finding her there since most of her family was either gone or dead.

"Little. His ingratiating smile did as much to soften the edge of his skepticism as aftershave improved the smell of a pig. He threw wide an arm and turned in a half-circle. Old perhaps, but there's nothing little about this three-story, 5,000-ft house."

"Is that envy or admiration?" Glory hit a shudder at the way he took stock of her business, like a shrewd cowboy inspecting the withers of a horse he might buy. She sensed Eli felt the same when she saw him grimace, and she liked her suitor all the more. The mayor smoothed his mustache. "Now, how would it look if every store on the street except the biggest and the busiest participated? What will folks say if your shade is drawn and your door locked?"

"You already entice a ton of people to the town. Come on, Mark."

"A ton. Me thinks you exaggerate." She studied one title after another and separated them into piles.

"And me thinks the lady protests too much. The mayor sneered. That's a quote you should recognize."

"I should, and I do. Most people get it wrong the same way you did." Her arms loaded down with historical fiction, Glory stepped around the familiar caring hands that reached for her and the other stacks of books. "No, Eli, I don't need your help, but thank you. What I do need are those days off. Mark is suggesting I give up. He doesn't understand they're part of my weekend."

The mayor braced a fist on each hip, and his suit coat flapped behind him like a cape. "You're working right now."

Eli, who'd been leaning against the stair railing, straightened up and took a step toward him. "Hold on a minute, Mr. Mayor."

"It's all right, dear." The mayor didn't mean anything by it. Glory waved off her would-be knight. Though chivalry looked cute as a button on him, she could do fine fighting her own battles. It was too soon for Eli to step into her brother's footsteps. "Mark's just excited." She loaded the books on a nearby cart and began transporting them to another section of shelves.

"I'm not usually working like this on Sundays. Someone's been distracting me." Eli grinned at her as she passed him. "I'm not saying it isn't a good idea, but I don't like the idea of a bunch of folks out of something to do descending on our little berg, bringing their sticky hands into my store and touching everything after eating hot dogs and funnel cake and barbecue." She shuddered, leaving Prince. The possibility that someone from Georgia or from college might recognize her also crossed her mind. After all, hadn't Eli sought her out? Mark's patent leather loafers clapped on

The ends of her wide-legged palazzo pants. Think of the lost sales and potential new readers. If you're closed Sunday, you'll miss the biggest of our 3-day festival. Based on our research, Friday, people are working. Saturday, they're running errands and coming over later. Sunday is for family time, even for those who don't go to church, like you and Eli over there." Any indecision on her part disappeared, poof, with his thinly veiled condemnation.

Here he was, fresh from the pew, conducting business. Glory rolled the two-tiered cart to the room on the second floor that peered over its pitched slate roof onto Springs Church Road, and parked it between the shelves she'd already emptied. She had decided to mirror some of the first floor sections, starting with modern classics. That way, anyone who couldn't make it upstairs wouldn't feel like they were missing anything. She reached for a book and feigned a deep interest in the nighting gale.

"Mark, maybe you should give us some time to think about this." Eli had followed the sparring to some. His shoulder bumped hers when he stepped closer. At first, Glory had bocked at the word "us." It was the first time that someone else had spoken for her since her parents had died, one following the other after Glory graduated from college. The first time she'd allowed anyone to. Feeling a change coming on in their relationship and in herself, she leaned into Eli. Turning to the mayor, she winked and pronounced, "You heard my man. Give us some time. We'll get back to you and buy the book is ready to join the party."

More than half a decade and a husband later, Glory considered finally joining the festival fun. As she pondered the pros and cons, both trepidacious and excited, her fingers continued to play an invisible piano on the cool concrete of the bar. "Create, inspire, grow, change, or something along those lines." Oilia's head rocked back like Glory had slapped her. "This festival is about entertaining some folks, getting them to spend some money in town and boost the economy a notch, not changing their lives." She aimed the broom handle at Glory before resuming her sweeping. "That's what church is for, changing lives. You talk about creation, read the Bible."

Glory's unrestrained laugh filled the octagonal-shaped cafe area that had once been a formal dining room. The other woman's mouth fell open. "I don't mean to offend you, but if I find something funny, I'm going to honor you by letting you know. My brother taught me that." With a swish of her fiery shoulder-length hair, Oilia turned her back to glory and sent her voice sailing over her shoulder. "Then I'll honor you by telling you the truth, Glory Prior. You want to change your life? Open a Bible, not merely any old book. Leave your house and go to the Lord's house. Believe what he says. That's what my mama and daddy taught me and what Eli's grandmama taught him once upon a time. I can't help my cousin grew up, married you, and forgot how he was raised." She sounded much older than she looked, but according to Eli, the 34-year-old woman had always been an old soul. The way her marriage had begun and ended had also added some extra years to her that time hadn't.

Oilia bent to brush the dirt into her dustpan, then depressed the lever on the waste basket with her foot. "And by the way, when Eli comes down, you tell him I said steer clear of my domain, or at least put things back where they belong. when he's through. I'm going to the kitchen to finish up these croissants." The polyester fabric of her brown pants swished as she made good on her pronouncement and pushed through the swinging door, tucking Glory's good humor and inspiration into her apron pocket for good measure.

Deflated, the book seller flopped against the iron scroll work on her stool and tapped her pen on her planner, leaving black dots all over the calendar pages on which she'd blocked out the word "festival" in red.

On the second week of November, dancing in bare fields where I once crawled and walked, laughing among the weeds where I'd mourned and boked at the bare furrows and earth which I'd planted and sown. Now joy and provision, when once I'd known only sorrow, reaping hope for today, not merely wishing and sighing and crying, looking ahead to tomorrow. Glory's fingers curled into a fist of their own valition, and her short nails nearly tore through the paper she'd ripped from the book, made tender with the passage of time. Time and lots of handling. She weled her hand to set free the page, and it drifted, slightly bruised, but intact, to her lap, its left edge slightly tacky with glue. A tear splashed onto the crinkled words, and others followed, scurrying down her face before she could catch them, nearly obscuring the next line of the poem. Naked vines.

A far-off diesel engine rumbled and stopped. Rumbled and stopped. As it chugged closer, Glory retreated deeper into the corner of the sofa, out of the driver's line of sight, and sucked in a tremulous breath to gather herself. Reading those lines about sorrow was one thing. Expressing it for all the ever loving world to see was quite another. Without seeing the blue cab or a clock, she murmured, "Johnson's transport. Al is headed home." The white block letters receded on the rear roll top door after the truck passed by the store and lumbered up the road, then turned left at the three-way intersection at the top of Spring Church.

Glory had nearly perfected hiding in plain sight over the past 40 years. Like a felon who'd sought and found shelter in the prison library he'd escaped from, who feared someone would hear his chains, she drew her legs to her chest, and linking her arms around them, she balanced her chin on her knees and harumped. Or a chicken who works the assembly line at the Tyson's factory. Those images helped Glory add another name to her ever growing list. Coward. Maybe I should incorporate it onto a banner for the festival and wear it around my neck. The festival. She knew better than to consider it. This threat to her self-imposed anonymous life as only a book seller, yet another title, but one she'd worked hard to earn and even harder to hold on to. By the book was more than a business to Glory. It was her sanctuary. When she told Eli these novels were her babies, she'd meant it. Each title, every author was perfectly curated. Her former employee helped with her selections before skipping town. But now she sought input from her husband and Nomy Pearlline, her friend and jeweler. Glory didn't always buy what was most popular or the most current. She listened to her heart and ordered what caught her eye, and when it came to her collection of cookbooks, appealed to her taste buds. And like a child, her business had grown and matured over the years.

After graduating from college, searching for fertile soil to put down the roots she'd yanked up herself, Glory had driven blindly from North Georgia and eventually planted herself in Gilmore. At the time, the buildings that lined both sides of two-mile long springs road were going the way of most things in small towns, downhill. Slowly but surely. And for some painfully when she stumbled on the three-story tutor revival built on a third acre lot with its arched doorway, cross gables, front porch, and molanded windows, she'd fallen for it. And the realtor and future mayor Mark Aston had taken one look at her enthusiastic face and found a willing victim and new Gilmore taxpayer. 3 months later, she'd moved in and was unloading her pieces of furniture and her mama's teacup, eager to live in virtual obscurity. The town's folk used to wonder why the single young woman had bought such a large house. And Glory heard many a rumor about her plans. "She's opening a bed and breakfast. She's starting a children's home. She's tearing it down and building some fancy new store or modern home." "I'm happy all by my lonesome," Glory staunchly avowed to anybody who would listen. Then opened the doors to buy the book, her dream all along. Back then her stock took up only a single room, the large one in the back of the main floor that she considered her happy place. She'd kept the others empty until she could renovate and add more inventory. Today, her store encompassed the first two levels, and merchandise was starting to sneak to the third floor, where she and Eli had commandeered three bedrooms and a tiny bathroom that had suited her fine until she married. When their two became one, they'd knocked down a wall and created an adjoining bathroom and a walk-in closet. They'd converted the bathroom into a space for a laundry. Eli designed a den of sorts out of the third bedroom to retreat to his television shows when he was tired of tending to her books. And when he sensed Glory had tired of tending to him, she unccurled her legs so she could take in what she had birthed, what she and Eli were growing together. Since she couldn't see everything beyond the shelves around her, she had to imagine the cafe on the left side of the house and the kitchen behind it. The hallway that led to the original gathering room where guests first entered the store and the intricately carved stairway curving up to the upper floors. The spaces on the right side that sprouted off from the grand entryway that were full of stands and displays and bookcases, the store room in back. But it wasn't difficult to envision it all. She could walk the floor plan in her sleep. "Who forgets what their babies look like? Even when they're all grown up," she asked the empty room. A dog yapped in answer, drawing her eyes back to the window. "Osk her." But if Mr. Graves is walking by, then it was time to lock up baby cakes. "Yes, indeed." Glory counted the creeks on the stairs and knew she had three more to go before Eli reached the first floor landing. It would take him another 30 seconds or so to wend his way through the maze of books to this room. She waved goodbye to the Yorkshire terrier, who she was sure always smiled back at her, though Eli had said his beared teeth looked more like a growl than a grin. Then she tapped the glass to acknowledge Mr. Graves, who was gripping the leash as if his life depended on it. She knew it did. The dog wasn't going anywhere, but that man adored his pooch the way Glory loved her books. Deciding to meet Eli halfway, she rose and stretched langoriously, forgetting how she'd wept over the page in her lap. It slipped to the floor and under the sofa. Glory went to retrieve it, but then she heard the last creek announcing her husband's imminent arrival. "I'll get it tomorrow," she promised. At the door, she hesitated. Then, hurrying out, she warned herself. "Now, Glory, you'd best not forget."

Chapter 4. The clapper dinged against the copper sides of the bell, and the pain rattled with the closing of the front door. The sounds pierced Glory's subconscious, rousing her from a rare half doze at the counter. There was simply too much to see to, so much musing and planning to do. It was rare indeed when she allowed her mind, hands, and feet to rest. But she hadn't been sleeping very well lately. A symptom of aging, her primary care physician informed her when she bumped into him at the public's grocery store. Glory had spent too much time with doctors as a teen, and wasn't inclined to spend much more than those few minutes chatting between the jars of spaghetti sauce and boxes of tortillini. Glory credited her husband with her interrupted nights. All his talk of selling and moving had stolen her peace. What little she had these days. To rid herself of the vestigages of drowsiness, she took one last slurp of the drags of tea, now cold, and marked her spot in the catalog with one of the sticky notes she kept close by. Then she hopped down from the stool with an ease that testified to all her years of climbing three flights of stairs, and urged her bottom half to wake after having perched too long on that stool.

"Oh, mommy, look at that." The exclamation stirred Glory to full attention, and pleasure curved her lips, knowing what the little voice was ooing and aawing over. Alice, tumbling head first after the white rabbit. That morning, she'd placed an oversized popup book on the round entryway table, a book she displayed around this season of the year, when back to school sales led both adults and students to dream of books like sugar plums and consider the return to school. The house sat too far back, and the front porch was too deep for the pages to lure passers by, but anyone who stepped into the store would spot the vignette right off, and be tempted to venture farther inside. While she didn't get all the fuss over Louisis Carol's tale, this illustrated version never failed to grab the attention of younger readers and their parents. A book seller's dream combination.

"Mommy, mommy, can I touch it?" And those words were a book seller's nightmare. Glorious, anyway. She willed her tingling legs and feet to move more quickly as she wound her way toward the entryway. "These long skirts," she groaned as the calf-length hem of her rayon dress reached out for protruding metal edges and snagged on the corners of books. "These mamas today, the way they let their children have their way with everything, too permissive for their own good or anybody else's." "Hey there, may I help you?" Glory called out as a warning in case the woman folded to her child's request to touch. With one hand pressed to her chest, she emerged from between two book carousels, setting one to spinning as she brushed by it in her haste. "Phew. These bones of mine were trying to tell me to slow down. I should have listened."

"Bennett, you know better. You're reaching before I ever answered. Now put it back." The younger woman didn't look at Glory as she slowly leaped through the large pages until she came to the scene with the Queen of Hearts and her cascading deck of cards. The pop-up stack of cards created a bridge from one scene to the next. Quietly she mounted the book on the stand and studied it. Glory swallowed her hymph and made a mental note to turn back to the falling Alice once these folks left. She bent at the waist to level the playing field between her and the child. "Well, hello there, young man. Do you like my book?" He took a half step back and tucked his right arm between his mother's thighs, encircling her leg with his left. "Ben." Then his mother threw an arm out to study herself and hooked a finger around the joint of his thumb and slowly pulled it from his mouth. Then she eased his hand to his side while allowing him to maintain his death grip on her thigh. "H—he's a shy one. Seems a bit old for that thumb sucking business." Glory took stock of the boy, determining him to be about six. As if to straighten a few books nearby, she edged away to pose as less of a threat to the child and to give the mom room to handle family business. Sure enough, out of the corner of her eye, Glory saw her squat until her head was even with her sons, and with their temples touching, her mouth uttered words Glory couldn't hear. She punctuated her whispers with a nod or two in response to whatever she whispered. She pecked him on the nose, her eyes closing so briefly it was almost a blink and straightened. Glory feigned busyiness until she heard a little cough. Rosy lips smiling, hands clasped. She spun to face them, setting her long skirts a sway. "Ready?" The woman nudged the little one toward the book seller. "Bennett, don't you have something to say to Mrs. Prior?" Glory's eyes rested gently on him, even as she chewed hard on the question. How in the world is this stranger calling me by my name like we've been introduced?

"Um, Mrs. Prior, I'm sorry for touching the book. I just wanted to see." Bennett's voice could have kept his toes company in his scuffed blue sneakers. "Then you should." Glory scooted around them, plucked Alice's Adventures in Wonderland from the gleaming mahogany pedestal table, and extended it to the child. She chuckled at his wide, light brown eyes and slack jaw before laying her own eyes on the mother, who looked none too happy at Glory's gesture. "That is if your mama doesn't mind." "No, of course I don't." The woman fiddled with the gold pendant hanging from the chain around her neck. "Say thank you, Bennett." "Thank you." Gratitude and wonder gave his voice oomph, and his personality eaked through. Glory squinted at the simple cross between his mother's fingers, and figured she was lying like the vintage Persian rug in Glory's bedroom. Everybody knew fidgeting was a telltale sign. But the stranger's ferocity, or lack thereof, belonged to her alone. Her reading habits, on the other hand, were Glory's business. "Good. You're welcome. I have a special seat in the back with your name on it, Bennett. And you can sit right down and enjoy this book that caught your fancy." Glory stretched her long, slender fingers toward him. "Want me to show you?" Again, his eyes widened as he gazed at the gold, silver, and gem-studded bangles encircling her wrist as he clenched the oversized colorful book against his chest. "Mommy, you're coming with." Glory kept her arm extended his way, assuming the sale. She believed that given time, Bennett would accept her invitation, and his mother would inadvertently tour the store. Based on what she knew about six-year-olds, there was no way this curious fellow could resist the lure of the book or her sparkly jewelry. It was the same kind of temptation that sent Alice through the looking glass. And Eve to the fruit, and then cast from the garden, a voice reminded her like I had to run to Gilmore.

The boy's mother rotated the top half of her body a few degrees, pointing one shoulder toward the front door, while her feet remained planted, mouth slightly open, her gaze flicked from the top of Bennett's head to Glory's face and back again. Brow furrowed, she nodded and murmured. "Oh, of course, sure," she reached for her son. He'd already put his small hand in Glory's. "There, off we go." Pinching together the left side of her wide skirts, Glory led the way, trusting his mother to follow the two of them. "What do you like to read, Mr. Bennett?" he giggled. His head swiveled from one side to the other, taking everything in. "We read lots of biographies." The voice behind them kept in step as the three meandered toward the back right of the store. "Also, we're making our way through the children's book of virtues." Glory tugged a little on the hand in hers to get his attention, hoping to give him the chance to join the conversation. "Oh, is that who you were named after? William J. Bennett, the author of that book your mommy mentioned." "My daddy's name was Ben. Yes, like the author," his mother interjected. Glory drew up to a guest who was perusing a carousel filled with used books and stopped. "Here for your bimonthly visit." About that time, the man glanced down at the child. "I see someone playing peekaboo." Glory scrunched up her nose at Bennett to elicit a giggle before returning her attention to the man. She made a show of raising her wrist bearing the watch. "You know what time it is, Mr. Baldwin?" "That I do. I looked for you when I came in, but I had to find this all by myself." He shook the cookbook in his hand. She bit her knuckles and winced. "Oof. You saw me dozing in the cafe?" Mr. Baldwin flattened his palms together and leaned his cheek on them out like a light. At one time, before Glory considered her guest a friend, she'd had to stop herself from brushing the back of his wool slacks with the door when he sauntered around to the ticking of his own internal clock. Now she didn't feel compelled to hurry him along. Sometimes they exchanged recipes, or she gave him a to-go box of Oilia's sweets, along with a treat for the dog he'd bought to fill his empty nest. More often than not, he wandered the store freely, as he had that day. "Ah, Lee Chase, you can't go wrong with her food." Glory shifted to include both the other woman and her child in the conversation. "Frederick here tends to walk in my store after 5:00 every, let's see, couple of weeks or so. He'll read a few magazines, page through new titles, and amble out the door a smidge before 6. Isn't that right, Frederick?" He shrugged. "Thereabouts," Glory continued. "Usually, he sits in the cafe with an old book and eats something Oilia made. And if he purchases anything, which he almost never does, it's a cookbook like that one he's threatening to buy today." She partially covered her mouth with her free hand and whispered sodto voce, "Or a copy of Southern Living magazine because I caught him tearing a recipe out of it." Fred's laugh formed a trio along with hers and Bennett's. "Hey, stop maligning me. You know I bought plenty of books for the school drive. And where would dude be sitting if I hadn't recommended that chair for his birthday?" "True. True. What drive?" Up until then, Bennett's mother had stood as a quiet ark on the outskirts of their circle. "Oh, only a little thing. Our annual book sale," Glory explained. "A little thing," she says. "Well, I spell humility G L O R Y." Frederick shook his head. "Every spring she holds a special sale and gives the proceeds to the schools in the community to help their libraries expand their cataloges. What books don't get sold, she donates. Win-win. I keep some of them, so win-win-win. And Eli does most of the work. He's not just my handsome front man." "How is that husband of yours?" Frederick asked. "Well-rested like your puppy." Glory felt her hand jiggle and in her periphery she saw the woman whispering something to the child. While the grown folks were talking, Glory had noticed him scratching first his nose, then a knee and the back of his head, and danced from one foot to the other. "You know I don't like standing in one place too long, Frederick. So I'll let you get back to what you were doing. I'm off to show my new friend my favorite reading spot." As they walked away, she waggled a finger goodbye and offered breezily, "Don't forget to check out the current issue of Architectural Digest. If you need me, I'll be back in a minute."

Once they reached the rear, Gloria ushered her two newest visitors through a set of carved pocket doors. Inside the room, she had arranged three upholstered armchairs, a medium-sized coffee table with initials carved under it, and a long, lumpy sofa in the midst of floor to ceiling bookcases. Mallerie, one of Oilia's 16-year-old twins, had been tasked with keeping the cherrywood shelves, hiph scotting, and the ebony baby grand piano glossy and dustfree. Late afternoon, sun streamed through wide windows flanked by thick yellow curtains that puddled on the hardwood floor. Baskets of books marked not for sale were tucked into the back corners alongside three-foot wide pillows big enough for Bennett to sprawl on. Glory raised her eyebrows at the boy. "I call this my happy place. Won't this be a fun spot for you to read?" His eyes traced every inch before nodding slowly. He stayed put, his hand in glories, when his, as yet unnamed mother moved up and placed an arm around his sturdy shoulders. She couldn't blame the woman, whether it was the rosy tint of his creamy cheeks, his tousled brown curls, or the roundness of his limbs and torso. Glory struggled to keep herself from picking him up and plopping him onto her lap with a copy of the Velvetine Rabbit, and whiling away the afternoon. She reared back her shoulders with a sigh and unfurled her fingers from his. When Bennett inched across the thick, faded wool rug toward the flower-covered sofa, she urged him on with a grin. "Thank you." Hefted himself onto her own favorite corner and promptly opened the book. Satisfied that he was otherwise occupied, Glory bestowed her attention on the other adult in the room. "Speaking of names, how do you know mine?" She pivoted for a face-to-face answer and had to suck in a breath. "I'm sorry. Are you okay?" Abruptly, the stranger's expression changed. The eyebrows that had been aimed at each other like angry arrows retreated to their original positions, and her pursed lips flattened. She seemed to swallow her emotions, and her fingers did the conga with her necklace. "I'm fine." "If you say so." Glory acquiesced to the equivocation, but resolved to steer clear of whatever the woman had going on. "I can leave y'all to it so I can check in with my other guest. Enjoy your time with my friend Alice." She made to return to the front of the store with a tinkling of bracelets and a flash of color.

"Adele," the word stopped Glory in her tracks. She readjusted her neckline so that each shoulder was protected by the soft dark fabric. "Excuse me. I was talking about the book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. My name is Adele." In a second, she'd taken the few steps that brought her within arms reach of glory. Her outstretched hand spanned the short distance remaining between them. "And I learned your name when I researched the store. I'm a freelance reporter. And then Miss Thing tells me she's writing an article on the festival."

Glory scrubbed her face with the cloth and wants to ask me questions about buy the book. She hung the rag on the rag beside the sink and splashed water on her face. Every time she rinsed with hot first, then cold, she could hear her mama instructing her teenaged self to clean her pores, then close them. Old habits like old pains died hard. Eli poked his head around the gap in the bathroom door. "You know I can't hear you in here. All I can detect is the anger in your tone." "I'm not angry, so my tone can't be angry." Voice cool and modulated, Glory dried her face with the hand towel and used it to dab at the dots of water on her pink cotton night gown whose lacy trim brushed her ankles. Eli stepped into the bathroom and took the towel. He patted her forehead before he looped it around her neck and used it to draw her close to him. "Well, your face is saying something different. There's a reason you took such an early bath. The son is willing and able to carry on a conversation with us, and you're already in your night gown." His voice was deep at her ear, like he was sharing a secret in a crowded room before his soft lips lingered on hers. After briefly relaxing in his embrace, she yanked the towel from him and swatted his thigh, laughing. "You should have seen her face, Eli, all scrunched up like this." She screwed up her mouth, narrowed her eyes, and drew in her brows, looking all evil. "Talk about angry. And then she has the nerve to form her lips to talk to me about the festival." Glory raised her voice to mimic the voice in her head. It sounded nothing like the woman she'd met. "Wendy, you have time to sit down with me. I'd love to interview you since by the book is the cornerstone of Gil Moore's finest event. Adele my foot. I don't think so."

Eli crouched over the laundry basket overflowing with sheets and pillowcases, pulled out a queen-siz fitted sheet and shook it. "That was terrible, Glow. You can do better than that. You are better than that. What kind of reporter can she be if she didn't know by the book doesn't take part in the festival? Not yet, anyway. How can I be the cornerstone if I'm not a participant? And don't think I didn't hear that. I have to put up with Oilia shortening my name, and her habit better not be contagious. Hint taken." Eli pressed the sheet to his body and flattened some of the wrinkles. "Turns out her little boy, Bennett, what a cutie pie, is four years old, not six. Just a little big for his age. Or maybe he's not. What do I know about kindergarteners? Those eyes of his. And he's already reading, Eli." "Yes, you told me." His eyes twinkled. "Anyway, Ben, that's what Adele called him, asked her about the book. When she went to see, I left the room without making any promises about an interview. She'd best speak to the mayor to learn about the festival." Eli raised an eyebrow. "From what I understand, weren't you recently discussing that event you're supposedly not interested in? Going on about themes and creation and being led, if I heard correctly?" Glory resisted the urge to drop the towel over his smug expression. "I take it you've talked to your cousin." "Our cousin Oilia. Yes. If you and I ever get on the same page, we'll either have packed up or moved on by then. But you must know this type of article could contribute to the growth of Gilmore and the festival's success. The timing is heavensent." "I wouldn't say that at all." Glory rejected references to things and places and people beyond her control, and she certainly wasn't getting into this nonsense about the move so close to bedtime. Chasing sleep was giving her enough trouble as it was. Picking up the opposite ends of the linen, she followed his lead and connected the ends of the sheet. "I hope you haven't spread those rumors to Oilia. What did Mark Twain say about the exaggerated reports of his death?" "I wouldn't call talking about a major change in our lives a rumor or an exaggeration, Glory. But no, I haven't mentioned them to her. Not until we've decided our next steps. As far as the festival goes, I would and I do say that as a former marketing director and entrepreneur, I can tell you that nothing beats natural organic publicity. It's not like Gilmore has a social media presence to speak of. People don't flock here by the tens of thousands for its annual party." He brought his folded ends to meet Glory's. Then he hd the sheet again, which leads me to wonder how your new buddy heard about it. Glory wanted to take umbrage with his words, but her husband was telling the truth, however simplified. Gilmore's residents threw a community party basically for themselves and a few hundred residents of neighboring towns. It grew a tad each time, but shouldn't warrant national attention. The local business owner inside her certainly wouldn't mind any trickle down effect on her own business. The part of her that craved a more reclusive life retreated from the spotlight. "Also, I don't trust my so-called new buddy, this Adele Simonet." Glory finished her own thought, syncopating the syllables and emphasizing the tease. She dug in her drawer for her hairbrush to tend to her short silver tinged quaffure. Chopping off her hair was the best decision she'd ever made. Her eyes settled on Eli, who was withdrawing another sheet from the basket. "Okay, third best," she amended, thinking also of the store. "Any man who volunteers to fold fitted sheets as a keeper." He met her gaze in the mirror. "You just met the woman. You don't know enough not to trust her." "Exactly." Glory squinted in Eli's direction, not really seeing him or what he was doing. She was replaying the 30 minutes she'd spent with Adele and Bennett stewing, according to her husband. "All I know is she has a 4-year-old son who is absolutely scrumptious. I could just eat him. Once he got over his shyness, he carried on conversations like a little man, looking at you eye to eye when he spoke, barely blinking. I might have to get him a copy of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, the way he tore into it." Her husband carried his small armload to the tiny closet near the clawfoot tub and stacked the sheets on shelves according to color, as Glory had shown him. She'd explained that old habits didn't die because you married them to somebody else's, and he'd taken it to heart. "You don't like Alice, but I get a sense about people. It comes from meeting and working with all sorts over the years. When someone walks into the store, I know who's planning to steal a book, tear a recipe out of Bonapetit or Southern Living, like I caught Frederick doing, or do the puzzle in the newspaper. I can point out the non-readers who only need somewhere to go on a rainy Saturday and the folks who will buy anything I suggest. And I can tell you that woman, that Adele," Glory sorted through her jumbled thoughts as she lifted her plush purple robe from the hook on the door and slipped her arms into it. She raised the lapel to ward off the chill she felt once the shower's warmth had faded. It wasn't until she double tied the belt around her narrow waist that she could gather her feelings into an easier to sift through worrisome pile. "That darn festival. What does that woman know about me in my past? Why is she sticking her nose in my business? Fed up, Glory's emotions finally spilled over. That woman is up to no good, Eli. No good. Mark this day that you heard my words."

Chapter 5. Adele rose from Bennett's bed and drew the covers up to his chin. Before he could ask, she wedged the sheets and blankets between the mattress and the boxing until his head looked like the tip of a hot dog poking from a bun. She cupped his round face with her hands and planted a wet smack on his cheek, still damp from the bath. "There, comfy," giggling, pink where she'd kissed him, he worked his fingertips free to clutch the folded linen. His head went up and down several times. "I'll take that as a yes, ma'am." She ran a finger gently down his nose, its shape reminding her so much of his daddy's. Something else to make her treasure the one and yearn for the other. Bennett yawned. "Good night," Adele whispered and bumped his nose with her own, then waited through the fire trucks, police cars, and dinosaurs he'd left scattered on the floor from the bed to the door. Mercifully, the sole of her foot avoided the building blocks he'd used to construct the roads and bridges for his city. At one time she had enforced an "everything finds a place by bedtime" rule, but those long ago habits and days went the way of the delicate white roses she'd tossed into her husband's grave, gone and buried. She regarded Bennett's blank bedroom walls and the taped up boxes in his closet. No need to decorate. "We're only staying long enough for me to do what I came to do." But Adele wondered if resuming some routine would make the place feel more like home, though they were far from anywhere that looked like it.

"Mommy." Bennett's voice stayed her hand on the light switch that controlled the lamp. "Yes, sweets." Adele tried to speak quietly so as not to break the slumberous mood settling on the room, helped along by the heavy curtains she'd drawn over the closed shades, she prepared herself to perform an encore of amazing grace. "Do you think Daddy has met Ga yet?" Such an out-of-the-blue question. She pressed her bald hand into her abdomen. Anything to keep the sob from exploding up from her gut and out through the hole in her chest where her heart used to beat. Taking a second and only a second to compose herself, or otherwise he might notice, she responded as normally as she could manage. "Oh, wouldn't that be such an unbelievable reunion, Ben? It's hard to imagine Daddy's joy upon seeing his own mommy again." Adele returned to his bedside and knelt there, praying her horse voice sounded full of wonder, not woe. "I'm not sure about such matters. All the ins and outs of heaven, and who will remember or recognize who or what. All I know is that we had a Jesus-loving husband and father. And since he left us both behind on this earth, he must be present with the Lord. That's as far as my understanding goes." "Ben—Ben, as much as I can wrap my mind around, will your daddy know his mother, father, and grandfather, and my own father, as well as our other friends and family? Or will his eyes be too full of our savior to notice anybody else?" "Those are good questions we may get to ask God one day. Yet, I have a feeling when we get there, we'll know everything we'll need to know." She flicked the lamp switch to prevent her son from seeing her tears. A well-intentioned friend had once told her that people who loved greatly also mourned greatly. Those words provided meager comfort. Less than a threadbare blanket in the Antarctic.

"Mrs. Prior's dress was like an angel's, wasn't it, Mommy? I bet Gma's wearing one like it." Bennett's yawn took over his face. It was so big. Another stomach punch. This time it was anger Adele swallowed, not sorrow. She could bear the weight of widowhood this time of night. The mantle of Avenger was a heavier burden on her neck and her shoulders. Working to maintain a neutral tone, she uttered between clenched teeth. "I don't know, Bennett. Do you think anyone wears that shade of yellow in heaven?" But Adele realized that the child had fallen asleep the way the young and innocent do suddenly and deeply with his mouth open, which was for the best since Adele didn't want to engage in any comparisons between that woman and God's saints and angels. "Talk about apples and orcas, the slimy kind my daddy liked to eat. That's how unalike angels and Glory Prior are."

Back at the doorway, Adele took a moment to pray for her son. She drew the door, but left it partially open. The hallway light would softly bathe Bennett in its warm glow should he awake before morning. He'd been able to stay in his own bed for two nights straight, and she was shooting for a third. Adele padded toward the center of their rental house, pausing once to glance toward a noise coming from his bedroom. But the only thing following her were the impressions left by her bare feet on the loosely woven brown carpet fibers, and those were quickly fading. Back in the small den, she considered dousing the light, curling up on the sofa, and pretending to watch an old show, but she hated to risk crying herself to sleep there, what she'd been doing way too often here in Gilmore and back at home as well. That habit she'd maintained. Instead, she took a left turn for the kitchen in search of a suitable distraction. The popcorn maker, one of the first appliances she'd unpacked when they'd arrived in Gilmore last week from Cabat, Arkansas. Buttered popcorn had become a main staple for her since Bennett's dad had died.

"Oh, my love." Adele bit down on her knuckle to stifle her cry. Though she knew it was better to be with Jesus. That place wasn't here with their boy and with her. And had her husband still been on the earth, she and Bennett wouldn't be in this town and in this house exacting an imperfect justice instead of leaving it to God, who by her estimation was taking much too long to work his will. "Has it really been only 13 months since you left us, Ben?" Adele considered it progress that she no longer counted the hours and the days since her 40-year-old husband had succumbed to a bacterial infection that moved through his body like a high-speed locomotive. What had started out as sniffles and a runny nose had progressed to fever, coughing up blood, a hard-to-shake lethargy, and at the last a midnight ambulance ride when she couldn't wake him. Ben had lasted 18 hours in the hospital, never making it to the intensive care unit. Toxic shock, the doctor said. Streptoccus pyogenes. "My family keeps losing over and over. My father, Ben. I refuse to give up even more. I won't." Adele pounded her overworked hand on the laminate-topped island. She squeezed her eyes closed, but hot tears oozed out of the corners and made slow trails down her cheeks that carved a burning path to her soul.

When Adele opened her eyes, they overflowed, blinding her until she swiped them with the edge of her gray cardigan, the color of her favorite kind of days with her husband. Stormy days when the thunder and the rain drove the family of three inside to the couch to munch on popcorn and watch animated movies, snuggled up together on the sofa instead of crying by herself on it. The sweater was her husband's with the holes on the elbows and the ragged hem and an unraveling sleeve. Just as this was Ben's custom, she'd adopted it as her own, crunching on colonels for dinner because he was too busy working on a story or meeting a deadline or interviewing people. It was his career that Adele had borrowed when she'd told Glory Prior she was a reporter. Thank God the woman hadn't asked for more details like who she wrote for or where the two of them hailed from.

"Don't bring my name into this." "Oh." Adele jumped a mile, knocking the large domed lid of the popcorn maker to the vinyl floor with a clatter. Sure it was her own guilty conscience she'd heard. She still glanced upward, her heart thutting. "Okay, Lord. I'm sorry. But I'm glad that Prior woman didn't pester me for something more than who I was. I couldn't have manufactured the name of a paper or magazine. She's too sly not to check and she's likely to do some digging. What was I doing? Volunteering my last name and telling her I'm a reporter. Asking for an interview." "You've been through a lot, haven't you?" Not sure whether she was asking herself or the hard plastic cover. Adele retrieved the lid where it had skidded by the range. When she saw the large crack branching off from an older split near the top, she burst into tears at this. The last straw on a day she'd wasted so much effort grasping for them. Adele snatched up the appliance, stalked across to the door, and yanked it open. Without stopping to consider what she was doing, she hefted open the green receptacle and chucked both parts as well as the cord. They landed at top the heap of cardboard and plastic with muffled satisfying thumps. Maybe somebody somewhere would make better use of the thing.

Returning inside, Adele dimmed the lights and parked herself in the den. Aware that she couldn't do much without waking Bennett, she took a visual inventory of the kitchen, the hallway leading to the bedrooms on his side of the house, the opposite side where she slept, and the kitchen again. She spied a large box beside the fireplace and decided to dig into something more productive than the lone bag of potato chips and the mostly empty pantry. Using the scissors she'd left on the table, Adele started to cut through the tape before noticing the broken seal. The second she lifted the four flaps, it dawned on Adele why she'd resisted tackling this box filled with books, pictures, frames, photo albums, handdrawn and painted artwork, and other memories. It had taken her until last spring to pack away these items from Ben's home office, and that was when she'd come across the diary tucked between her husband's high school yearbooks. That was the night she'd made up her mind to come to Gilmore. Friends and church family, after they realized they couldn't talk her out of her decision to move, however temporarily it might be, had convinced her to take these treasures with her for safekeeping. Adele lightly traced her husband's profile with an index finger. "And here I thought breaking the cover to the popcorn maker was the last straw." Adele knelt over the box and riffled through her life. If only she could package her grief and her anger and set it aside the way she'd stuffed this container into a corner of the room. A photo of her in an off-the-shoulder white silk gown and her serious-looking new husband mounted beside a copy of their wedding invitation. Their first house with a "sold" plastered over a real estate sign. Ben's framed college degree. His first published column in a local paper. A star award for one of his articles. Three small fuzzy images of their little bean. What they called their unborn baby until he became Bennett Jr. Tears plopped onto the glass. Heavy droplets onto leaves in a rainforest. Like clouds that were heavy and full, her eyes could not contain the outpouring of her sorrow. This storm had been building. She dug deeper into the carton, using both hands to search for evidence of her past. Not only his, or what they'd left together. There, Adele's self-portrait that Ben had insisted on hanging over their bed, a black and white rendering that she was secretly proud of. A small box containing a collection of rabbits that she'd been adding to over the years, one made of lava from their honeymoon trip to Italy. The leatherbound diary, a book of verses with a black and white picture tucked inside. "Daddy." A hand settled on her shoulder. The touch was too light to startle her, and it came too late for her to disguise her tears. The carpet that had swallowed her footprints had muffled her son's steps. Or perhaps she'd expected him to show up all along. Adele unfolded his tiny fingers with hers and drew him around in front of her. "Hey there, Ben. Ben, what are you doing up?" Repeating her husband's name, quieted her inner storm. He stood there, legs akimbo and ankles bare in the Navy Paw Patrol pajamas he'd outgrown a year ago. "I heard you crying." Adele tried to force a smile, but her lips crumpled at the edges. She ran a hand through his curls. "How could you hear me all the way out here if you're asleep all the way in there?" Bennett shrugged and pointed at

The pile. "What you doing?" She studied him for a second. "I'm looking at special books and photographs of Daddy and you and me. Is that what made you cry?"

His observation was matter of fact, like he was asking if the rain had wet her hair. Adele sighed and nodded, hating that he'd become ignored to her tears. Fresh ones threatened at the thought of her young son finding her sadness a run-of-the-mill event. Part of her wanted to poke the bear, to elicit a reaction of some kind, to not feel so alone in her grief. She caressed his soft, babyish skin with her thumb. "Want to sit with me for a little while?"

"You may not remember what daddy looked like when he was younger." Bennett turned and without further urging backed into her lap, the way she remembered him doing as a toddler. He looked up at her over his shoulder and patted her cheek gently. "I cried when I looked at these pictures yesterday. But that's okay, Mommy. Jesus cried, too, when he lost his friend Lazush."

Her lips wobbled at his pronunciation as he wiggled into place and made himself comfortable in the hollow created by her criss-crossed legs. Something he wouldn't be able to do in a few months time if he continued growing at his current rate. "My Sunday school teacher told me that when you love someone a lot, you miss them a lot, too."

"So I've heard that advice sounds better coming from you," she thought, her smile firming up briefly before collapsing altogether. All Adele could do was rock him with her face buried in his crown, sobbing into his hair.

Emptied, eyes so swollen she could barely see, she opened the album she'd been holding when Bennett had walked in, and drew his attention to a photograph. "Do you know who that is?" His round fingertip covered the faces of the gray-haired couple perched on a green and yellow riding lawn mower. "Bumpa and Gimma."

Adele had taken the snapshot of Ben's parents when they were working on their farm, located a few miles away from their family home in Cab. They'd adopted her husband when they were nearing 50 and had died within months of each other when their grandson Bennett was barely 2 years old. Adele thanked God they hadn't suffered through the unexpected loss of their only son.

"There's Penny." He tapped the corner of the rectangular printout indicating a chestnut colored horse standing in the background. "I hope she's getting her apples." The elder Simonets had left their home and land to Ben. And now his wife was left to figure out what to do with the property and the animals since his older sister had no interest in farming. Adele had put everything in the capable hands of in-laws and neighbors for the time being, but she didn't know how long she could abdicate her responsibilities there. She promised herself grimly. "Long enough."

Bennett flipped the page and pressed his nose against the plastic. "Who's that?" Adele grasped the book with both hands and brought it down so she could see. "Oh, that's Grandpa. You probably can't recognize him with the beanie." It had been a long time since they'd explored all this memorabilia, and it became particularly difficult once she'd locked it away. To her, all these faces and places represented all she'd lost. Tonight, cuddling Bennett, she started to recall all she'd gained from these experiences and people she carried inside, as she'd once carried her son.

He squinted at her, wrinkles crinkling the bridge of his nose. "What's a beanie? Like beanie weenies?" Her laughter felt good to those rarely exercised muscles. "No, silly Billy. Beanie weenies are baked beans and chopped hot dogs. That's what mommy makes for you when I'm too busy to cook. Or too sad or too behind with shopping." Adele patted her head. "A beanie is a hat."

"Oh, that's a funny name." Bennett reached for the corner of the page, ready to move on. She flattened his fingers. "Wait a minute. Do you remember, Grandpa? That was my daddy. Like Bumpa was your dad's daddy." The child shook his head slowly and settled against her. "Isn't Daddy with Grandpa now?"

"Yes, Grandpa is in heaven." Adele rested her chin on his head. She had to clear her throat before she could speak, but no more tears threatened. "From what I was blessed to know about my father, he's one of the saints sitting on the front row beside your dad. He traveled a bumpy road in his earlier days, like most of us. But his faith and the life he chose later smoothed all that out in the years before he died. Grandpa was a good man who raised me all by himself."

"What happened to him?"

"He had a condition that made it hard to breathe."

"What about your mommy?"

"She was one of the bumps in that road daddy traveled." Adele almost said, "I didn't know her the way I knew my father. She went away when I was very young, so he had to be both mom and dad for me."

She unwrapped a ceramic rabbit smothered in packing tissue. "Do you know who made this?"

"Grandpa." She gingerly set it into his palm, watching him examine the intricately made ears and nose of the cream figure balancing on its rear legs and holding an orange carrot in its front paws. Adele's rabbits used to sit on a high shelf in their kitchen and cabin in the bookcase she'd designed during their remodel. The collection was meant to be admired from afar, not enjoyed, not touched. She intended to protect it from the same little hands clutching the pottery at that moment. None of that mattered now.

"He did this? Wow."

"Mhm. He did when he was about my age. He was that old." She tickled him and growled over his giggles. "Yes, he formed this from a mere lump of clay, little boy. And not only was he good at this, he was a creative genius." Adele wrapped her arms around Bennett and smooshing her cheek against his, whispered, "A true artist."

Keeping him cocooned, Adele scooted back to prop her back against the table and extended her legs in front of her. She finger combed his hair. "People used to call your grandpa's house a junkyard, but he didn't care. He threw nothing away. He was an innovator, and he could find a use for what other folks considered beyond repair, probably because he said he wasted so much of his life before the Lord found him, or rather before he found the Lord." She leaned down so she could see Bennett's face. "Grandpa believed everything has a purpose. Every life, each mistake, all the stuff we call accidents. He was constantly telling me his eye is on the sparrow."

Bennett's hand was lying on the carpet. Adele plucked the rabbit from his palm and turned it this way and that, studying it from every angle as if she'd never seen it before. It felt like she hadn't. Not really. Not through the perspective of her father. "He'd write songs and sing them to me. Tell me stories before bed, mostly about what he'd made and seen in life. Daddy loved to travel once upon a time. Oh, you should have heard him."

When Adele peaked again at her son, she spied half-closed eyes and a mouth drooping to one side. All her talking must have prevented him from falling off that steep cliff of sleep. For a minute, she listened to his breath slow and whistle through his nostrils, savored the rise and fall of his chest. Still holding him, she twisted to replace the rabbit in its tissue and open another album and read her husband's award-winning writing and looked at more pictures and smoothed her son's hair until nearly 2 hours later Adele closed the last leather-bound cover over the recumbent form of Bennett, who had succumbed to sleep an hour before. Her face crusty and dry from the salty residue of spent tears. She set the book aside, covering faces of smiling friends and family smiling up at her.

By wiggling her legs and toes, she got the blood flowing in them. Assured that she wouldn't fall once she was upright, she laid Bennett down and clambered to her feet. Steady, she tucked her hands into his armpits and grunting, threw him over her shoulder. As she lumbered down the hall, Adele heard her husband laugh, warning her in the way he used to. "He's not a baby, Adele. Wake him and make him walk. You'll regret spoiling that boy." But her only regret was not spoiling her husband during their 12 years together, assuming they'd have decades to talk more and make more babies like the one she was carrying now. "Maybe you're wasting the gift of time God has given you with the child you already have."

Coming to Gilmore, running after the prior. "Haven't you lost enough?"

"No," she whispered, and tucked the sheets around her son's sleeping form for the second time that night. She pushed his hand under the covers when it tried to find his mouth like a tiny heat-seeking missile. "I didn't just lose it. It was yanked from me. But I will get it back." Her mouth a straight line. Adele again left his door ajar and the light on outside his room and headed back to the den. Gazing down at the memories peppering the floor, her eyes landed on the treasured rabbit her daddy had fashioned from a small lump of clay no one else valued. Less than a minute later, she was scrambling for the popcorn maker and its cord, half in, half out of the recycling bin. Back on her feet, the humid late August air hugging her chest, the cicadas buzzed to their own rhythm that was louder than the blood pulsing in her ears. Eyeing the inky expanse above her that was broken by a few far-off twinkling stars and the red blinking light of a passing airplane. She vowed, "I will get it back for you." If someone asked her at that moment what it was, she wouldn't have been able to define it. But it sounded like the jingling of bracelets.

Chapter 6.

"Have you cleaned the windows yet?" Jason stared at Glory, his face blank, his bottom teeth visible above his lip. She resisted rolling her eyes. Wasn't she the adult who owned the store? He was a teenager and part-time employee. Glory gestured to get his attention and snapped her fingers, exasperated with him and with herself. "Jason, you did hear my question, didn't you?"

He blinked and at last removed a wireless white bud from his right ear. "Oh, yeah. I'm sorry, Mrs. P."

"I was listening to something else other than me," Glory said dryly. "Billy Holiday. Mallerie turned me on to her. Want to hear?" The aspiring musician held out his hand.

"No, but thank you." She took his chin by her index finger and thumb and tilted his head so she could inspect his left side. "Remember, when you're at work, you can't plug both ears. How are you supposed to hear me call Jason? Look out for the falling book. Or, Jason, I've fallen and I can't get up. Or, even more important, 'Jason, this guest needs you to find a gathering of old men.'"

He dug into a front pocket of his oversized carpenter pants. After pulling out the case, he stuffed one earpiece into it and left the other in place. "I'm sorry, I know, but don't be sorry. Be better. Do better, darling." Glory patted him on the shoulder to ease the sting of her chastening. "Now, back to my original question. Have you washed the front windows yet? It's almost 9:00 and we'll be opening our door forthwith. Um, son, chop chop." Glory clapped her hands, but it looks like it's going to rain. She raised an eyebrow. Her hands spread palms up in front of her. Sure enough, Jason's lips clamped shut. He rotated the bib of his hat until its visor hung toward the back of his neck. And with a sigh that ruffled the scraggly wisps of hair struggling for life over his top lip, he turned away. For a few seconds, Glory watched Tommy, Chucky, and the rest of the Rugrats characters undulate on the back of his t-shirt before stopping him. "The window cleaner and the newspaper are where I left them for you on the counter in the cafe in case you're looking for them." He redirected his steps, headed toward the right, and disappeared down the hall.

Technically, as Oilia's boy, Jason was her kin. But that familial connection meant Gloria expected more from him instead of less. She'd have sent him on his way the day after he'd started working a few hours a week, but for the blood running through her husband's veins and linking her to the teen. That and she couldn't very well fire him and retain his dedicated mother and sister. By this point, Jason should be well aware of their morning routine, what it took to open the store, and if he wasn't, he should know to refer to the checklist she'd tacked to the kitchen wall. His mama could assist him on that score. According to the list of opening tasks, cleaning the windows was one of Jason's Monday, Wednesday, Friday jobs, the first to-dos. Tackling the glass squares outside on Monday set the tone for the week, helping the store recover from the weekend and preparing it for Tuesday, Glory's opening day. On Wednesdays, Jason did the glass inside. Glory took care of the front door Thursday and ignored the handprints on the rest of the windows in front until Friday. Then it was time to spiff up the exterior windows again after visitors touched them on their way to and fro and birds and insects peppered the glass under the porch. On Fridays, Jason spot cleaned and helped prep by the book for Saturday. It was tedious yet important work.

Glory pushed up her bell-shaped sleeve and adjusted the slim platinum watch on her wrist. A wedding gift from Eli that coordinated with the sterling silver and gold bangles on her other arm. 8:30. Barely enough time to arrange the chairs out front and to write the notes on the chalkboard announcing Oilia's special of the day. Glory also had to hang the advertisement for the upcoming book signing, a job she wouldn't entrust to Jason, who lacked the finesse to not only do it, but do it well. He had other work besides his opening chores, and his sister didn't come in until late afternoon. "Oilia." Glory turned it into a one-word song that hearkened back to Eric Clapton. Singing it sounded much better than yelling for her across the store, empty save for the staff this time of morning, and Eli sleeping upstairs. When her baker didn't answer, she sashayed to the rear, still humming the song, and pushed open the kitchen door. "Oh." A surprised Eli swung toward her. "Guilty." Not surprised, she decided, like I caught you eating all of Oilia's ham and cheddar scones. Glory could have stuffed them in his open mouth. "Eli, what are you doing in here?" She regretted the accusatory sound of the words she'd lobbed his way, but it couldn't be helped at this point. They'd sailed through the air, and from Aphilia's expression, they'd struck her dead center, where she stood partially shielded by her cousin. She rolled out the dough on the flowery stainless steel counter. "Can a man be in his own kitchen?" Glory wasn't in the mood to engage both Oilia and her son in a span of minutes, so she ignored her. "Eli, isn't it a mite early for you to be downstairs? You haven't even kissed me good morning yet, and here you stand in your own kitchen." Oilia sat down her rolling pin hard. Eli patted the red head on her shoulder, much as Glory had Jason, before ambling toward his wife. "I thought she'd be outside by now." Glory cut an eye at Oilia as he approached. She proffered her cheek instead of her mouth. "You're looking mighty dapper today, Mr. Prior." Eli studied his lower half as if he needed to remind himself what he was wearing. When he faced Glory again, he appeared pleased as punch with his purple golf shirt tucked into gray trousers cinched under his paunch with a braided black leather belt. He raised a loafered foot and pointed to his sock-free ankle. "Why, thank you, wife," trying to keep up with the brains of this outfit. Glory wasn't in the mood for any of his blandishments. Those two looked up to something. "You're welcome, husband," she responded, her voice stiff. "Oilia, when you didn't answer, and I see why, since you and Eli must have been too busy chatting it up back here, I came in to tell you I'd be outside setting up the chairs and the chalkboard. But since Eli is up and at 'em, he can watch things in the store." Glory pivoted, her silky skirt swirling, and pushed open the door. She flicked a hand, making her sleeve slip down to her elbow. "Y'all go on back to whatever you were doing. I'm taking my brains and putting them to work."

As she suspected, Glory heard Eli pushed through the door behind her, lickety-split, before she'd moved more than a few paces. They hadn't been married but a few years, but she'd come to know him well enough. "Hold up there, baby." Eli wrapped an arm around her and drew her up short. "I can see your feathers are all ruffled. There's nothing to be upset about." She tried not to wrestle away from him, but she had things to do and wanted to be about them. "I'm not a chicken, Eli. What do you mean?" "Oh, the feathers. H-how about I liken you to a peacock then, because you strutted out of that kitchen like one in that eyecatching dress you're wearing. Red is your color?" he winked at her. "Actually, it's burgundy, and a peacock's plumage is closer to jade." Perhaps if she wasn't the brains of the outfit, his words would have achieved their desired effect. But his flirtation only served to rile Glory more. For the life of her, she couldn't see why the opposite sex thought compliments smoothed the way and made everything better. Such flattery only made men slippery and hard to pin down, like trying to hold vegetable oil in her hand. "I've got things to be doing, Eli Prior. Your cousin's son is probably counting the number of robins bopping on the grass out front, and the store is opening in less than—" She angled her wrist. "25 minutes." She stuffed her hands in her pockets and waited for him to say whatever it was he needed to. Eli pursed his lips. "How about we talk while we work? We—" But she didn't wait for him to explain. If he'd said Glory had caught him sneaking an extra scoop of sugar for his morning coffee, she would have brushed it off. This was something else. This avoidance, and she didn't like it one bit. Neither did she appreciate his shoes practically catching on her heels bare in her flip-flops as she flapped her way to the front of the store. As much as she tried to ignore him, she couldn't. When he picked up one end of a chair, she could, and usually did, lift on her own. "Why are we doing a job I can manage by myself?" Glory glared at him as he backed out the door and duckwalked backwards to the spot where she arranged seating on Fridays. She smiled and nodded at Nommy Pearline, arriving at the jewelry store next to buy the book much later than normal, then spared the sky a glance. Voluminous dark gray clouds scudded across the northern horizon, and indeed threatened rain, as well as downtown shoppers. Grateful their front door and the windows Jason was cleaning were set deep beneath the overhang, she hoped for the best and returned for another chair. "Because I wanted to talk without slowing you down." Eli spoke quietly, barely making himself heard over the jangling of the bell. "Well, you are slowing me down." Glory picked up another seat and he held up the other end. This time she scooted backward out the door to place the chair caddy-cornered to the first. "What is it?" "If you slow down a minute, I can tell you," he huffed, obviously working to keep up with her brisk pace. Glory sped up. She had a feeling she wouldn't want to hear what he had to say. "Eli." He caught her by the elbow and forced her to stand still. "We have an appointment today with a realtor." His announcement gathered steam and tumbled out of his mouth. Her "what?" was more a reaction to what she'd clearly heard him say, though his words had landed all smooshed together. Glory froze, bent over the small chalkboard. Eli clamped his lips together. She straightened so she could stare him down. Her long legs nearly making them eye to eye. "Now, why would you go and do a thing like that? And is this what you were talking about with Oilia when I caught you together in the kitchen?" "Did you say caught together? You didn't catch me at anything, Glory Prior. Now, he was the one in a dander. I was about to tell her about the appointment because I didn't want her to be surprised." "You mean the way your wife is feeling right now? Surprised? Gobsmacked? Eli, we agreed we wouldn't tell anyone what we've been thinking about. Thinking about, not doing. And here you are making appointments and telling Oilia. Yes, I caught you doing the very thing we agreed you wouldn't do." Frustrated with him and with herself, Glory grabbed a fat piece of white chalk. She yanked the board by one of its sides, stomped out the front door, and set it down with a firmness that garnered Jason's attention. "Don't worry about me," she snapped at the young man, and wrote, "Friday Feast" in large cursive, and underneath that, "Ham and Cheddar Scones" in block letters. Jason went back to spritzing window cleaner, mindless of the wind starting to pick up and casting the spray in every direction but at the glass. Eli was by her side in a moment, wincing as he knelt. "Glory, we have to know what we're considering. Get a complete picture. If I left it up to you, you'd never set up a meeting and we'd never see what we're working with. How are we supposed to plan a move if we don't talk to a realtor about this place?" "How indeed." When Eli had broached the idea of relocating before they got married, she'd nodded. At the time, anything had felt possible, even something as impossible and otherworldly as selling by the book. Glory never thought she'd marry, and suddenly she could see herself at the altar holding a bouquet of lavender clematis and trailing honeysuckle vines. Marrying Eli was exactly what she wanted to do, the only thing she wanted to do. She would have agreed to buy waterfront property on the moon if it meant she would wear Eli's ring for the rest of her life. Yet Eli had wanted other things, not instead of her, but along with her. A widower of 10 years at the time. He'd come to town to see the woman he once knew as Glory Gibson, his former elementary school classmate on a lark. He was on his way to meet some of his business partners in Nashville, Tennessee. It had taken some hunting to find her, but once they'd rekindled their friendship and invested in a couple years of courtship, their reunion had led to their union. From the start, he'd been clear about his hopes and goals, though he'd stumbled through laying out his life's plans the night he proposed to her. The two of them had squeezed into a set of swings at the park, located a stone's throw from the Baptist church that anchored one end of downtown Gilmore. Their arms were extended, their fingers intertwined as they swayed slowly back and forth, back and forth to the chirp of the crickets and the occasional rumble of a passing car. With her free hand, Glory fanned away mosquitoes and the image of the newer mounds interspersed amid the crumbling headstones. "Interesting, isn't it? The juxtaposition of the children's playground with the church and its adjacent graveyard."

"Glor-glory." Eli choked out. "What is it? Are you all right, dear?" She had gripped his fingers and leaned forward in alarm, worried something terrible had happened that would transport him from the swing to the grave in one horrible yet well-deserved twist of fate.

"Mhm. Yes, Glory." Eli had gulped as if swallowing a glass full of water. "I love you. I know I always have. Even if I forgot for a few decades and married somebody else." Gloria had started to laugh, but he shushed her with a brisk shake of his head, the moonlight behind him casting his face in shadow. "I know you've made a life in the bookstore, but I think we have an even bigger life ahead. Together. If we're together, um, Lori, we—you pour yourself into the store and I want to help and not only there but beyond it to help you see there's more than those books because you're you by being you. I want to show you there are people to love and who'd be blessed by your attention. Something that has taken me most of my life to learn. People, family who'd returned that attention and love. What your books can't do. What my business didn't do." For a moment, she'd tripped over the word "blessed," one of those churchy terms her parents brandished, like a huge flag over the work they did for the community. Rivers of sacrifice flowed her way. But somehow they became rivulets when it came to her older brother Davis, if not diverted altogether. He'd not been too blessed by the kind of attention his parents gave him while he was growing up.

Eli had tugged on her fingers, making her swing jiggle in his direction and away from her distant memories. "Glory, do I make sense? You're quiet."

"Well, you were talking, Eli, and I was listening. You shushed me, remember?" She used her feet to still her seat. "You make plenty of sense."

"Good. Good." He slid off the wood slat suspended above the ground and stood in front of her, moving a bit stiffly after their hour in the swing. In that moment, Glory knew what he was about to do. What she'd been hoping he'd do in her heart of hearts, and her breath caught. She didn't bother whisking away the insects that continued to assault her bare shoulders and arms, and the tops of her feet her sundress didn't cover. And sure enough, Eli grasped the chain that hooked her seat to the overhead steel beam and used it to help him sink inch by inch to one knee onto the hard-packed dirt. Suddenly, he seemed more sure of himself than he had a few moments before. When he was stumbling over his words, he returned to the confident version of himself who strode into her store, looking for the first grader who stole my pencil case 50-some years ago. He covered their interlocked fingers with his own hand. "I told you how I wanted to find you and see if I was right. That you really were and are my first and one true love. The one that got away. It took some doing, but I finally did, even though it seemed like you had purposely moved underground like a mole."

"Eli." Glory's protest chugged to a halt and petered out, for she had indeed burrowed as deeply as she could without disappearing altogether. She operated her business with the help of the store manager, refrained from using social media, and rarely communicated with anyone from her hometown or college. His finding her had taken a lot of digging, something she hoped no one else would bother to do. With her parents dead and her brother good as dead to her, this man was the only person who still cared she existed.

Eli placed a quieting finger across her lips. He obviously had more pressing things on his mind besides Glory's undercover life. She forced herself to still. "We've also talked about my Playboy lifestyle and the years between losing you and my first marriage. About the daughter I didn't know I'd fathered until a month ago. I promised myself that if I ever got the opportunity, I would be present for her in a way I never had the chance to be when I was younger, when I was married after my wife died. And even now—" Glory caressed his rough, unshaven cheek with her knuckles. "But that's not your fault, Eli. You didn't know she existed until recently, and you have no idea who or where she is, if she is."

"It is my fault, Glory. I should have been more responsible at the time. My grandma taught me better. I made those choices. And if I'd been the man I should have been, it wouldn't have happened. And if it did, that young woman would have been able to trust me enough to tell me I had a child." Emotion choked his voice. The man she'd come to know was so much better than the man he thought he used to be. And Glory hoped to show she accepted him as he was. How she ached to tell him to stop punishing himself, to forgive himself. If only she wouldn't sound hypocritical to her own ears.

That day on the swing set, Eli had cleared his throat and told her, "The situation has kept me from getting closer to you and you from getting closer to me. But I don't think that promise has to supersede the one I want to make to you, Glory. To love you and cherish you all my days, to put you first. If you're prepared to promise me the same, to put me first before anyone or anything else." Glory had nodded before he could finish his statement, believing that if it came to it, she'd follow Eli to Timbuktu or Tennessee to live closer to the family who he believed so needed her motherly attention. The only thing that would keep her from him was the truth. He'd slipped an emerald the size of her fingernail over her left knuckle, and it nestled into place like it had always belonged there.

Now Glory shook off that memory and wrote "$2 for $5" on the chalkboard. When she straightened, she twisted her wedding ring and stared at Eli, knowing she belonged in "By the Book" with him, despite those wild ideas she'd pledged she'd consider. "You're always talking about not having family. How dude in these books were the only kinfolk you had until I came along." Eli continued his pursuit. "Don't forget Oilia and her twins." "What about them?" She threw out the line and hoped he would take the bait. "You've said yourself they're not my real cousins." Looking, she grinned, he lifted his chin at Jason in a belated greeting, who was starting at the other end of windows and bobbing his head to an indiscernible beat. "You're always teasing me about our dotted family line." A horn blared and someone shouted, "Watch out there now." Glory recognized Mr. Jackson's familiar manner of calling hello to Eli in the way that older men tended to do. Rolling her eyes, she swished back into the store, her shoes clapping against the bottoms of her feet, wishing she'd stuffed cotton in that bell over the door. He'd moved aside to let her pass, but quickly followed her. "Glory. I've learned more about my family. About our family, a daughter and possibly a grandchild. The rumors now have flesh and blood on them." "Is that why you're worked up enough to call realtors? You've heard from your daughter." "I'm not worked up. I'm excited. Hopeful. I haven't heard from her. I don't even know her name or what she looks like, but now I know she's real. One of my old fraternity brothers confirmed that my former girlfriend was pregnant when I left town and that they'd heard she had a daughter. My daughter. Once I confirm the truth, I want us to be ready to go. Free from the responsibilities here so we can stay away as long as we want, as long as it takes. It would kill me if I didn't do everything I could to write my wrongs."

"You're always so dramatic, Eli," to her ears. The words she often said sounded like a groan. She knew what it was like to have family somewhere and not be able to see them. The difference was his was alive and well and he was running after them. She was running from a memory. "It's not drama, Glory. I dropped my life into your life. I welcomed you into my life." "Your life? My life? What about our life?" moving forward on a brand new path that we carved together. "Brand new with a daughter that's 40 years old, you mean?" She ground out.

Glory grabbed one of the two hip-high wheeled carts right inside the front door. On it, she'd stacked old periodicals beside a jar of pens, pencils, markers, and scissors under a sign taped to the rack that read, "Take one, use one." It was hard for her to get rid of any type of literary material, and she invited potential guests to do a crossword, cut out a recipe, or simply sit a spell and enjoy the entire downtown area. Recycling was probably ingrained in her blood by her parents and folks from their generation who taught her to use old newspapers to clean glass. "Waste not, want not" wasn't a Bible verse, but her parents repeated it almost as often as "do unto others." "Don't brush me off." Eli pressed his back against the door, allowing her to step unhindered toward the sidewalk. Glory halted on the threshold, but didn't look at him. "I'm not dismissing you, but this business about dying and killing, it's too much." She pushed the cart outside between the chairs she and her husband had already set up, and quick-stepped inside to retrieve the second cart. It held rows of soft covers, familiar backlisted titles to entice potential readers inside to look for new releases and later additions. "What business again?" He flattened himself against the door. Glory had to keep moving. That was how she'd survived all these years, by doing. She angled the cart to the right side opposite the small seating area so people wouldn't confuse the books they could scribble in with the ones they couldn't. Finished with all her opening tasks, she checked on Jason, who'd wrapped up the window cleaning. At last, that child, he would take an hour to prepare instant grits. After surveying her arrangements and the gathering clouds, Glory flipped the sign hanging on the door to "Open" and raised the shade covering the glass. Leaning around Eli, she cupped a hand around her mouth to issue a last command to her employee. "Run a moist cloth over the door because this wood is dusty from all the road work." She pointed toward the end of the street where a crew beat a steady rat-a-tat-tat. By her calculations, they wouldn't be working much longer if mother nature had her way. But at least her door would get cleaned. "Remember, moist, not wet. Then see if your mama needs help in the kitchen."

"Would you stop and listen?" The pain rattled when Eli closed the door firmly. The clanging of the bell above him sounded as angry as he. Glory finally stopped moving by the Alice's Adventures in Wonderland display in the entry and ran a hand through her hair, making her normally well-tended style stand on end. It wasn't that she was ignoring her husband. She had to keep the train chugging along until it had reached its end. "But you can't outrun the guilt, Glory. You know you're letting Eli down, too."

"Okay, I'm listening." He huffed, this time with frustration. "You told me before we got married you were willing to go to the ends of the earth for us to be together. I wasn't lying. However, I didn't believe I'd have to that you'd make me because you said you knew how important 'Buy the Book' is to me. What about you? Were you lying?"

"I was telling the truth then and I'm telling the truth now. It was decades before I learned I may have a child out there somewhere and a couple years more to accept I have a daughter. And I'm ready to hand out pink cigars. Glory. 40-year-old pink cigars. I don't care that she was raised by another man because I intend to keep that promise I made before I ever saw you again. I laid that all on the table in the months leading up to my proposal and you told me you understood. Yet here we are still talking about this like you've never heard it before. You're running around moving furniture, selling books, planning signings and events like not a thing's changed. Probably because nothing much has changed in your mind. This is how you intend to go on in perpetuity. But we have a grown baby and a grandbaby. And you talk more in one night about a stranger's boy named Bennett than you have about your own."

The front door rattled and opened, and Jason lurched through with the cleaner and a huge ball of crumpled newspaper. "It's starting to rain, Mrs. P, so I didn't bother with the door. Do you want me to bring in those displays?" Seeing the muscles in Eli's jaw clench and unclench, she shook her head. "We'll see to it, Jason. Maybe we'll get by with a little sprinkle this time." Thunder shook the store and the overhead lights blinked. "On second thought, bring in the carts with the books. Leave the chairs and the chalkboard. We can wipe those down." She winced when lightning lit the sky. "You'd best hurry."

Glory waited until the young man had set down his armload and opened the door yet again before turning a weary gaze on Eli. "Now, what were we saying?" He cupped her elbow and marched her deeper into the store, not stopping until they'd reached the tall pocket doors that enclosed Glory's happy place. There, it was unlikely they would be disturbed, but he lowered his voice. "That first time I saw you in this store and we had lunch and we talked for hours. At the end of the day, when I had to leave, I told you I was coming back. You believed me, didn't you?"

"Yes." Glory sounded as quiet as her husband, as stricken, despite the hopeful images his words conjured.

"I came back, stayed a while, and then I had to leave. But I told you I'd return once I sold my business. And that's exactly what I did, didn't I? Because the man standing before you is a changed man, and he keeps his word, which is part of the reason you love me."

"I know that. I cherish that. And it's important to me to keep my promise to you and to them, too, despite the fact they've never heard it. But do you want to know what's really killing me?" Glory nodded slowly, moved beyond speech by his passion. Eli clasped both her hands and both of his against his chest over his heart. "I know you love this store. All these books, your customers, guests." She couldn't refrain from correcting him in her mind. "This is my home, and these people are more my guests than my customers. They're my family." Eli continued his list. "Dude, Mallerie, Jason, Oilia, who will grow on you in time, more than likely because she's associated with this place here. Maybe that's why you love me as much as you say you do. Because I agreed to move upstairs and so became a living, breathing part of this legacy of yours. But what kills me is that you're willing to give up everything, everything, Glory, for this." Her husband relaxed his grip to aim a finger toward the third floor, then forward toward the cafe area, the bookshelves, and at the room behind them. "And this and that and those and here. You're willing to give up us as long as it took for there to be an us and yourself. You're not by the book, contrary to what you may think. I'm not really asking you to sell your home and exchange your dreams for mine. I want us to live our dream, the one we make together. Your unwillingness to do that is what's killing me. But I'll fight like—" Eli seemed to search the room to see if the word he needed was hiding under the sofa or the piano. "Let's just say I'll fight with everything in me to make sure your muleheadedness and your fear don't kill our marriage first. Because that's what I think it boils down to. Fear. Fear of leaving what you can see, know, and trust. Fear of believing in something and someone that isn't you or what you built." Obviously done, he let go and took a step away from her, but then turned back to lean closer and kiss her cheek. Glory grasped his fingertips at the last moment and halted his exodus. Eli tugged at his hand to free it. "Yes, I'm calling the realtor to cancel the appointment. I'm sorry. You're right. I jumped the gun. I was excited, but I should have asked. Let me reassure you that I'd only planned to tell Oilia we had a meeting at 5:30 so she could keep an eye on things while we were occupied. I wouldn't have broken your trust." She clung to him, forcing herself to step over her brother's shadow wedged between them. "No, Eli, wait. We came up with our own vows 5 years ago and neither one of us said anything about 'till the bookstore us do part.' But we did end them with 'till death do us part.' I didn't simply repeat what I'd heard in other weddings. I meant every last word. You're not the one who should apologize. I am. And I do apologize. I mean." She wrapped her arms around his neck and a gratitude flooded through her when she felt her ribs squeezed in his tight embrace. Gratitude and trepidation. Glory tilted her face a little so she could look him in the eyes. "Give me until the festival. After that, we'll make all the plans we need." Then she pulled him into her special room. There they had the best view of the rain as it pelted the windows for the next hour. She wondered where Dude would find shelter.

Chapter 7.

Adele did a dosey-do with Bennett on the sidewalk, leading him by the hand to her right side to insulate him from the traffic on Spring Church Road. She wouldn't risk losing him, too. He stumbled. "A man, you made me step on a crack." She put her hand to her back and moaned. Bennett crowed over her pretend pain. "How's your back, Mommy? Did I break it?" Her tongue lolled out the right corner of her mouth. "I think I'll make it." To prove it, Adele swung him high over the next break in the sidewalk. The boy landed with a chortle. "Whoa."

They'd both itched to escape their rental house. Friday morning's torrent marked the first of a weekend's worth of rain-soaked days, and she'd viewed the inclement weather as an opportunity to attack the remaining boxes the movers had stacked in the garage and in Bennett's closet. The only real break they took from unpacking was attending a nearby Sunday school and enjoying a hearty southern-style brunch. After Adele determined to get things in order, the house, their life and schedule, and most importantly, her next steps, hence that Monday morning's excursion to historic downtown Gilmore. That was how she'd described it to Bennett when she'd helped him choose an outfit. His favorite cargo shorts with pockets for his cars, the red t-shirt with the faded blue trim, and his knee-high yellow rain boots. She'd donned a less conspicuous pair of gray linen cropped pants, a pale pink blouse, and black canvas sandals. The more professional the better. When she'd checked herself in the mirror, she'd murmured, "No striped calf tans for me." The sun and warmth had returned, but the humidity had retreated along with the storm. Adele made the most of the day and parked their SUV by the church at the top of the street and walked the five wide tree-lined blocks to buy the book. "This way we can get the wiggles out and see what there is to see," she explained to Bennett.

In Dollars to Donuts, the local coffee shop run out of a 1920s bungalow. She nursed a latte and he dribbled his hot chocolate on the table while they compared the kinds of bear claws. The ones people ate and the ones on the animals' paws. They talked about black holes versus donut holes as they walked through the secondhand store. And Adele elicited all the reasons he didn't need yet another red Radio Flyer wagon, particularly one with a flat front tire that cost as much as a new version. "Besides, we brought yours with us when we came to Gilmore." Adele swung their clasped hands forwards and backwards in a wide arc when they resumed their walk past old houses, up-to-date offices, and storefronts. "It's in the garage back at our rental house." He poked out his lips. "I want another one."

Adele, sapped from the debate and on the verge of chastising him, planted her feet in front of Rock and Robin, a music store near the corner of the second block. When he kicked at an empty soda can, she gripped the baseball cap covering his head and turned his noggin toward the rows of records inside, visible through the clear double window of the brick building painted a stark shade of white. "Do you know what those are?" Bennett twisted out of her hold and crossed his arms, apparently refusing to be mollified. "You said we're not supposed to point."

"Those are called records and they're things. It's okay because I've taught you not to point at people. I also said you should mind your attitude, particularly when you're talking to me. Uncross those arms." He sighed and obeyed, albeit slowly. "Yes, ma'am." Adele eyed him for a moment, then extended some grace. What her husband had done as naturally as he breathed, and what she struggled to give and accept. She balanced her hands on her knees to meet Bennett on his level, and put her mouth next to his ear. "How about I take you for a ride in that wagon later if the weather holds out? Let's pray the afternoon forecast is wrong and ask God to turn those white puffs I see on the horizon into fair weather clouds." He squinted at the sky. "You mean cumulus clouds?" "Yes, smarty pants. I see all that reading is paying off." While she didn't believe in bribing

A child to behave, she too was trying and failing to adjust to all the upheaval, knowing what to leave behind and what to carry with her, what to leave buried, and what to resurrect. It had to be harder for a four-year-old who had no idea what his mommy's plans were. If she had her way, and the Lord had his, they'd be settled soon enough.

"There you go again," that not so little voice chided. "Making your will God's will instead of the other way around." Shrugging off the admonition, she puckered up and leaned in, and Bennett nodded and kissed her back. After deciding to forego the music store, he shuffled rather than bounced along beside her.

As they continued on their way, Adele noticed an older man and his dog approaching from their left on the side nearer the street. She edged right closer to her son to allow the pair more room to pass. Bennett tugged on her arm and pointed with his free hand. "Mommy, that dog is smiling."

"He sure looks like he is," Adele thought, pushing down his offending finger. "Shush, Ben! Ben, remember that's not polite." She nodded at the gentleman as an apology and in greeting.

"But I'm pointing at something, not someone," the child piped up. "I'm talking about the dog, Bennett. I think he smiles, too."

Drawing beside Adele, the man stopped and winked. "Would the little man like to say hello to Oscar?"

Uh, well, Adele tended to keep herself to herself, as her daddy used to say, and she'd become even more reticent since her husband died. After all, Ben was the person she most liked to talk to. The stranger's friendliness, while not exactly off-putting, caught her off guard.

"Can I? Can I?" Bennett danced close to the dog. Its tail wagged furiously, as if answering, "Yes! Yes!" Ignoring her natural inclination to correct her son's grammar, Adele freed his hand, but hovered while he took a knee beside Oscar. She rubbed her shoulder. It felt like Bennett had tried to yank her arm from its socket in his eagerness, but couldn't resist grinning back at both the dog and the child.

Out of something else to say, she offered, "He's a cutie. My best friend, Oscar. All I have left since I lost my wife. She loved him, too." The man spoke quietly, sounding like he was making a personal observation rather than polite conversation with Adele. Not wanting to intrude on his private pain, she nodded. She understood.

In the silence, Adele retreated to her own thoughts. Did her own kind of missing and mourning, what she hadn't planned or expected to do on their expedition to the downtown area, with the sun warming the middle of her back and glinting off the slowly disappearing puddles. But she'd come to learn that every day was a good day for weeping.

"My name is Charles. Charles Graves," the man extended the hand that wasn't wrapped around the red strap connected to Oscar.

"I'm Adele. Nice to meet you, Mr. Graves. Oscar." Snapped out of her revery, she squeezed his callous palm in a brief hello. Her daddy had taught her well about respecting her elders. There was no way she'd call.

"Is he 70 or 80? Hard to tell by his given name. And who is this fine young man who looks like he wants to take my Yorkie home with him?" Mr. Graves's silky silver mustache twitched. He tucked his hand into the pocket of his striped slacks. "My son, Bennett."

Adele wasn't sure whether it was his sense of humor or his own grief that made her feel comfortable enough to share their names. What she typically wouldn't do so readily, the years behind her had taught her to look a scance at the years ahead of her, as well as the people they brought with them. She scratched the nape of her neck under the loose French braid trailing across her shoulder. "Actually, I thought he was afraid of dogs. Your best friend must be very special."

The two watched Bennett stroke the dog's bluish brown head and back and encouraged it to sit by gently pushing down on its hind quarters. As kind as the older man seemed to be, passers by seemed to be similarly minded, for they silently edged around the small group, blocking much of the sidewalk. Enthralled, Adele couldn't find the wherewithal to hurry the child out of the way of the uncomplaining pedestrian traffic.

"Oh, nobody's afraid of Oscar. He makes friends everywhere he goes," Mr. Graves waved a hand in the direction the mother and son were traveling. "Glory down the way has special cookies baked for him. We look forward to those on the weekends, don't we, boy?"

Like sudden cloud cover on a clear day, his words cast a shadow over their pleasant exchange and broke the spell. Adele's lips flattened, and so did the tone of her voice. "Well, we should get going. It was nice to meet you, Bennett. Tell Mr. Graves thank you and let him be on his way."

At first, the child continued to pet Oscar, whose ears turned like miniature satellite dishes, taking in the 9-in high world around him. "Bennette!" And that was all she said, all she had to say. Feeling slightly guilty that she'd rained on the child's sunny parade, she watched him spring to his feet. "Thank you, Mr. Graves." He elongated each syllable. After throwing a quizzical yet respectful look her way, the man nodded at Bennett and patted him comfortingly on his head. Mr. Graves, too seemed to understand words unspoken, or at least accept them. A tug on the leash garnered the attention of his four-legged buddy, and man and dog were on their way without another word.

She and Bennett trooped along quietly, both their steps now dragging. Around them, cars and people passed each other on both sides of the two-lane road. Adele tried to quell the swell of emotion that threatened to overwhelm her whenever she heard mention of Eli and Glory Prior. What would she do when she faced them again?

"Why are you carrying Daddy's backpack, Mommy?" Trust Mr. Eagle Eyes to notice.

"I almost made it to buy the book. Just something I wanted to show Mrs. Prior." Adele had to force herself to say the name evenly without an edge to the words.

"What is it?" He stretched for the bag's old-fashioned burnished bronze buckle. The child couldn't go a day without asking a thousand questions. His curiosity seemed to multiply without his daddy to run interference. "I need to ask her help with something. You have the chops to be a reporter like your daddy."

She swung around out of his reach. "Let's hold up and wait for the light. Ben, we'll stay here until we can cross the intersection safely."

"Oh. Oh, can I read Alice in Wonderland again?"

On the move once more, but with extra pep in his step, Bennett veered out of the direct path they were traveling across the street to jump into a large puddle with both feet, making the most out of his bright yellow boots. A woman headed in the opposite direction shot the mother and son duo a none too happy look and brushed off her wet pants. Adele flashed her an apologetic smile, but was relieved she'd distracted him. "Be more careful, Bennett. As far as Alice's adventures in Wonderland, I don't know. Mrs. Prior might not let us in if she's there. By the book is closed today based on the hours posted on her door. My plan is to see her as a visitor instead of as a customer." Feeling like she was coming on like a nimbo straightus cloud full of continuous rain, she adopted a more hopeful outlook. "We'll see if Mrs. Prior still has it displayed. But let's find out whether she sells something besides fiction. Maybe check out her selection of biographies." These days, Adele preferred truth in all aspects of her life.

He frowned, but then his eyes widened and his countenance changed. Adele followed his eyes and spotted the huge circle of muddy water between the sidewalk and the street, nearly obscuring one of the areas marked for parallel parking. Before she could stop him, he yanked his hand from hers and dashed toward the space just as a car whipped off the road to park in it.

"Bennett!"

From out of nowhere, two sturdy hands snatched the child back and lifted him onto the concrete.

"Father, I'm thirsty. Can I get me a drink?"

"No, child, not from the kitchen sink. Why pull up a chair and sip from there when I know where there's water flowing from an unhidden place? It satisfies and cools, puddles and pools, and it won't leave a trace of that thirst you first spoke of, my love. Here, see, walk with me to the base of Yandere. Dip your cup in the inmost part. There in the heart, daughter."

"Oh, here you are. You said you'd be working in the other room with the young adult books. What's that you're reading?" Her heart thumping against her rib cage, Glory casually refolded the page along an old crease and slipped it into the back of the book in her hand. She picked up her pen and fiddled with its cap to give her trembling fingers something to do. Immersed in thought, she'd not heard the wide oak treads announce his entrance.

"Just thinking. I've heard of just mercy, but not something entitled just thinking. Must be a one-page new release." He smoothed her hair from her forehead and pressed his lips to it. "I thought you were reorganizing the shelves."

She closed her eyes and enjoyed the weight of his hand, the tenderness of his touch, treasured the latitude and the forgiveness they conveyed. Glory hadn't intended to be disingenuous when she'd announced that she had to work on the stacks, but really she needed to retreat to them, to be alone with her babies. If Eli had his way, she wouldn't be able to do that much longer, to lose herself in these areas in the quiet of the day, to trail her hands along the spines of her beloved friends and family. After amling through the rooms, she'd found herself in one of the bell-shaped swivel chairs positioned at the end of a row, riffling through pages that were, on the one hand comforting and familiar, and on the other painful and condemning.

Dropping her pen, Glory raised her hand and took his, squeezing it gratefully, and offered an excuse that was close kin to the truth. "I planned to reorganize, but once I got here, I started thinking about the festival and all that comes with it."

"Oh, the festival." Obviously, he inferred her meaning. The festival and his desire to move shortly after. He paused a beat before walking to the matching leather seat. "I came up to get your help, but I can see you need me more."

"Okay, if I join you here for a second," she nodded, appreciating his respect for her alone time. Glory knew Eli was more the extrovert to her introvert. That companionship and conversations fed him like the sunlight and rain fed her favorite creamy white gardinas in Gilmore's public gardens. Though the rewards were worth it, he required lots of attention.

"May I ask what you're thinking about exactly?" Eli's voice seemed to tiptoe through the dust modes, dancing in the sunray over his shoulder.

"Sure, you can ask, but I don't think I'll tell you." Glory's arched brow dared him to ask again. She knew he recognized her need to wreak her after a day full of interaction and to-dos. And now, even more so, when he wanted to pull her away from all she held dear.

Glory crossed a covered leg, her knees invisible under the silky material. It was Eli's favorite, this loose dress. He'd bought the mumu on their Hawaiian Island honeymoon. Wearing it today was her own way of secretly telling him, "I love you and I forgive you for breaking my heart."

Eli took up the dare by leaning over and grabbing an exposed toe. He dragged a finger down the middle of her soul. "Uncle," she giggled. She had none to speak of, but she called out to the nameless, faceless man for mercy anyway.

"Shh, we have a guest downstairs," he whispered.

"A guest? But it's Monday," he pressed a finger to his lips. "This is a special circumstance."

"Didn't you hear the commotion?"

"Then what are you doing up here?"

"Wait, now I realize you mentioned a situation before you got distracted." She peaked around the long row of shelves. They tried not to leave folks completely unattended while still giving them some breathing room to explore the premises.

"Yes, the situation. What led me upstairs. She was asking questions I couldn't answer, but then I saw you looking all captivating and whatnot, and I forgot myself." Gloria sat up straight and slid her feet back into her shoes. All business now. Rising, she clipped the pen to her neckline and cidled past the shelves of classics toward the door leading to the landing. Each of the four rooms on the second floor held different genres, old and new classics, and historical fiction, contemporary, literary fiction, and what the industry called up market, a blend of the two. novels geared toward young adults and teens, and a fancifully decorated room for children's books that had squishy chairs, plush rugs, a small stage, and puppets. The downstairs shelves held a mixture of genres and ages, some sections mirroring what readers could find on the second floor.

She stopped with one hand on the rail, ready to descend, and turned to Eli, so close behind her she could smell his minty breath. Expecting him to reel off some author's name or title he was less familiar with. She asked off-handedly, "What kinds of questions? Something about a Bible?"

Glory nearly tumbled down the stairs. "Bible? You know we don't carry Bibles, Eli? What exactly was the question? The closest thing to Bibles by the book carries are the novels written by CS Lewis."

"Glory, honey bun. I know all that. You're constantly having to explain that we don't carry much besides fiction. The Bible isn't the situation. Surely you heard all the commotion a few minutes ago." Now he really had her attention. She pulled him into the closest room to their left. The butterflies Jason had hung for summer fluttered from the ceiling.

"I didn't hear a sound coming from downstairs through these thick walls and the woodwork. It must have been that poem."

"Well, I was unpacking books in the stock room and I heard banging on the front door. I walked up front and Ailia was standing beside dude. Dude, this story is growing stranger and stranger by the telling of it. He's always ignored my invitations to come inside." Glory knew that was more than fine with Eli because he wasn't as comfortable with the relationship such as it was.

"Yes, dude. There he stands with his arms around some little boy who's crying. And his mother, the little boy's mother, is beside him, wildeyed, wearing one sandal and toaden the other." Glory pressed a hand to her chest. While she didn't know dude from Adam, she would never suspect him of harming anyone other than himself with his daily poison. He wasn't her brother, and he wasn't her.

"You say dude held a child. And the woman..." Eli closed in and grasped the fingers twisting the fabric of her dress. "Baby, stop thinking the worst. From what I hear, the boy dashed toward the street to hop in some rainwater, and Dude grabbed him in time to keep him from getting run over."

"What? Where is Dude now? Where are I mean? I can't believe you. I Why did it take somebody asking about a Bible for you to come get me?" Glory made for the door. He pulled her back inside near the life-sized dollhouse it had taken them weeks to construct.

"Shh, Glory. The woman with the child. She's who asked about a Bible. While I settled folks down, dude took a shortcut home through the kitchen, and Oilia helped the other two compose themselves with a drink and a snack in the cafe. That mama is a prickly one, let me tell you. I figured you wouldn't mind offering them our queen of mons or croissants. Soften her up a bit."

Glory shook her head, wishing this man of hers would hurry it on. "I was on my way to get you when the mama stopped me to ask about Bibles. When I explained that we specialize in fiction, she looked like she would have a cow, a big old Jersey cow with white splotches right there. I told her to eat something and I'd find you. And here I am. And here you are tickling my feet, chatting me up like we're having a tea party. Then you tell me about this. Is there anything else, Eli Prior?"

"Not as far as I know." Her husband shrugged and held out an arm to usher her out. "After you, Mrs. Prior, messing up my weekend," she fussed, gathering her dress and dashing to the stairs, the vibrant flora and the material shimmering.

As she neared the cafe, she heard Oilia coupooing over what must be the child Eli had told her about. Gloria had never heard the baker speak so gently in all the times she had worked at by the book. "I hear them coming now. An aunt can't crawl down those stairs without us hearing it."

"Glory. Eli, about time," the baker boomed. Glory rounded the corner through the last display. And there, sitting in two of the stools at the counter, sat a mud splattered, bloody knead and tear stained Adele and Bennett munching on Oilia's pastries.

Chapter 8.

When Adele spotted Mrs. Prior in her periphery, she had to choke down the delicate dough, now a rock in a throat gone dry. She tried to swivel imperceptibly toward the counter and pretend not to see the owner of buy the book, but she cocked an ear toward the woman as she approached them. Those goddy bracelets of hers were more a giveaway than the telltale sounds of footsteps.

"Need more water?" The employee wearing the striped apron lifted the picture and filled Adele's empty glass from her spot behind the counter. Bennett drained his hard plastic cup and slapped it down on the concrete. "Mine, too. May I have more, please?" Adele laid her hand on his arm and corrected him gently. She folded her napkin to cover the crumbs and wiped her mouth. Always on motherhood duty, even after all the excitement of this situation. The book seller tisked and exchanged a glance with the gentleman who'd helped Adele and Bennett when they'd entered the store, all in a tizzy. Adele had to move aside when the woman positioned herself between her and her son and stretched an arm along the back of his seat. "And you, young man, did you see a white rabbit and follow it like Alice?"

Bennett's face lit up. "Oh, oh, can I?" He peeked around at his mother. "I mean, may I read the book again?" Before Mrs. Prior could respond, Adele spun in her son's direction, and her outstretched legs made the older woman take a step back. "We talked about that outside, Bennett. Just because you ran out in front of the car doesn't change my mind about looking for biographies first. Also, if she's right about that book leading you into the street, that's the last thing I want you to read."

Spying the couple sharing another side glance, she concluded, "He must be the lucky Mr. Prior. We don't carry much in the way of biographies, Mrs. Simonet, unless you're talking about biographical fiction like Roots by Alex Haley." The virtual stranger, smiling a little, hunched her shoulders and held up her palms as if laying all her cards on the table. The hair on the back of Adele's neck tingled at this woman's feigned helplessness.

"You don't carry much in the way of truth in this store, do you?"

Mrs. Prior's wide eyes moved from one face to the other, as if searching for a life raft. "Excuse me?" Adele realized she'd overstepped when Bennett dropped his pastry and stared at her. She swallowed and brushed the wisps escaping her braid and tickling her face. "What I mean is, I told Mr. Prior, I was looking for a Bible. And you don't carry them. So, no biographies, no Bibles. But we do have newspapers. Not that they tell you the truth, either."

The helpful employee swiped crumbs into her palm and brushed her hands together several times over a waste basket. "Can I get y'all anything else? I'm glad we had a few of these left from Saturday, which shocked me out of my shoes. But the Lord knew you'd be coming today. Too bad he didn't warn me," Mrs. Prior grumbled.

Bennett tugged at his mother's sleeve. "May I have another queeny thing?" The person behind the counter clocked in her thick sold shoes toward the swinging door that guarded the kitchen from the cafe area. "A queen of mine?"

"Sure, I think there's one more left."

"And thank you, but no." Adele stopped the woman in her tracks. "We should get on our way. If my little guy eats more bread and sweets, he'll never eat his dinner, which I promise you won't taste nearly as delicious as any of the food we've had here. I do appreciate it, Mrs. Miz."

"I'm Oilia, the baker and allound helper, but Oilia will do." Adele stood and tucked her hands into Bennett's armpits and lifted him from the stool. Looking disappointed yet resigned to his fate, the boy landed on the floor with a solid thump and took his mother's hand. Mirroring the younger woman, perhaps subconsciously, Mrs. Prior cidled to the man near her and linked her fingers with his, her eyes as narrow as her smile. "Well, before you go, I hope you consider walking with me around the store to gain a better feel for buy the book. Maybe there's another way we can help you."

To Adele, her move toward her husband revealed her need for reinforcements, a request for backup. This sign of weakness and discomfort emboldened her. "I think I have a pretty good idea of what you're selling. What else can take the place of a Bible, and I take it you're not a fan of fiction?"

Mr. Prior unfolded his wife's hand through the V of his bent arm. "Not much."

The book seller's eyebrows furrowed. "May I ask why?"

Adele's hip poked out when she shifted her weight to her left leg. She gazed into the distance, as if the answer was printed on the covers of the books beyond the older couple. "I think authors use novels to work through things on the page they can't figure out for themselves."

Oilia covered her mouth when all the heads swung her way. "Oops. It's kind of funny hearing someone say that in this store."

"I take it that goes for poetry, too, Mrs. Prior's voice was soft."

"Definitely," Adele affirmed bruskly. "I mean, it depends on the subject matter. But you must admit, when it comes to writing fiction, it's all about plunking down the twists and turns of someone's imagination."

Mr. Prior rubbed his jaw. "You don't encourage using your imagination." His question sounded curious, not condemning, and it made Adele squirm. She didn't like how her back felt pressed against the wall and the heat of a spotlight on her face. "I have a four-year-old who's incredibly creative and and and fanciful and smart, but I want him to cling to truth, to know what truth is when he sees it and hears it." She shrugged. "Anyway, we were on a walk through your cute town and this accident happened. You can assume it rattled me. I'm probably saying a lot more than I should and in a way I shouldn't again. Thank you for your help. We won't take up any more of your day. You were closed for a reason."

When Adele raised Bennett's hand, she saw him staring at her quizzically. He's judging me and rightly so. and she blinked away her guilt. Unable to bring herself to extend any gratitude to his wife, she nodded at the man at her side and then at Oilia. It wasn't like Glory Prior had done anything for them anyway. Adele fought a sense of shame over her unusual behavior. But she felt so uncomfortable in the store since nothing that day had gone as planned. It would be better if she came back another time. Maybe they wouldn't have this audience.

"Don't forget your backpack." Oilia briskly circled around the counter and recovered the battered army green bag propped on a stool. She extended it to Adele, who slid the strap to the crook of her elbow. The youngster shook the sack and cried, "That's right, Mommy. You said you brought Daddy's bag to show something to Mrs. Prior." Her jaw dropped open, and Adele knew that she'd been caught.

"Why don't we give your Ben Ben more time to come to himself? Poor baby. He can read his favorite book to Oilia while we three chat. Would that be okay, Mrs. Simonette? Then you can explain why you hate fiction so much, and I'll see what you risked your lives to bring me on your walk through our cute town."

Is she laughing at me? How dare she call Bennett by my name for him? She doesn't know us like that. Adele hid her rising temper by hunching her shoulder to scooch the strap of her backpack closer to her neck and out of sight of her son.

"Mommy, may I?" Bennett yanked on her shirt, his voice a stage whisper in the quiet room. Adele slowly eased her grip on him. Instead of ranting and raving, as she was tempted to do, she forced her lips apart and spoke sensibly. "Sure, Bennett, but only long enough for me to tell Mr. and Mrs. prior a few things."

Glory worked to gather her wits about her and the time it took to retrieve the popup book from the entryway and return to the cafe, and she made sure to take measured steps and not to hurry. For the life of her, she couldn't figure out what was going on with Adele Simonet. The woman's son was absolutely adorable, so polite and bright. She bet he was a joy to any librarian. But his mother, she was another story altogether. One of those graphic novels with different fonts and bold and italics and wild punctuation. By the time Glory returned with her prized and only copy of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Oilia must have overcome Adele's objections to more treats, because both Bennett's small hands gripped a saucer full of the sticky layered pastry that her guests found so hard to spell and nearly impossible to resist. The young widow was nowhere in sight.

"Mind if we take this to your window seat?" Oilia took the book. Glory's eyes twinkled. "That's the perfect spot for some afternoon reading and people watching. As long as you turn the pages for him. Maybe Bennett will see Charles and Oscar. They should be headed back from the park soon."

"Oscar. Oscar." The child hopped up and down. She thought the child would drop his plate. "You already met them. Y'all do get around, don't you?"

"What's going on?" Adele's sudden reappearance made Eli jump, but Glory remained inscrutable as she straightened, her emotions a mystery even to herself. Bennett was helping me calm down about his meeting Charlie and Oscar. I swear that dog grins at me every time he passes that window, but Eli says he's daring me to count his teeth." She deepened her voice. "The better to bite you with, my dear."

"Mommy says we shouldn't swear either by heaven or by earth or with any other oath." Eyes wide, Bennett solemnly recited the verse. "But let your yes be yes and your no no, lest you fall into judgment." Oilia finished the quote and added the book of James 5:12. "It's nice to hear scripture around here. Maybe you can recite more." She led them out.

Glory made a show of straightening the stools to mask her frustration. Though glad to see Oilia go, she felt she was diving head first from the frying pan into the fire Adele had lit. She squared her shoulders and faced them. "Well, let me take these things to the kitchen, and we can begin our official tour. Be right back, Eli." After dropping the dishes in the large sink, she pasted on what she hoped was a pleasant expression and pushed through the door. She gestured to the shelves around the cafe area. "As you can see, this area is geared toward reading and eating, two of my favorite things, especially if I can do them together."

Her husband laughed. "You should see the grease prince." Glory slapped at his hands. "You know that's not so. I can't stand to harm a book. But unfortunately, not everybody shares my feelings on the subject. That's the reason I only put well-loved copies over here. Things my guests can read without completely hurting my feelings." She indicated a sign that cautioned, "Be gentle. Use a napkin, not the page." "We also encourage them to bring their own books from home, hoping they'll buy one, too. I call them our guests, not customers. We treat folks like family."

"Excuse me. Must have been a piece of croissant stuck in my throat." Adele muffled her cough in the crook of her elbow. Glory murmured skeptically.

"Need some water before we continue?" The younger woman shook her head. "Please go on."

Well, glancing around the store, wondering where to go on from there, whether to go on from there, Glory cut her eye at her husband. It was obvious that Adele had other matters on her mind. She shuffled along beside Eli as the silence among the three mushroomed.

"How did you get started? What made you go into this business?" They were standing in front of the front door when Glory heard the question behind her. Glory faced Adele.

"What made me open by the book? Yes. What were you doing that inspired you to open a bookstore of all things? Not a dress shop or a hair salon? Did you work in a library or why a dress shop?" Standing there with her arms crossed, Adele put glory in the mind of Bennett. "Can't women do other things? Aren't you a reporter?"

Adele blinked. "Oh, about that." The book seller laughed, not unkindly. After all, she was in no position to throw a stone at someone else's plate glass window. "Why did you tell me you were a reporter when that was your husband's job, unless I have the wrong Ben Simonet? I just assumed since Ben had said he was named after his dad."

Eli cleared his throat. "I'm sorry about your husband." Adele looked away from the couple and said nothing. Glory shrugged at Eli and tried to communicate, "What should we do now?" with her eyes. He brushed off something only he could see from the table in the entry. Deciding to press on and address the essence of Adele's original question, Glory did some mental apple picking, selecting the parts of her life that she was comfortable with sharing and leaving the rest on the tree. She nodded at her husband and headed toward the opposite side of the store, hoping the other woman would follow.

"You told me you did a bit of research on the store before you came to Gilmore. Well, I'm pretty sure you didn't see anything about how I always loved to read as a child. Isn't that true, Eli?" He chuckled. "Yes, yes, even as a kindergartener, I can remember."

"Forgive me, but I didn't come to wander down memory lane with you, Mrs. Prior." Adele's quiet voice carried from the spot where she'd parked herself, beside the rack of used books where Glory had chatted with Frederick Baldwin the week before. She squeezed her eyes closed and spoke again after sucking in a deep breath. "What I mean is, I'm sorry. I really don't mean to be rude. I don't like acting this way. It's not me."

Glory sensed the woman's struggle and slowly drew closer with Eli bringing up the rear. When Adele's eyes opened, they glistened with unshed tears. "No, I'm not a reporter. That was my husband. Not only did he love truth, he sought it, hunted for it. That's why he became a believer. That's the greatest truth Ben knew."

Glory didn't have to ask. Believer in what? Because she knew it was more like believer in whom. Her mama and daddy worked 12-hour shifts all week and prepared all day Saturday to spend the entire Sunday at church, ironing clothes, pressing hair, cooking next day's dinner to respect the Sabbath, prepping Sunday school lessons. Again, it wasn't a what that stood out about her family's faith. It was a who. The truth was neither she nor her brother were anywhere to be found in her parents' day-to-day worship of the god they believed in. But it wasn't always that way. Monty and Dileia had hurried to the altar when he was 22 and she was 17. With Davis arriving before her wedding ring had warmed Dillia's finger 6 months after Glory arrived 3 and 1/2 years later. The couple set their minds to training up both themselves and their children in the way they were supposed to go. No more partying, smoking, and drinking. Out with their old friends, in with the usher board. If the church doors were open, the family of four was sitting in a pew. Some of Glory's earliest memories involved playing tic-tac-toe with Davis on the church program and getting spanked for scuffing her white sandals, chasing him in the parking lot. Her mama never discussed their family's beginnings, but a curious Gloria had come across her parents' marriage certificate and done the math. She knew better than to ask for an explanation. Glory did wonder if her mama would smile more at Davis if she told the whole truth about her past. if it would really set her free. Like the preacher said, she'd asked her brother about his thoughts on the matter one Saturday morning when the 16-year-old had come in all sweaty from mowing the lawn, doing man's work, while she dusted door sills and window blinds.

"Why are you worrying yourself? She loves you plenty enough for us both." Davis's lips curled before he bent over the kitchen sink and rinsed the expression from his face. "Boy, you better do that in the bathroom if you know what's good for you. Mama will have your hide." He leisurely dried off with a good hand towel meant for company. "She'll have it anyway for something else. Might as well save me some steps. I'm going out, sis. Tell mom and dad."

"What? That you're at Bible study?"

"At 12, Gloria had become used to Davis's Saturday night routine. Close enough." He paused on the threshold. "Don't worry about mom. You can't make her happy. Only God can do that."

"But she goes to church all the time."

Davis had laughed. "I didn't say church, knucklehead. That's a building. They go there all the time to prove something. A pile of bricks doesn't make them happy. That church is a monument that attests to their faithfulness. How worthy they are of love or happiness, even if they don't believe it." At 12 years old, she could sense how smart her brother was, though she couldn't understand all he said and didn't say. As she measured the height and depth of the shelves and by the book, a wiser 64year-old Glory considered the possibility she'd built her own monument. "What am I trying to prove by staying here? Would Eli think I'm worthy of forgiveness and love if he knew my whole story?"

A duet of laughter. Bennett's high childish notes mixing with Oilia's rich elto. All three adults looked in the direction of the window seat, located beyond the entry and in the room at the front of the store, hidden by the shelves and displays. Glory shook off memories that had no place in her bookstore as much as her brother did.

"Mrs. Simonet. Adele." Glory inclined her head. "Adele. Well, Eli and I are truly sorry for your loss. Your husband sounds like an upstanding fella, and please don't give another thought to what you told me. Pure miscommunication." When she flicked her fingers as if clearing the air, she noticed how their visitors eyes zeroed in on her jewelry. Glory stuffed her hands in her voluminous pockets and looked at her spouse.

"Don't we all act as reporters at times, looking for answers, sharing what we learn?" His silent agreement did not disappoint. "In fact, Adele, I think fiction reports a truth of its own," Glory continued.

"But fiction by definition isn't true. If anything, it's the opposite of fact. That's why we have the term nonfiction."

"Well, I'm not sure exactly why we have that word, but fiction often shares real elements of the human condition." Glory tapped Eli's hand and resumed their trek toward the other side of the store. As she expected, it took merely a second before her sparring partner fell into step behind them. "The need for love, the dynamics of family, the effects of hate." Glory ran an index finger across the spines as she ambled down a row of shelves in the historical section. She half turned toward her audience. "And lies."

Adele shoved her hands in her back pockets. Glory felt the thrust of the two words aimed at her and she parried with sure and also forgiveness and redemption. "All themes you'll find in fiction. What do you think, Eli?" His shoulder brushed his wife's as he moved by her to study the books arranged in alphabetical order by genre.

"There's Christian fiction, right? I know. I saw names I recognized from the catalog. They're mixed throughout. Contemporary, women's, romance, ya," Glory murmured. "Eli, you know better than to venture down that rabbit hole."

"An oxymoron if ever I heard one," Adele scoffed, edging by the two of them in the narrow aisle. Glory watched the backpack sway over Adele's hips as she made her way through the stacks.

"But why? Faith is another commonality among people. The need to believe in something or someone." Adele paused and glanced back. "I bet your parents gave you that name for a reason."

It's short for Gloria, she wanted to shout. But she couldn't. Not after all this talk about truth and lies. Every year, her mama would sit on the end of her bed with their large illustrated family Bible open on her lap and tell her, "Now you know, we can't let this day go by without reading from the book of John. It's the best way to celebrate your birthday, reminding you where you come from." Then Dia would read, "And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." When she was old enough, she and her mama would read the scripture together, and it wasn't long before Glory said it from memory. After they finished the passage, Mama would list all the names she could have chosen, but didn't because they wanted one that best reflected their faith and their prayers for their only girl child. Glory clenched her teeth. Their faith? It may have been full of glory, grace, and truth. But what about love?

"I wonder what the name Davis means." Eli draped an arm around his wife's shoulders and drew her close. "Because she's glorious."

Adele closed her eyes as the couple embraced. Whoever Glory Prior was, she obviously loved and was loved by her husband. Oh, how she missed Ben. Adele pretended to study book covers as she continued to the next aisle.

"Adele." Hearing Glory's voice, she whisked away a tear and slapped her cheeks to add color. "Yes, I'm over here." The two joined her near a door labeled the store room. The older woman raised herself on toes that were almost obscured by her dress to peer over Adele's shoulder. "You still haven't shown us what's in the backpack."

She tilted away from the prying eyes. "We can talk about it another time. I think we already have lots to think about." Eli linked his hands behind his back. "So, you'll be around for a while? Do you think you'll be here for the festival?"

"The festival?" Adele adjusted the straps. "You know, the one you researched for your story."

"Not to beat a dead horse," Glory commented. "Riley."

"Honey." Eli's grin peeked through his frown. Adele had the grace to laugh at the situation and at herself. "I do plan to be around, but from what I gathered, by the book doesn't take part in Gilmore's event. The store didn't appear on a list of participating businesses." The were of the air conditioning system made more noise than anyone in their small circle until Eli managed. "Actually, we will this year. Right, Glory?" Gone, was the adoring look from the store owner's face. "That's right. This will be our first year." She held out her hands. "I'll take those if you're through with them." Surely there was a story there from the look on Glory's stony face, and Adele wondered how it would affect the plans she'd put in place. Hiding her curiosity under the guise of making polite conversation, she offloaded the books she'd accumulated.

"What's different about this year?" The two cut their eyes at each other before Glory examined the spines. She slid one book onto a shelf and moved to a second. It seemed the right time. Adele maintained the few feet of distance between them, but she was close enough to smell that this might be the long awaited opening. This seemed to be an opening in their cozy united front.

"Oh." Glory slid all quiet on the western front into place and left the section as if she hadn't heard the implied question. Adele hooked her thumbs in the backpack straps and addressed Eli.

"Is there something wrong?"

He shook his head. "No, no. My wife takes her work seriously, that's all. Can't stand it when a book is out of place. Glory is pretty particular that way. Now, what were you asking?" She watched the book seller move farther and farther away from them. "You were talking about by the books joining in the festival this year. Maybe I can help and you can help me. Since my husband died, we've been out of sorts. So, I decided to explore the country with Bennett. >> What about his education? >> Eli propped an arm on the top of a shelf. Adele shrugged. "I'm considering homeschooling. He's only four, so why not take our show on the road for a while? Maybe relocate. Actually, Ben had tried to talk her into educating their children at home long term, not only their first few years of life. Anyway, we've been studying the 50 states, another truth. And as we headed through North Carolina, I saw Gilmore and heard about the festival. Maybe you can use our help with the planning. And while I'm lending a hand, you can help me learn to appreciate the value of what you do here. You know, selling lies to people. And hey, I'm an artist of sorts. Perhaps I can exhibit at the festival."

Adele attributed the stab she felt to deferred pain from the accident earlier. It couldn't be a guilty conscience. Eli straightened. "You know, Mrs. Simonet."

"Adele, please. I asked you to call me Adele."

"Adele, you may have something there. My wife has a bee buzzing in her head, and I'm thinking it's going to take some work. You might be what she needs, what we need."

"Great." Several somethings clattered to the floor behind her. Adele wheeled around and confirmed her suspicion. Books splattered like water droplets around Glory's feet.

"Eli, what are you going on about? Wait, don't tell me more reconfigurations."

Chapter nine.

So there I am with my precious books bouncing on my toes. Books she'd had no intention of reading. And my husband is inviting this stranger to help me plan what I'm not sure I want to do. Gloria unwrapped the square of caramel, popped it into her mouth, and slid the wrapper in her pocket. As much as she wanted to lean on the glass, she refrained. No Pearline was her friend, but she was nearly as pnicity about smudges as Glory was about dogeared pages. One ankle crossed over the other. She propped her back against the wall by the door. The Simonet woman had gathered her son and rushed out of the bookstore the minute after she accepted Eli's over-the-top suggestion. Out of words for her husband, Glory skipped her evening's people watching, and found herself on her front step under the swinging sign bearing the name of the bookstore. At first, she'd skirted her building in hopes of finding Dude, and thanking him for saving Bennett. No one had mentioned the man in all the talk about truth versus fiction at the festival. When Glory hadn't laid eyes on him, she'd circled the block. Still no sign. Eventually, her steps had taken her next door. Pearline's jewels was the antithesis of by the book. The owners, Noammy and her husband Dale, had raised the old house that had once sat on the property and erected a modern building a few years after Glory set foot in Gilmore. Mirrored walls, light blues and silvers, metal, clean lines and glass, where the bookstore was mahogany and cherry woods, original stonework, pitched roof lines and chimneys, low ceilings and natural light. No, Emmy dashed about in fitted pants suits and kneelength skirts that fit her shorter, curvier figure, instead of ankle length one-sizefits-all dresses and flowy pants. As Glory watched the jewelry store owner, engaged in her closing up routine for the day, she took stock of what the two of them did have in common, their fascination with crystal chandeliers and their love for each other and their husbands. And now they shared similar suspicions about Adele Simonet.

No finished cleaning the watch she held and returned it to the empty spot in the display case. "Is she cute? You know how some men can act around a pretty young thing when they reach a certain age, needing to shake their tail feathers and strut around a bit."

Glory shook her head at her friend, one of the few she had in town and most certainly the closest. "No, Eli's not like that. He's always a fixer. It's in his nature. He can't restrain himself from leading the charge. And don't let it be a damsel in distress. It's Sir Eli to the rescue." She pretended to wield a sword. "Nature or not, it burns my buns how he likes to go ahead of me and make decisions without discussing them first."

"Phew, child." Noammy took the trays of watches from the display and climbed on a stool to set it in the topmost stack with the others. Upon closing the store, she had the ownerous task of packing up the jewelry and moving it into the vault and

back. Ph is right. So, Miga, what are you going to do? No moved to North Carolina from Colombia in the late 80s. She frequently peppered her speech with both Spanish words and traditional southern phrases.

"What else can I do but agree to Mrs. Simonet's help? Ride over a cliff. She'll help me." Glory laughed, paraphrasing a favorite quote from the movie The Parent Trap. "But there's something odd about her. I can't put my finger on it. It's more than her rapport with Eli, which would irritate me more if I were jealous or insecure. Maybe it's the secret grief the woman wears like a monk's cowl."

"You're one to talk about secrecy and grief." Glory chedd herself. Yet it was something more, something else. That first day the stranger had strutdded into her bookstore with such a determined knowing heir, like a blood hound on the scent of a runaway.

Today. Flustered and hair flying, hobbling on one shoe, the woman looked ready to extract a gavvel from her vintage backpack, bang it on the countertop, and pronounce guilty loud enough for all of Gilmore to hear. Adele Simonet's silent appraisal and judgmental demeanor raised Glory's hackles.

No kicked off her heels and yanked her white shirt, still starched and pristine, from her waistband. She loaded sparkling necklaces and bracelets onto the repurposed bakery cart. Frowning, Glory offered. "I wish you'd let me lend a hand."

The 5-ft high vehicle stopped and No peered around the side. She was barely tall enough to see over it. Glory held up a hand. "Yes, I know better than to offer." She raised her voice when her friend turned the corner at the back. "I've been known to allow people to pitch in at the bookstore. As long as they do what I say."

No returned directly, wheels squeaking. She used the key hanging around her neck to open the next display, and she transferred rings onto an emptied rack. "You didn't come over here to close up, Glory. That's my business. What you came to do was talk to me. Seek my wise counsel. An altogether different kind of business."

"True, but one doesn't stop the other. Where is your help meat? Dale must have cut out early to go fishing." Glory craned her neck to see if she could spot his ancient blue Ford truck parked out front.

No froze at the cart. "Help me. That sounds straight out of the book of Genesis. Where'd that come from, Glory?"

Where had that come from? From somewhere bone deep. A place that resounded of old hymns and looked like prissy church hats. It smelled like Old Spice, what Glory's daddy wore on Sunday mornings that didn't quite cover the motor oil and exhaust fumes from the garage where he worked all week. It tasted like the macaroni and cheese and candied yams served at Sunday school dinners, laid out on the paper covered tables in the fellowship hall.

While Glory had shared much about her life in Gilmore and her marriage to Eli, she'd spoken little about her past relationships, spiritual or otherwise.

"That wasn't you sitting in the back of my church Sunday, was it?" No tapped her temple, appearing to think about it.

"Hush, no. Or should I say Naomi. Okay. Glory. My name may have Hebraic roots, but it's no match for yours. which is the Bible through and through from Genesis to Revelation. God in the flesh. Your last name is Hallelujah."

No danced with the card across the carpeted aisle behind the displays toward the doorway that led to the back. Usually Gloria enjoyed hearing her friend Noamy's softly rolling Rs that reflected her Colombian descent. But all this Bible talk got her goat.

No reappeared, her face radiant. "There's smoke spewing out of your lobes. Right over those beautiful earrings I sold you. Destria spiritual. Where is your joy? Mana. Armana. Sister." Recognizing the word from hearing it so often. Glory swallowed the lump of anger that had risen in her throat.

"You don't need to show me where my ears are. No. Emmy. My joy is next door. Probably cooking dinner. Also, I did come here to get some, what did you call it? Wise counsel. If that's not enough, I can offer you some fried fish when Dale gets home. Because you're right, he did indeed go fishing this morning. He can't take the boat out Saturday because we're having a sale, and it's all hands on deck in the store."

"I don't need fish. Your stinky advice will be more than enough." Glory laughed, then added seriously. "You have been my friend. That in itself is a tremendous thing. Or so said Charlotte the spider in so many words to her pal Wilbur. Charlotte's Web."

"You are full of quotes today." No spritzed the glass with cleaner and wiped it. Glory itched for the bottle in a cloth, but she forced herself to remain still.

"Probably because of my battle of words with Adele Simonet. I felt like I was defending my whole way of thinking, not merely my profession. Books help me process life. They say what I want to say, what I can't say out loud. Sure, the authors may create fictional lives and settings, but the emotions they draw from are real, and so are the ones they evoke."

No held up her palms. "Hey, you've convinced me."

Glory cleared her throat. "It's that other woman I couldn't convince, though she was deliberately being obstinate. My mama would have accused her of choosing ignorance. Adele has to see how literature relates to our shared experiences. Like friendship, for one."

"Yes, like friendship. You missed a spot." Glory walked closer and pointed. Noami aimed the nozzle as if to spray her, then started on another section. "Who are some of your favorite friends in books?"

Her repetitive circular motion on the glass seemed to hypnotize Glory. The only sound was the occasional squeak when the other woman scrubbed the counter clean. After a few minutes, Glory answered, "Frog and Toad."

"Why did I think you'd say Joe and Lorie? Huck and Tom or Oliver and..." Noamy snapped her fingers. "What's his name?"

Glory nodded furiously and drumed on her chin, thinking, "Yes, I know who you're talking about. The Pigpocket and Oliver Twist." But I'm sorry. Those are the characters that came to mind when you posed the question. Especially when I think of us. Then I get to be Charlotte, and you're Wilbur.

The jeweler stuck out her tongue and broke her own rule by leaning against her freshly cleaned glass. Following the other woman's lead, Glory relaxed beside her. "Or Holmes and Watson, the Scarecrow and Dorothy, Pooh and Piglet."

Noam linked her fingers behind her neck, deep in thought. "You mentioned Joe and Lorie, but what about Manas? Sisters can be friends, too."

"No, you mentioned those two from Little Women. I'd say Joe, Beth, Amy, and Miss Knowit all take friendship to another level as sisters."

"No, Emmy swatted at her. Me is not a know-it-all. She was doing her job as the oldest."

No stare pinned Glory into place. "We never dig deep into your family. Remind me, where do you fall in the birth order? Were you and your siblings good friends?"

Glory's smile died on her face. A quick, painful death. "I'm the younger of two, and I adored my big brother. There was a great deal of hero worship on my part." She didn't flinch under No steady gaze, who'd heard different versions of these same lines over the years.

"Until he started drinking, which I've told you about."

"Not much, no prompted. Glory buried her hands in her pocket so No clenched fingers. "My parents stayed on him. They expected a lot from the both of us, but Davis marched to his own beat. must run in the family. But not like Davis. He was so creative. The way he dressed, spoke, thought, believed. He could have run the world with his brains and personality. But he decided to run them crazy instead."

Glory pictured her brother with his laughing eyes, looking older than his years. He always stood head and shoulders, literally and figuratively, above other boys his age. His alcoholism didn't play well with the deacon and missionary boards at church, let alone my parents. Davis would sneak into the house and I'd cover for him. They'd fuss whenever they caught him. Then he started staying out later and later, going away days at a time because he figured he could just delay the arguing. the lectures and the punishment.

Growing warm under the chandelier. Or was it Noy's interrogation? She counted her pink tipped toenails as she spoke. Then one night there was a fire. I got hurt pretty badly and my parents blamed his drinking. Glory raised her hemline a tad to reveal a hint of her scar tissue. They couldn't forgive him, so he left home. which is a euphemism for they kicked him out and he had nowhere to go. He disappeared. Eventually, I went off to college and my parents died soon after I graduated. When we had the chance, when we were younger, we did the traditional brother and sister thing fairly well. The problem was we didn't get to grow into friends because we didn't get the time together.

Glory scrubbed at something sticky on the floor with her toe as her story trailed off. The clock at the end of Spring's church gonged the half hour.

"Eli and Glory." The melodious soft voice on Glory's right was strong enough to lift her chin and reclaim her attention. "What?"

The jeweler raised one shoulder and blinked into the early evening light streaming through the front windows. "Married couples are bodies, too. the best kind." Thankfulness made her want to hug her friend, but she settled for playing along. "Then I nominate you and Dale."

No squeezed Glory's shoulder, showing her that she understood. "Since we've moved on to non-fiction, that brings up that Simonet woman. Perhaps you two can form a friendship. Why don't you take your bestie up on his idea about your festival planning? This quote thing might inspire people like it did you and me."

Glory rested against the glass as she ruminated. No poked the book seller's knuckle with a nail. "Oops." Glory snatched her hands away. "Wait until I rub greasy prints on one of your precious novels." Glory waggled a finger in warning before stuffing her hands into her pockets to keep them and her books out of danger.

"You got me to thinking, No. What if I designed famous quotes on large placards and posted them around town to advertise the festival? They would inspire people to buy books."

"Sure. And jewelry and apple fritters, massages, pottery. But how does this relate to your new friend Adele? If you truly want words that speak to a wide range of readers, you should gather them from more than the two people who sit at your dinner table each night or the two of us."

"You have something there. But where would I get the quotes?" Glory went to press her fingertips to the glass again, but reared back when she spied Noy's raised hand.

"You and Dale, for one, y'all would be a great help because you're readers. I've already helped, but I can't speak for Dale. Wait, we've been married for 43 years. So, of course, I can count us in. Who else could you ask?"

While Glory paced the store, her flipflops slapping against the large tiles. No walked to the front and picked up a rod with a rounded end like a shepherd's crook. She used it to grab an iron gate high above the windows. "What about Oilia? She's a reader. You need folks from all along the age spectrum, too."

The book seller went rigid. "Who do you have in mind?"

"Different ages, younger and older. You have people in the middle. Middle-aged, that is. What young people do you know?" She lowered the bars.

Glory marched to the front left opposite no and reached for the bars. "Charles Graves, without Oscar, could represent the older demographic. This would draw him out of the house to converse with people other than his dog. Perhaps your neighbor Frederick could join us in exchange for more recipes and free sweets." Both Frederick Baldwin and the Pearl Lines lived in Hickory Grove.

No covered the door. "Talk to Jason and Mallerie, Oilia's twins. They could speak for the teens if they're willing. If Jason's mama can convince him to take out his earplug thingies long enough to contribute..."

Glory couldn't hide her doubt. "You still need someone younger. I'm on to you. You know, you're not as sly as you think you are." No sauntered over to Glory and faced her friend headon. "That Bennett you talked so much about. So well spoken, you said. So smart. A four-year-old who reads like he's 10. Sounds like he'd be perfect. But also that means his mama. Adele."

Glory could have sworn she heard the sound of a guillotine falling into place. "Mommy says it's not right to swear." A young voice reminded her. She grimaced. "Who wanted to help anyway? Win-win." No clapped silently.

Chapter 10.

Adele pushed aside the plates and cups from their early dinner to make room for her drawing pad and pencils. She started to sketch, allowing her mind to reflect on the day's events. So far so good. She drew a house, a tree, then a rabbit, not the long-eared, well-dressed version from Bennett's new favorite story. Instead, the rabbit she'd had as a child came to life, looking ready to hop across the page. Next, she drew chrysanthemums among hydrangeas and tea roses mixed with dandelions, sunflowers growing along hillsides. Penny, the horse on her in-laws farm, Ben's nose, his hand, his eyes, Bennett's profile.

All the while, her hand busy with her colored pencils, she laid out her plans in her mind. The day had started so auspiciously. First, a call from the leasing company with a promising lead on her home. The sun and a warm breeze chasing away the clouds that had clung to the sky for days. Waffles and bacon for breakfast. Walking down Church Road with Bennett. Hot chocolate. Meeting Oscar and the sweet Mr. Graves. The yellow rain boots. Mud puddles. The accident. But that helped me gain entry to the bookstore to talk to Eli, she reassured herself. Don't forget glory, she reminded herself, using amethyst to envelop a mountain in shadows towering over a valley. She drew footprints leading through snow, then erased the beginnings of a winding country road, blew off the paper, and covered the faint pencil markings with tall trees with twisted branches.

When Adele flipped the page, she stared at the 11 by14sized sea of white. There was so much to do, even more to rectify, while protecting her son in the process. Making a way for them both, she asked herself, "What's next?"

"Are you ready to go, Mommy?" >> Bennett's call sought and found her. "Yes." Adele closed her pad and set the case of pencils on top of it, then took their dinner plates to the sink. Adele had promised Bennett she would take him and his Radio Flyer wagon on a loop around the neighborhood after he finished his green beans, comforting herself with the thought that technically it wasn't a payoff since she hadn't made a conditional. It was a when, not an if.

"Who are you kidding? Adele asked the empty kitchen, rinsing away their meals remains. Not him, and certainly not yourself. Who are you talking to?"

"God." This time, she didn't jump. Adele was getting used to his popping out of nowhere. So, she acknowledged him with a side eye as she wiped her hands on the dish towel. She looped it over the handle of the dishwasher.

Bennett held high his red Converse sneakers by their strings. "I can't get them untied. What do you want me to do?" Adele raised a brow and waited. She was trying to get him to make his needs known, not merely making announcements for her to take a stab at. That was the way he'd learned to humble himself and talk to God. To willingly, yet boldly share what was on his heart and trust him to hear and respond.

>> "Could you untie them? They're all knotted up." He pulled it a lace with a missing adlet. "Yep, he's definitely nailed the expect an answer part." She barely hid her smirk. "You're tightening the knot," Ben, he frowned. "That's what I said."

Adele reached for a sneaker and steered him toward the two seats at the table. She'd refuse to bring more than two kitchen chairs. That way, she wouldn't be forced to think about who wasn't there every meal time. Now the table was always full. No one was missing. She patted the bottom of a seat. "Here, sit." Bennett hefted himself into it.

Adele scratched at the clump of string with her fingertip. It would have been much easier to pick at it if she hadn't gnawed away most of her nails, but she managed to loosen it. She exchanged shoes with him, taking the sneaker with the tighter knot and giving him the loosened one. "Okay, let's see what you can do. Sometimes the help comes just as you asked and believed, but you need to add some elbow grease, right?" He nodded and plucked at the sho strings. Slowly he pulled, loosened, and tugged until finally he untangled the jumbled string. Bennett grinned widely and snatched the other shoe from her lap. "I can do it."

Adele ruffled his curls. "Sometimes the Lord shows us he's willing and able and then equips us to do the work. Bennett sighed and angled an eye at her, but kept at the knot. "I did it all by myself." He beat his chest like he was King Kong. She high-fived him. "Good job. Thank you, God. Thank you, God." He echoed.

Adele watched him slide his feet into his shoes. She couldn't resist one final direction. "You can prevent this problem altogether if you untie your shoes before you take them off. Like I've told you countless times. God is always willing to hear us when we call and help us in all our troubles. But let's learn from our mistakes, son, and do better. Avoid the trouble whenever we can. Don't jump in every puddle." He grinned and bobbed his head vigorously. "Don't jump in every puddle. Okay."

Adele watched his small fingers fumble with the string. She covered his hands with hers and made sure his deeply set eyes were locked with hers. "Bennett like today. He ran in front of a car and could have gotten hurt. Seriously, if it weren't for that nice man." She swallowed the lump that clogged her throat and pressed on. "If it weren't for dude," Bennett interjected. "Mr. Prior Dude, and that's the same name Mrs. Prior yelled when they were upstairs before they came down and she let me read Alice in Wonderland."

"Yes, dude. I'm glad you remembered his name. Let's draw him a card tonight and take it to him. Tomorrow?" His eyes lit up. She sighed and nodded. "Gratitude first, then back to the plan. Bennett, God sent dude to help us right when we needed it. That was grace and mercy at work. But I hope you learned that you must be careful. No more playing near the street or running away from mommy. There's a time and a place to splash and play. Don't jump in every puddle like now when we go for our walk." He jumped to his feet.

Adele hoped this lesson was sinking in. "Yes, like on our walk. But I'm serious." His lips poked out like a fish. The face he made when he was ruminating on something. "You were pretty serious at the store." She nodded. "But mommy, why did you tell Mrs. Prior you were looking for a Bible when you were carrying one in Daddy's backpack? And what was the other book? It looked special. Did Mrs. Prior give it to you?"

Adele collapsed against the back of her chair. "What? How did you know what mommy was carrying?" He bounced from one foot to the other, obviously unaware of her consternation. "Because when you threw daddy's backpack on the sofa, I looked in it. When we were walking, you told me I could see later." And I thought that was later. Wasn't that later? Why were you fussing at Mrs. prior about helping you find a Bible, and you already have one. Is ours not good enough? Do we need more truth? Truth. Truth." Adele covered her mouth as her son hopped around the table. Dude was nowhere to be found.

Glory peered down every side street and around every corner on her walk up Springs Church. Now that her feet were leading her toward her tutor, she could picture Eli tapping his toe and glancing at his watch. She hadn't wanted him to think she was punishing him, but she wasn't quite ready to head home after No, locked up for the night and headed home to Hickory Grove to await Dale. Out of places to search, Glory sank down on the steep steps of the church. Really, hers had been a half-hearted hunt. Dude's business was his own. and Gloria had no idea what she would have said had she found him. Yet she hated to think he felt accused or blamed for the incident with Bennett. "Shoot, you're a hero," Glory whispered. "A name I can't add to my own list."

These wide concrete steps were the closest she'd come to the church in a good while. spent from the day, her unprotected feet achy from the walk. Glory rested and stared up at the sun's last harrah. Burnished orange streaks stretched across the sky, setting a fire the splotches of dark gray clouds that promised more rain to come. She almost applauded its slow descent behind the tall steeple. Though she hadn't planned to ever put a foot inside Ebenezer, this imposing red brick building had served as one of the main reasons she'd been drawn to this historic community. There was something about a town whose anchor was a cross. Glory couldn't put a name to it. Yet, she could assign memories, mostly of Davis.

Her brother skipped Sunday school more than he attended, and his absentee record grew exponentially. Once he had a driver's license, he could flash at the ABC store. He used his winsome ways to pull the wool over the eyes of the folks behind the counter of the Georgia package stores, especially since he was always big for his age, like some of his relatives. But Davis's smooth talking and good looks had little sway with Monty and Dia Gibson. She pictured him slipping in the window of his bedroom, what Mama and Daddy had caught him doing more than once. He'd climbed into his twin bed, wedged his back against the wall, and pulled the covers up to his chin. Davis was so long and thick limbmed he had to curl up like a baby to keep his large feet on the mattress, his knees drawn toward his chest. "Tell mama I'm sick, little sister. You know they'll trust you. You're the angel in the family. The smart one." He cajolled. Everybody knew who the smart one was in the family. And it wasn't Glory. She was the obedient, hardworking youngest Gibson who kept her head down and stayed in the background. Everybody, from the principal who documented his tardies to the lunchladies who sneaked Davis an extra carton of milk, knew her brother was a genius. His parents were well aware of that fact, which made life so much harder because he was wasting all his god-given talent and abilities that could be used for the furtherance of the kingdom. At 12 years old, Glory was proud to know it, and thanks to her former best friend, she also was on to the reasons for the Listerine on Davis's breath. That sharp smell smacked her across the nose most Sunday mornings.

"Nuh-uh. I ain't saying no such thing. Why are you just getting home? If they'd seen you, daddy would have snatched your hair out by the roots. Come on, baby girl. You don't want to hear all they're carrying on this beautiful Sunday morning if they suspect how busy my Saturday night was." Davis yawned and rubbed his eyes. "They know better than to believe me, saying you're sick and sleeping in. You weren't feeling poorly last night before we went to bed. I heard you've been going to the pool hall."

"Well, I'm sick and tired now. You best believe that. Please turn out that light," he groaned, his head burrowing deep into the pillow. "Do me a favor and take my troubles to the cross and leave my body here. The Lord knows where to find me." He'd burrowed under the blanket, knowing full well that his adoring sister would cover for him that Sunday morning, and for many mornings following, until Davis was too sick to do much of anything other than sleep in, and their folks had finally had enough.

Briefly with an eye toward the top of the steeple cloaked in a darkness that would soon cover the ground. Glory considered asking their god where Davis was since her brother was so confident he cared enough to know his whereabouts. Then she shook her head and stood, her bones creaking and rattling into place. She'd rested long enough on that step, too long, and her backside was sore. If she didn't take herself back to the house lickety split, her sheriff would hop on his horse and initiate his own one-man posi to match the search party she'd launched for Dude, who was most likely settled for the night.

Plotting rather than striding on her return, Glory glanced at the buildings she passed. Some were dark, seemingly resting as she had, until proprietors returned in the morning to wake them. Others, private homes, had lights and life in the windows of the houses, and she peeped at the silhouettes of busy people having dinner, watching television, and carrying on the business of living. She shuddered and picked up the pace past Baker's memorial and crematorium, an imposing two-story colonial a couple doors down from Gilmore's much cozier public library. The funeral home was strangely bright, and she pictured it with the Christmas lights they draped along the balcony above the double front doors. "I guess people are dying more than they're reading, and going home is worth celebrating."

Glory cast a last glance over her shoulder at the lights above the crematorium door that beckoned to her, eliciting images of her brother once again, and the haunting words of a poem. "Come family, you far off sons, mamas and daughters, the least and the lost. You are the ones I've been searching for, yearning for, no matter the cost. Whether thou art, thither and yawn, flung far and wide, or long time gone, come, gather around, I'll leave the light on."

Tears fell at the pace she trod. Slowly and steadily, she brushed away the last of them as she reached the brick pavers leading to buy the book. She steadied herself with a hand on the mailbox post as a warm breeze hinting of rain plastered her skirts to her calves. Finally, tired of serving as a buffet for the mosquitoes and gnats, and ready to face Eli, longing to be embraced by him, she hurried around the house to enter through the kitchen door and back. On the way, she gave herself a stern talking to. "Now, Glory, don't bother, dude. Don't look in his direction. Give the man some privacy. That's his home. At least for the night." Still, much as she couldn't help but glance over her shoulder at the funeral parlor, her eyes cut toward the chair in the shadowy spot under the maple. The empty chair under the maple. Deflated, she took her key and turned the lock. The bright light greeted her, and so did the sight of Eli, slowly rotating a spoon in a large saucepan.

"Hey there! Hey!" He smiled and wiped his knuckles and palm on his apron, permanently stained by saucy red splashes and greasy splotches. The familiarity of the movement made her smile this time. Feeling like a far-flung wife, she shoveled over all her weary legs could manage and encircled his waist with her arms. Pressing against his back, she peeked over his shoulder. "Yum shrimp gravy. Need me to stir the grits?" He twisted and kissed her cheek. "No, I've got it. You have a good talk with no Emmy." "I did. We came up with a fantastic idea for the festival that you'll love, and I can't wait to tell you about it. No, Emmy is great at problem solving. Almost as good as you." Glory knew he'd probably used his phone to track her progress from Pearlines to the church and back, and even double checked her whereabouts with No. Grateful, she planted a wet smack on his neck and stepped away to wash her hands.

"Glad to hear it. Maybe she can help with another problem." Eli lifted the lid on a smaller pot, bubbling away on a rear eye. Glory's stomach clenched. His casual tone didn't fool her. Her hands were dry. Yet she continued ringing the hand towel as she tried to decipher this troubling situation he'd alluded to. The festival, Adele or Bennett, this daughter of his? Somebody else asking for a Bible? 30 interminable seconds passed while her husband tapped the spoon against the rim of the pot. Then he set it down and faced her. "We've been robbed. Glory."

Part two. Clinging vines.

Chapter 11.

"What did Margaret Mitchell write in Gone with the Wind? Today is another day." Oilia set a plate in front of Eli and Glory and slapped her hands together. "I'm substituting apple fritters for this week's special. So, I need you to taste them and tell me if they need more cinnamon. Quick now because I'm preparing the dough and chopping more apples."

Glory wanted to tell the baker that the word Scarlett O'Hara had used was tomorrow, not today. But she chose not to pop her overly inflated balloon. In fact, what Oilia said seemed more fitting. Today was just another day in the life of a book seller and in the life of a wife.

Eli took a bite and gave a thumbs up. "I wouldn't change a thing. Glory." She patted her tummy to satisfy his cousin's need for a compliment, not a recommendation. "Thank you. I'm sure it's delicious as always."

"Great. Got to get cracking." Oilia hastened from the stock room.

"I still can't believe you're not upset." With a shake of his head, Eli polished off his fritter. Glory nibbled the pastry, counting the calories she'd accumulated since her husband and his family had come into her life. "Your shrimp gravy comforted me in my loss."

7 days had passed since Eli had discovered that a vintage copy of The Great Gatsby had gone missing from a display. He'd been locking up after Oilia had finished kitchen prep and all the ruckus caused by the simonets, and he'd noticed the place where the book was supposed to be, but it wasn't.

Glory watched him peel back the long strip of clear tape on the box in front of him. "Are those the rest of the books we're expecting for the upcoming signing? I can't believe you're this calm about the theft. It's valuable."

"You're not telling me something I don't know, husband. But life goes on and insurance goes up. True if we file." She crumpled up the tape and reviewed the packing list inside her box. "22 copies here plus what you opened, which means we're all set." Several times a month, by the book welcomed writers and readers to special events, talks, workshops, signings, demonstrations, giveaways, or collections for hospitals, schools, and the community center. Glory was preparing to celebrate an author's latest children's story about a talking piano.

Studiously avoiding her husband's eyes, she scanned the book jacket. "Listen to this endorsement. On a scale of 1 to 10, get it, Eli. Scale piano. Do you think Jason might remove his earbuds to join us that weekend?"

"Glory." His grim tone informed her. "I'm on to you." She met his gaze. "Honey, I must admit, I've never read The Great Gatsby, though. If you tell anybody, I'll deny it. So, K Saras." Eli balanced the brilliant yellow picture book in each hand as if weighing her response. "What do you mean what will be will be? We're talking about a few thousand, not the lyrics to that Dora's Day song. What you had was a rare copy and we don't know how long it's been missing. My first thought was that someone took it that day, but we were the only ones in the store."

"Does your we include Oilia, Jason, and Mrs. Simonet?" Glory angled her head. "And Mallerie, Bennett, and Dude." He mirrored her movement. "No, none of them, which is why I determined it must have been gone a while, unbeknownst to us. How do you know it's worth?"

"That thing has sat in storage since I bought it, well before we got married." Glory had splurged on the vintage copy of The Great Gatsby at an estate sale the year after By the Book opened. Acknowledging her own distaste for the classic story led her to lock it away in a chest in her closet, just as she'd locked away her guilt-edged memories of her brother. Setting out Fitzgerald's popular story for the world to see, one that, remarkably, the former English major could never bring herself to read, had taken effort. but she considered it progress.

"It's ironic that you finally displayed it, only for someone to steal it almost immediately. Eli lifted the new books from their cardboard home and arranged them in four piles on the table in the center of the room. "I've never liked that book, partially because most people love it so, but also because it worships a lifestyle. greed, lack of self-control, self-destruction. That hits too close to home for me when I consider how Davis threw away his life. But I feel something akin to relief. Are you worried at all about your insurance premium? Freedom comes with a cost. I hear the shrug in your voice, but don't dismiss it out of hand. I'll talk to our guy. You haven't had a claim since we married, and that's worth something."

"Eli, my hope is that it's on the wrong shelf somewhere. Our guests pick up something in one place and put it down somewhere else. Ignoring the caddies placed throughout the store. But if I'm not mistaken, you had four display only do not touch beside the book." Glory shrugged and reviewed her to-do list. "If I put too much thought into this, I'll get worked up to think somebody walked out with one of my books. Honestly, I'd rather talk about the festival."

His eyes lit up. Glory held up a finger. "And I don't mean what happens afterwards because that's where your mind leaps. Our leaving Gilmore. I'm talking about our famous quotes group that's meeting tonight. One step at a time," he responded, the wattage in his eyes dimming. "Who's coming?"

"Frederick, no, and Dale. Jason and Oilia. You did remind her, didn't you? And she doesn't have to bake a thing. My waistline can't stand it."

"At least you have one." He chuckled, adjusting his belt. "Although I'm the only person who can find it in those beautiful tents you wear." He loaded the books on the cart behind him. Glory's eyes widened, but she hid the hurt by digging in the upper cabinets for some duads to decorate the room for the reading. Her husband knew why she preferred to wear those so-called tents, however beautiful they were.

Suddenly, strong arms spun her around. Plastic thorns poked her fingers that tightened around a bunch of artificial roses. "Oh, baby, I'm sorry. I love everything about you. What you wear and what you don't. Forgive me, please." He pressed his lips to the valley between her shoulder blades. Icy and stiff at first, Glory slowly thawled to his touch. Resistance melting, she let him draw her even closer, and her tears wet his collar. Culpable crocodilian tears. If she could only ask for and accept the forgiveness that she offered him, she swallowed as a children's book flashed across her mind. Lyall. Lyall. Crocodile.

Eli leaned back and used his thumb to dry the skin under her eyes. "What is it? I'm old and tough. I can take it." She briefly rested her forehead on his chin and extricated herself from his embrace. "I was going to ask for for your help arranging chairs for the meeting. I hate to ask for help with jobs I can do by myself, but we can get it done faster and better together. As Mama used to say, many hands make light work."

"Mama also used to tell me a lion tongue never finds rest. That's what you couldn't spit out." The lines on his forehead deepened and his arms relaxed their hold. "You could delegate this to Mallerie and Jason, but if that's what you want. Eli began dismantling all the cardboard packaging. "I'll take these to recycling. But first, you were telling me about tonight's guest list." She wondered at his ability to pivot, at how easily she could flourish a few flags and sound a bell to distract him and redirect the conversation.

Glory set the flowers under the book stacks and grasped the cart's handle. "Did I mention Charles Graves is coming and without his dog? And knowing you as I do, you invited your Adele Simonet and my new found little friend Bennett. If so, that will make 11 of us all totaled."

That evening, Adele aimed to put her ancient Subaru in one of the parallel spaces directly in front of by the book and leave no room for error. Hands shaking, she adjusted the rear view mirror to spy on Bennett, who was altogether too quiet for a 4-year-old dynamo. Just as she'd suspected, his head was leaning toward his left shoulder, drool leaking onto the seat belt. She drumed her head against her seat. Gh. These folks who don't have young kids, they don't have to worry about dinner times and bedtimes.

Adele flicked on her left signal and turned onto Springs Church Road. She slowed to the regulated 35 m an hour, which gave her plenty of opportunity to admire Gilmore, a quaint town God laid gently at the foot of the mountains. As much as she tried to resist, she was beginning to feel more comfortable here. Here was an eclectic mixture of old and new styles. Modern remodels fighting for purchase among all the traditional and historic. The yellow and blue paint on ye old ice cream pailing next to the neon sign for cigarettes mounted on the roof of the 1930s bungalow. A man in a suit tugging on the locked door of the glass fronted post office and couples strolling hand in hand toward the movie theater that offered $2 classics and of course buy the book. about the only thing not to like about this berg, but the very thing that brought her here. Yet slowly, even that place was growing on her like Lykan on a fallen log. Hadn't dude saved her son's life. Always a drama queen, Adele tried it herself, thinking of the sheet of poster board propped on the floor next to Bennett. They'd folded it in half to make an oversized card and covered it with a large red lopsided heart. He'd spelled out T H A N C K Y O U in large block letters above the symbol for love. She'd resisted having Bennett redo it and hoped the good Samaritan considered the misspelling added character along with the torn corner and smear of ketchup from hitching a ride in their car for a week.

Adele navigated the parking, switched off the ignition, and dropped the keys into her purse. She peeked at the bookstore, and noted how the lights inside chewed away the shadows on its porch. It was Dude, she had to credit, or shake a fist at for their return to the scene of the crime. Dude, and of course, Eli who' shared that the one-named man had returned to his spot behind their house.

When Adele had answered the landline the other day, Eli's voice had taken her back. She'd had the telephone installed for Bennett's sake in case of emergency. "Oh, hi, Mr. Prior. How'd you get this number?" "Eli, please. You and Oilia exchanged information when you stopped by with the card for Dude. She said she'd let you know when she saw him next. And well, dude is home for want of a better word. It's what Glory says, so I guess that's what it is." The chuckle that followed his words sounded like he attached it as an afterthought. "Oh, thank you." Adele squeezed closed her eyes to the picture of Eli and Glory. That couple, whether they were separate or together, twisted her tongue into knots. Also, if Monday evening is a good time, we're organizing a festival think tank. That is, if you're still interested in helping out. Eli juggled his phone. "I'll see." Adele considered it as she sat in her yard, supervising Bennett's Pelmel tricycle ride in front of the house. She moved her foot to circumvent a small black ant's expedition over rocks and blades of grass. Eli shifted on the other end of the line. "Yes, sure. That will work, Mr. or Eli. What time? Of course, Bennett is my plus one." He laughed. "He'd better be. Glory won't let you through the door without him on your arm. See you at 6 Monday evening. If that works for you, it shouldn't take more than an hour. We don't open Monday, but we're accommodating the Pearl lines, who will be closing up the jewelry store." she'd wanted to snap. "No, that doesn't work for us. We don't eat until 6:00 like most people. But assured him, I'll make it work. Who's going to accommodate this widowed mother?"

Sitting in the car, listening to her son's breathing deepen as he transitioned from dozing to sleeping deeply, Adele wondered if that was what she was doing, making it work when it came to these plans of hers. Unbidden. Proverbs 26:es 27-28 popped into her mind. "If you set a trap for others, you will get caught in it yourself. If you roll a boulder down on others, it will crush you instead. A lying tongue hates its victims, and flattering words cause ruin." There was so much she hadn't considered, including her own feelings, her own beliefs, her own son.

"Mrs. Simonet. Adele. Bennett, you're here early." Glory threw wide the door and ushered in the mother and son. "We're in back still getting everything ready." Adele nudged the child across the threshold. He had to go potty, and everywhere else on the street is closing up. The woman's words hinted at an apology, but her tone said otherwise, and so did the upward tilt of her chin. Obstinate was how Glory would describe her to Eli later. But she forced her poppycolored lips to smile and suffer Adele's headto toe examination. She extended her black dress that had thin white and gold pinstripes running from shoulder to hem and curtsied. "You like I thought I'd wear something special for the occasion." Adele had the decency to flush at being called out for staring. "Yes, you look lovely. I'm feeling underdressed."

"Not at all. Come in," Glory said, thinking that's what you get. as she closed the door. At one time, a look tended to make Glory feel uncomfortable in her own skin. It felt heavy and hard to bear, cumbersome, like breaking out of prison with her ankles and feet bound. When she was in college, folks never knew what to do with themselves when they saw her scarred legs, supposedly the sign of healing from the fire. Doctors said they were trophies, badges of honor, the mark of survival. Her mama called them a testimony and praised the Lord for them. Glory viewed the thick and leathery shiny red marks for what they were, evidence of her guilt. They'd faded with times passage, but no amount of slathering on fade creams or salves could mask or assuage the pain of knowing what had happened. So, her clothes had to do the trick. When Glory grew tired of explaining and redirecting and ignoring, and panty hoes and tights were no longer in fashion, she tried leggings, but they felt constrictive, much as the prying eyes and the whispers confined her. Ultimately, she took to wearing long dresses and wide pants as a means of protecting herself from the curious, or worse, pitious staires. The loose material moved with her. The silks, rayons, and polyesters, they were forgiving and comforting. Folks admired and questioned and wondered, but her mumus and gowns transformed her like Clark Kent's telephone booth of days past. When the wouldbe newspaper reporter stepped inside one, he emerged a superhero, a good guy, the one who actually saved instead of merely pretending to. That was why Glory could roam through this ragtag group of sidekicks and that Adele Simonet and pratt on about the power of story, looking into the eyes of folks who considered her an eccentric book seller, friend, taskmaster, and wife.

"Let me show young Mr. Simonette where the facilities are while you head to the cafe. Oilia arrived early, too. The others should be here in a few minutes." She turned up the heat of her grin when she laid eyes on Bennett, and fighting the urge to swoop him up in a big hug, she stretched her hand toward him. Adele shifted him closer to her side. "What are facilities?" He scrunched up his face at the book seller. "I'm glad you asked. It's a super duper fancy word for bathroom." Glory's words must have reassured the little boy because he let her lead him. She winked at Eli as he passed them on his way toward the front.

"Adele." Glory shook her head, bristling at the excitement in her husband's voice. He'd better not hug that woman. "No right. She is right cute in those holy denims of hers." The tension in Adele's shoulders eased when Eli clasped her hand between both of his. She felt so out of place in her jeans and t-shirt, and Bennett in shorts and sneakers when that woman opened the door, wearing an evening gown and fancy slides with feathers across the toes. Still, she had to admit the older man appeared rather dapper in his lightweight linen sports coat and chinos. "Hi, Eli. Thanks for inviting us. I may not look like it, but I come bearing lots of ideas." He guided her deeper into the store through the hallway that led toward the cafe. "I'm glad to hear it. And you look fine. And about your ideas? I should explain that Glory and No, no, Emmy." Adele fell into step beside him. "Pearl. I guess you could say she's Glory's best friend. She and her husband opened the jewelers not too long after by the book turned its first page." Adele lassoed the words, "Guess you could say," and let his joke go free. "Is she not really her best friend?" Eli cocked an eye her way. "You are quite

The reporter, aren't you, with an ear for details?" I was only using a figure of speech. Extra words to fatten up my sentence. "They're good friends, all right, those two. No and Glory are thick as thieves." What an appropriate description. She only nodded and said nothing more.

As I was saying, those two have already cooked up a plan for the festival, and I think it's a solid one. They need some help fleshing it out and coming up with quotes, which is why we invited you all here tonight.

Eli threw out a palm and invited her to go ahead of him into the small area they'd converted into a cafe, empty of people, but filled with the scent of something warm and savory, and a smattering of small round tables and chairs. When he disappeared into the kitchen, Adele stared at the large sheets of paper and jars of pens, pencils, and colored markers set up on each table, and thought she was the last person for this book related job, whatever it entailed. And well, they knew it after the last discussion they'd had. Half of her couldn't wait to hear the specifics, while her other half dreaded it. All of her wanted Glory to bring her son back from that bathroom forthwith.

"Hola." Adele whirled toward the voice belonging to who could only be No Emmy. A diminutive yet commanding woman dressed in a well-fitting forest green pants suit and pale pink shirt. Her flipped-up collar framed the large diamond sparkling in her earlobes. Adele cringed inwardly, wishing she'd read the memo about the dress code.

"Hello." Adele hated the uncertainty in her voice as she picked at a crusty spot on her jeans. "And where is my boy?" In another minute, she would hop onto one of these chairs and scream his name.

"I am no Pearline." The jeweler strode forward in heels that added 4 inches to her height, her hand reaching for Adele, dark eyes piercing. She accepted the handshake and stole a quick glance at the large antique gold clock on the wall.

"Adele Simonet." Yes, I know who you are. She flashed two rows of white teeth that matched the brilliance of her eyes.

"Mhm. Somebody's been talking." Adele smiled back. "Either you're a little early, too, or everyone else is late. Where's this little Bennett I've heard so much about?" No head swiveled back and forth, her thick shoulder-length auburn hair swaying.

"I've been wondering that myself." Adele peered past the woman. "The question is, where's Dale?"

Olia's question entered the room before she did. She appeared bearing a tray. "Jalapeno and pepperjack popovers, everybody. Hey there, Adele. It's good to see you again. You might better take one to sustain you with this crowd." No opened her mouth and pushed on the baker's shoulder. "Are you saying she'll need fortifications?"

"But we're all family here." Olia said nothing, but turned toward Glory, entering with Benedin toe, and the customer named Frederick, bringing up the rear.

"I heard that, Olia." The bookseller elbowed her gently. "I meant for you, too," her employee responded in a sing-song. "Help yourselves, ladies and gentlemen. I'll get my cousin to bring out iced tea and cups."

Adele bent low next to Bennett. "Did you wash your hands?" His chest heaved and he droned, "Yes, ma'am."

"Then come sit next to me." She felt overwhelmed and desperately sought a corner to cower in. The farthest table and chairs would have to do, so Adele gripped his hand for dear life and proceeded in that direction. A slightly familiar soft tenor stopped her.

"Mrs. Simonette, is it?" Rotating toward the newest greeter, she pressed a hand to her chest and grinned sincerely. "Mr. Graves." Bennett abandoned his mother's hand.

"Hello there, young man. I wasn't sure if you'd recognize me without my little friend." The child circled the older gentleman's legs as if the dog was hiding behind them. Adele shook her head at her son, but was glad Mr. Graves's laugh broke through the sadness that drifted around him like morning mist above the grass. She could see him, yet it veiled his true self. This was only the second time she'd conversed with this person, but she recognized him as a kindred spirit, having shared a similar loss.

"Hello, Mr. Graves. It's so good to see you again, even without Oscar. Right, Bennett?" She willingly exchanged her need to comfort herself by fading into the background for a need to comfort the older man and draw him out of his shell. The boy kicked at a non-existent ball with his toe and mumbled, "Right."

Charles Graves chuckled again, then coughed. The unusual sound may have dislodged something in his throat. He bent and cupped the side of his mouth, helping Bennett hear him in the jumble of words and sounds rising in the compact space like a bathtub filling with water. "Don't worry, we'll soon talk Mrs. Prior into letting me bring my friend. Maybe even by the next time."

Adele's stomach dropped. "Next time, Dale Finelment." No moved away from Frederick toward her newly arrived husband. "It took that long to close the shop." Glory flew on feather-covered shoes from the room, her dress billowing. "I'll lock the front door. Can't have anything else going missing or someone thinking we're open." Adele risked a glance at Bennett as Glory sailed out, but he appeared not to have heard.

Eli pushed open the swing door and held it. Two teens with the same upturned noses, square chins, and dark curly hair entered, clutching two sweaty glass pitchers filled with water and iced tea. Eli dipped back into the kitchen, only to reappear with a tray of plastic cups and napkins. Frederick unburdened him and set the load next to the popovers and drinks on the concrete countertop. Bennett dashed away from his distracted mother and clambered onto a stool. He accepted a napkin from Frederick and stuffed his mouth.

Adele gritted her teeth, frustrated. None of this was what she'd come here for, to Gilmore or to the bookstore. She hadn't planned to chat about her reading habits, build rapport with virtual strangers, talk about the chewed toys liked, bless Mr. Graves's heart, or nosh on baked goods, however yummy they were. It was time to regroup. She gently touched the elderly man's arm and stemmed his flow of conversation. "Pardon, but I think I'll get Ben at home. He's probably feeling overwhelmed by all these new people. And it's awfully late in the day. We didn't have time to do more than eat a ham and cheese roll-up and some saltines before we left the house, which you can tell by the way he's scarfing down those popovers. Maybe you and I can meet for coffee and hot chocolate and talk one-on-one, or rather two-on-one, about how we're dealing with the death of our spouses. I could use a little wisdom for managing life on my own."

"Death?" He rubbed the back of his head. "My wife isn't dead."

Adele's stomach twisted painfully for the thousandth time that evening. But Eli, who'd been standing with his back half turned to Adele's left, stepped closer. "Charles, you should try a popover. Olia, put her foot in them, let me tell you. And ask her about the peanut butter treats she made. She's considering them for her food truck. And after tonight, we'll keep them in a jar on the counter for dog owners like you and Frederick. No more random dog treats for Oscar."

The older man moved away, his shoulders slumped as if a puppeteer had relaxed his strings. Eli leaned in. "I didn't mean to eavesdrop, Adele, but Charles's wife isn't dead. She suffered a stroke a few years ago and developed vascular dementia. She's in the late stages." She touched her fingers to her lip. "The first time we met, he said he lost her." Eli took a deep breath in all the important ways he has. "They've lost each other after 62 years of marriage. She's in a care facility now and probably doesn't have much longer for this world. Perhaps soon he'll have to bear the title of widower. But not today, dear. Not yet."

Trembling, Adele envisioned her life raft floating away with Charles Graves sitting in the middle of it. The one person she felt connected to in this room full of strangers in the whole town if she was being frank. "Thank you, Lord, for my son." Bennett, she wheeled to get him. But there he was, snuggling up with Glory Prior. As though someone called her name, Glory zeroed in on Adele. The older woman's brown eyes seemed to ask a question Adele couldn't understand before she leaned over and murmured something in Bennett's ear. When his thumb headed for his mouth, Glory gently redirected his fingers and held on to them. After much whispering and headshaking, Bennett nodded and straightened his shoulders. He stepped a little in front of Glory, clapped his hands, and yelled, "May I have your attention? It's time for the famous quotes group to begin." Then he ducked behind Glory's skirts.

Chapter 12.

"Y'all were worth skipping my afternoon sidewalk gazing. Thank you for making time for Eli and me." Glory leaned her cheek against her clasped hands and smiled at the people seated at the varied mix of wood, stone, and glass-topped tables scattered about the room. Eli and Frederick, Adele, Bennett and Charles, Jason, Mallerie, and Olia, Dale and Noam.

In *A Tree Grows in Brooklyn*, Francine Nolan described the world as hers for the reading, and I know how she feels. The right book at the right time can become a good friend or even a family member. Francine had one for every mood, just like I have tubes of lipstick. Dale smirked at Nomy, and Mallerie giggled, but Adele frowned.

Glory pushed on. "That's why I asked all y'all to join me at By the Book today. I'm hoping the famous quotes group, that's you, if you were wondering what Bennett was shouting about, will share parts of books and stories that inspire you or speak to you in some way, that explain why a particular book is a good friend and fits your mood. Write it down on that sheet of paper in front of you." She pointed at their tables.

Eli stood. "If you're like yours truly, who struggles to recall details, feel free to wander about the store looking for your favorite books to use as reference guides." No leaned toward Dale and whispered loudly, "If you buy those same books and take them home, that's okay, too." When her friend's words garnered a chuckle from everyone, Glory thought, "Maybe Mrs. Simonette does have a sense of humor."

A gleaming silver skull danced in the air, catching Glory's attention. Her eyes followed the other four rings, including the one encircling the teen's thumb. "Yes, Jason. Why can't we use our phones to find famous quotes? That's easier." His mother jabbed a finger on the table. "Easier doesn't mean better." Gloria applauded her softly. "Finally, something you and I agree on, Olia. Yes, Jason, you could Google titles and compile a whole list, but it wouldn't reveal what's important to you personally, what stands out to you. Maybe it's the lyrical nature of so I can choose music instead." Jason's face lit up.

Glory hesitated. "I reckon so. I'd never considered that." Mallerie raised her hand. "What if we haven't read the same books? I don't listen to what my brother listens to. How do we understand what we don't know? And what does any of this have to do with the festival?"

Olia propped her chin on the knuckles of her left hand. "The questions don't fall far from the tree, I see. Trust Olia and her children to have plenty to say." Glory pushed on. "In a book group, people read the same thing and get together to discuss it over pimento cheese and almond crackers. This isn't like that. We're talking about quotes or scenes only. Themes, what people connect to regardless of the story. We'll discuss them before we share them, or in Jason's case, play them." Jason jiggled to a rhythm only he could hear.

"Along those lines, what if you're not a reader?" a fiction. I mean, I have a sense I won't have much to contribute to this effort, which is supposed to be about the festival. At least that's what I was told. Adele sat back in her chair.

"Well, if y'all would let me explain." Running a hand through her silver strands from her forehead to her nape, she wished she had one of those fans her mama and daddy used in church once upon a time. Glory still remembered the picture of the funeral home on the back of it.

No slipped out of her blazer and draped it over her chair. "Desk job pay. May I?" Most of you have been to the fairgrounds in November. People come from all over. Children like Bennett, grandparents, young people like Jason and Mallerie, and mothers like you, Adele. They're hoping to find candy apples or antiques or barbecue and art, homemade jewelry or a good time. In the end, they'll share a similar experience, even if they don't have the same um..." she turned her hands together.

"Expectations?" Dale supplied.

"Yes, yes, expectations. Now, this year, By the Book is joining the party." No jiggled her shoulders, and her lips parted in a wide grin. "And this is how Glory and Eli will contribute to the festival. Gathering literary quotes to get people to thinking about their books." Adele scoffed. No vigorous nodding made her thick curls caress her shoulders.

"But most importantly about life, about love and family and friendship and community, even shopping. Everything our festival and life here in Gilmore centers around. Don't we have a common story? I suggested she gather a representation, men and women, little people, old people, and in-between people, to gather thoughts from all walks of life. You're those people."

Frederick didn't bother with requesting permission to speak. "I'm a little confused. Exactly what will you do with these quotes and lyrics or whatever it is we're coming up with? I brought some ideas with me, but I'm not sure if it's what you're looking for." He reached for the leather satchel propped against his leg.

Eli used the back of his chair to push to his feet. "Hold up there, Fred. We'll get to what you have in a minute. As we started to explain, once we compile a list of the most provocative or most meaningful ideas, we'll print them and then post them around town a couple weeks before the festival. I told Glory this would generate excitement in the community, get people to talk it." Glory squirmed a bit. That suggestion hadn't sat well with her, but once Eli got a seed planted in his head, there was no uprooting it. She worried over how far word would travel.

"I checked with the printer, and he'll need a few weeks to get it down right. Colorful big cards." What he means is "muaro." No rubbed two fingers together and winked at Glory. "That's neither here nor there. What's important is the schedule. It's August, which means we only have a month to meet before we'd need to send these to the printer."

Another hand rose, this time more tentatively. Charles said quietly, "Perhaps as an accommodation, we could ask a non-reader to act as secretary or designer and assist the group in fleshing out our thoughts." Adele mouthed, "Thank you," to Charles from across the room. No shook her head slightly at Glory and pressed a fingertip to her lips. The bookstore owner wanted to ask Charles Graves what it was about the woman that elicited such protectiveness and chivalry on the part of the men folk. While she didn't like it much, this show of sympathy for Adele, she had to admit to herself that she appreciated the olive branch he'd extended. She forced a smile and remarked, "Those are all good thoughts. Any more questions?"

The nine others glanced at one another until Frederick piped up. "How long and how often? I can smell something good and it's making me hungry. It's time to take my stomach back to the house." Everyone laughed. Glory signaled to Eli, who threaded his way through the tables toward the kitchen.

"I'm glad you asked that, Frederick. I know we asked y'all to come out at an awkward hour right after work for some and at dinnertime for others. To prevent this from being a hardship, Eli and I prepared something more than these delicious popovers of Olia's." It was mostly Eli, her husband shouted.

"Hush. We thought it would be special to have our inaugural discussion over dinner. That is, if you can stay." Most of the group trooped into the kitchen where a feast awaited, at least in the single mother's eyes. Covered platters filled with mashed potatoes, smothered chicken, roasted carrots, biscuits, and if the oven light was telling the truth, dessert. Once Frederick returned from making a call, they prayed and squeezed in around the Prior's private 6 ft table after lining up at the island to spoon food onto their plates.

But as hungry as Adele was for food and fellowship, it killed her to pick up one of those heavy earthenware dishes and serve herself some of the creamiest potatoes to ever grace her tongue. Sure, she was grateful the woman had actually accounted for people like her and Bennett, who hadn't eaten before the meeting, but extending the meeting without asking was mighty presumptuous. Either way, she stewed. The meal looked delicious and came right on time. So much better than the hot dogs she'd planned to boil once they were ensconced in their own kitchen. Two might be company, but that was certainly a meager number to cook for.

14 months ago, Adele prepped meals inspired by Ben's likes and dislikes. Chicken salad with grapes and walnuts instead of tuna salad on saltines. No cream cheese unless she served it in possum pie. Barbecue with vinegar sauce, but no slaw. Adele couldn't say what her own favorite foods were anymore. While cooking for a four-year-old wasn't complicated, it taxed her emotionally. These days, she scavenged for food like the birds in the fields, eating here and there, picking off Bennett's leftovers. She'd lost a dress size since Ben died.

"Everything all right, Adele?" Glory's question floated across the opposite side of the table. Debating within herself the reasons Glory would single her out, Adele bumped the child who was basically sitting in her lap in the tight quarters. "It's all delicious, isn't it, Bennett? Thank you for hosting us, Eli. Glory." Her son nodded, engrossed in gnawing on his remaining strips of meat. Glory set down the pitcher of tea. Before Adele could refuse, she plopped another gravy-covered piece of chicken onto the boy's plate. She fingered one of Bennett's curls when he dug into it.

"I know we're busy eating, but can y'all talk around your chicken bone and share your ideas?" Dale was born and raised in what was called the Queen City, Charlotte, North Carolina, about 2 hours away. He'd settled in the area after graduating from Western Carolina University. At first, the only answer to his question was the clink and clatter of utensils striking plates.

Frederick finished chewing and wiped his mouth. He unhooked the latch on the bag he'd brought with him into the kitchen and withdrew a book. "I read this years ago, and it stayed with me for some time. It's called *The Deep End of the Ocean*."

"Wait, that's an old movie with the actor who plays in the Marvel movies?" Jason asked.

"Michelle Pfeiffer," Mallerie replied. "You saw it with my friends during my sleepover. Isn't it based on a true story?"

"We're not talking about movies," Glory's voice was taut as she refilled the ice bucket. Frederick opened the thick novel and removed one of the green sticky notes. "I don't think it's a true story. Here's one quote that struck me. 'Home is not a place, but a feeling of belonging.' I'd agree with that. Your home is more about how you feel inside and the people around you instead of your address. And I believe that's a good theme for the festival. Wouldn't you agree? We want visitors to feel at home here in Gilmore the way we feel around this table."

Adele could have been eating stones. Her stomach felt so heavy. She set down her fork. "Here are a couple more that run along the same lines." Frederick stuck his finger in the book, opened to another section, and peeled off a green square. He pressed it to the table beside his plate and read, "'We are all connected, and our actions ripple through the lives of others.' And one more. 'Family is not just blood, but the people who choose to be there for us.'" He closed the book.

"Good stuff." Cringing inwardly, Adele risked a glance around the kitchen and her eyes landed on her hosts. Glory looked about as comfortable as she did. Dale hit the side of his head. "Isn't that story about a family losing their son?"

"The kicker is that..." "Are you okay? You're about to hit the floor." Olia jumped up and caught the platter of biscuits that was leaning precariously from Glory's hand. At her side, Eli pressed a napkin into her hand and guided her to her seat. She dabbed her glistening forehead. "I'm fine. Fine." Olia reached for the water pitcher in the middle of the table and refilled Glory's glass.

"Are you sure? Drink this." No hovered over at her friend's side. "You're so busy tending to us. You haven't touched your own food."

"I'm sure that's it. Mama would say I have the sugar and that it's because of all the extras I've been eating." Glory tilted her head in their baker's direction. Bennett balanced on his knees in his chair and whispered loudly in his mother's ear.

"Sugar? She ate too many cookies." Adele patted his leg to settle him. "I'll tell you about it later, Bennett." Dale snickered. "Sugar is another name for diabetes, a medical condition that affects how people process what they eat and drink. Some people call it that. And by some people, our friend over here means folks in our generation. My aunt lost her leg to complications from the disease."

"And it's no laughing matter," Frederick chided. "But as far as I know, my wife isn't a diabetic. Glory, enjoy your meal. We can handle our own drinks." Eli tapped the rim of her plate. "Now, what were you saying, Dale?"

"May I? While my husband chews on it." Laughing, Noam reached around her husband, whose mouth was stuffed. "H I'm not sure which character it was, but I remember reading something about trials. 'Here we are. Life is a series of ups and downs, but it is in the downs where we find our true strength.'"

"If that ain't lifted straight from the scriptures," Olia cried out.

"It is awfully close," Adele agreed. Glory quoted quietly. "That's why I take pleasure in my weaknesses and in the insults, hardships, persecutions, and troubles that I suffer for Christ. For when I am weak, then I am strong."

Adele stared at the bookseller. "You know that passage?"

"I don't sell Bibles, but I know what's in them. I had to memorize that verse from Second Corinthians for the Easter pageant when I was in the fourth grade." Olia shook the ice in her glass. "God is our creator and everything originates from him. I'm not surprised you'd find that in the book since there's nothing new under the sun. That's also in the Bible."

Eli shook his head at his cousin. "I didn't read *The Deep End of the Ocean*, but I did see the movie. That would be a hard thing to forgive, losing a child that way. The book addresses the themes of brokenness and forgiveness and also hope. Not to give anything away to anybody here who hasn't read it. She points out that our hardest struggles happen in our heart. That calls to mind that scripture from Ephesians that warns us that we don't fight in the physical realm against flesh and blood, but in the spiritual."

Dale scooped up the last of his potatoes and gravy with a biscuit. No crossed her utensils over her empty plate. "Adele, I heard about your fiction versus non-fiction debate. As a believer, I can tell you I see so many faith threads in novels outside of Christian fiction or biblical fiction. The authors may not have intended to weave them through their novels, but God can use anything and anyone. It's like the book says, all of us are connected somehow."

"The book?" "The Bible?" Adele asked absently, keeping one eye on Glory.

"No, *The Deep End of the Ocean*. This work of fiction. Frederick read it a moment ago." No wiped her mouth and turned her attention from Adele to Glory. "My friend, I recommended it to you. Did you ever get around to reading it?"

"No." Glory pinched the word the way she did a chunk of her bread. Adele tried to gauge the woman's expression. While she didn't know much about Glory Prior, she definitely seemed bothered by something. Maybe you're projecting your own discomfort with this subject, she thought.

"Well, you should," No insisted. "And I agree with Dale. It's an old book that people may not recognize. But there are good quotes that might be useful because it's about the love of family and belonging. I don't like the language all the time, I will say. But it describes what we share here and what you find in your community, your family, town, your friends. Love and loyalty and brokenness. Think about how you include dude in your family. I'm sure you're helping him in ways you didn't expect and aren't aware of."

Loyalty. Bile burned the back of Adele's throat and soured her stomach. She felt the urge to grab Bennett and dash from the Prior's kitchen. How can the two of them sit there and participate in a discussion on those two gifts like they know anything about them and laugh and go on like it's nothing?

Glory suddenly pounded her fist on the table, tears streaming. "No, Emmy. The last thing I want to do is talk about somebody else's missing son. Fictional or no? That's a book I can write myself. Mama and Daddy never found their son, my brother. Never. Despite the loving and loyal community." Eli covered her fingers. "Baby." Glory snatched her hand away. Crestfallen, No patted Eli's arm. "No, she's right. She's right. Loento miga. We should have known better. There's a reason I didn't suggest the book to you in the first place. And in the moment, I forgot."

Adele gazed around the table at all the people who knew the backstory Glory hadn't bothered to share with the newcomers. "What have I gotten myself into?"

Glory kissed her friend on each of her cheeks. "Talk tomorrow." No winked. "Sure is shooting. You're sounding more and more homegrown every day. If you don't watch yourself, we won't be able to tell where Colia ends and North Carolina begins." Glory waved goodbye to the couple and locked the door behind them. She rested her forehead against the wood. Tired. Without turning, Glory nodded in answer to Eli's question, but gratefully accepted the arms he wrapped around her middle.

"What can I do?" His soft words tickled the hairs on her nape.

"You can remind me why I thought these meetings were a good idea." He spun her in his direction and held her close, pinning her arms to her side. It was just as well. She hadn't the wherewithal to raise them the few inches to return the embrace, though questions buzzed about her brain with an energy lacking in her limbs. She counted his heartbeat until she reached 120 before raising another subject along the same lines that pestered her.

"You know how we've talked about being old and needing something new?" When she felt Eli's chin bump against her crown, she assumed he'd answered with a yes and trudged forward. "Is that part of why you're dying to sell By the Book? To move to some new exotic clime? Marriage? Check. Check. Owned a business? Check. Check. Had a child? Check. Retired? Check."

Eli pulled back and tilted her face. "This had better be that lemon meringue pie talking because I know you're not serious. You're so full of bursting. All that tartness is overflowing from that lovely mouth of yours." He kissed her. "Yep. Sweet and sour." Glory laid her hands on his chest to create room to think. "I'm serious, Eli. I can tell, love. From what I've heard, my old girlfriend lived in Myrtle Beach. I don't know if I'd call it exotic, but I for one could stand a break from inhaling and exhaling all this book glue and these fancy words."

"Clime." He shook his head. She delicately pummeled his chest with her fists. "Well, beach sand and boardwalks sound exotic to me after living in the shadows of these mountains most of my adult life. It's 6 hours away and about 20° hotter and more humid. Maybe you're still feeling some kind of way about our plans to leave this place." No amount of teeth clenching could keep Glory's deepest thoughts from squeaking through them. "Our plans. I'm not planning on going nowhere."

Chapter 13.

"Glory." She brushed at her cheek. "Glory!" Groaning, she snuggled deeper under the blanket. "Honey bun." Glory shivered when she felt a cool rush of air on her exposed shoulder. Blinking slowly, she tried to focus in the dark room and reached for the covers. "What's today?" she asked hoarsely.

"It's Sunday," Eli whispered. She promptly rolled to her left side away from him. He shook her. "Glory, wake up." Sighing, she raised herself to an elbow and glared at his shadowy figure. "Eli Prior, why are you waking me in the middle of the night?"

"It's not the middle of the night. It's very early in the morning. I want to take you somewhere and we need to leave as soon as possible. You might want to put on a sweater." He paused. "Glory, are you awake? Did you hear me?" She rested her head on the pillow for another second before holding out her hand and letting him gently pull her upright and to her feet.

Less than 30 minutes later, Glory was ensconced in the passenger seat of Eli's Lincoln Aviator, sipping Earl Grey from an insulated thermos. So far, she'd counted two women walking their dogs, a lone jogger, and a man sitting on the curb of Spring Church Road, though she pressed her nose to the cool glass. A bleary Glory couldn't tell if it was dude as they passed him at 45 mph.

"You neglected to tell me where we're going." At this time on a Sunday, she was supposed to be stretched out in her bed for at least four more hours.

"After the week we had and the group meeting tomorrow night, I thought we could use a short getaway."

"You have a point. A getaway sounds nice. But there was no way to get away later in the day. We woke up the birds."

"Uh-uh." Eli pressed the button to open the lid to his cup. Glory's nose wrinkled at the smell that drifted through the car. "Coffee. At least you got my tea right. Otherwise, I wouldn't be able to forgive you for dragging me out of bed on the only day I get to sleep in." He chuckled and patted her thigh.

"Nice pants." Following his advice, she'd slid on a pair of blue palazzos with a matching striped tunic.

"Thank you. But I'm serious. I may be more of a morning person than you are typically, but I save my cheeriness for weekdays when I've gone to bed before midnight the night before. My Sundays are for chatting with you over a plate of grits and bacon, reading the paper, and maybe enjoying an afternoon snooze on the sofa. They're not for driving out of town on barely lit streets while the rest of the county sleeps in like I'm supposed to be doing." He spared her a glance.

"As you've said a few times, but they're also for adventure. Stop all the worryation. I don't hear you complaining when you're shelving books on a Sunday afternoon. You might be home in time to write your letters while you listen to the choir." She started, his words catching her in the middle of a yawn. Eli signaled a right turn and took the exit onto the highway.

"Yes, I've spied you bopping to the choir that sings down at Ebenezer. You must enjoy listening to it. Otherwise, you'd ride in the den on the third floor at the back of the house. That's why the directors mounted speakers outside and have that congregation raising the roof so they can minister to all the folks like us who forsake the pew." Gloria angled her body against the door. With 5 years under their belt, they knew each other's ins and outs better than some couples married five times as long. Still, she didn't have to like it. And he didn't have to know that one of her reasons for sitting on their front porch was gaining a better vantage point of the sidewalk and anybody strolling by. A part of her held out hope that Davis might find her one day, and Sunday morning seemed as good a time as any, possibly better. She watched Eli sip from his mug.

"What about you? You're the one who uses Sundays and Mondays to pretend you're truly retired. You'll regret this come Tuesday morning when I'm shaking the alarm over your head to wake you." Her husband had taken it to heart. Starting a second act as a full-time bookseller. Traveling, fishing with Dale, and watching Glory potter around the store filled up much of his off hours, despite her efforts to steer him toward a hobby to keep his idle mind off planning their move. Eli stretched across the console to take her hand.

"Stop complaining. There's a big world out here for you to see, and you don't know where we're going. Why is it so hard for you to leave the store's confines?"

"Because inmates don't get to leave the prison when they're serving a life sentence. I can't let Davis come back and find me gone, even if it's only the memory of him." Glory listened to the tires eat up the tarmac as they crossed a bridge, and determined to make the most of their together time. She squeezed his hand. "Okay, I'll trust you."

"That's what you said 5 years ago." The light from a street lamp cast a shadow over his face, but it didn't conceal his smile. She yanked the hair on the back of his wrist.

A few minutes later, they pulled off the main road at a sign marked "Scenic Overlook" and wound up what was little more than a gravel path barely wide enough for one-way traffic. After driving about a half mile, he parked between two other vehicles. "We should hurry to find a good spot." Eli lighted from the car and slammed the door. In a huff, she followed him in the half-light around to the trunk and waited as he removed two chairs and a blanket and leaned them against the vehicle. When he draped an insulated bag over her shoulder, she decided enough was enough.

"Eli, I'm about to act like a 5-year-old and kick and scream until you tell me what's going on. I see that 'I trust you' thing lasted all of 30 minutes. Since you can't wait until we get there for the surprise, I'll tell you this much. We're going for a little walk. What do you think?"

"I think that sounds like a hike in the dark with snakes and spiders I won't be able to see. And I thought our meeting with Olia over her infernal menu planning scared me. The baked goods his cousin provided were an excellent value-add, to borrow her husband's marketing term. But they also complicated Glory's life. Now this from Eli."

"I call it a big walk and you call it a little hike. As long as we don't call the whole thing off." Eli sounded pleased with himself. Glory shook her head. "Still working on that stand-up routine, I see. What I can't see is me traipsing over hill and dale at this hour, especially in these wide-leg pants. Unless our policy covers my tumbling down the mountain side. I'm afraid I do think we should call the whole thing off."

"That's why I have these." Eli shone a light on a rectangular cardboard package. She squinted at it. "Hair scrunchies."

"Consider them pant scrunchies. You'll look like a genie when you walk. Besides, I'm not talking about a hike, big or small, only a stroll with the medium-sized hill as the backdrop. And in case you can't see me, I'm holding up three fingers. Do you know how long it's been since you were a Boy Scout?"

"Glory." "Uh, I can tell you're wavering. You won't regret leaving the house. I promise. Aren't you afraid of turning into a hermit?" He picked up a chair with each hand and set out.

"But I'm not wearing hair ties on my pants," Glory grumped, unable to come up with another reason to get her out of going. They'd made no other plans for this relatively cool early Sunday morning. So saying anything else would make her sound peevish, difficult, or lazy. Or more peevish, more difficult, and lazier.

"Come, we don't want to come this far and miss it." Eli's voice floated over his shoulder. She adjusted the strap and trudged behind him.

"Could you specify what it is?"

"The sunrise over a picnic breakfast."

"Oh, wow. The sunrise." She perked up, immediately ashamed that she'd put up such a fuss. Grateful she'd heeded his advice to put on pants and thick-soled shoes, Glory crunched behind Eli. Already, the swiftly approaching day was creeping along the edges of the well-worn path that cut through the woods. A morning breeze whisking through the trees, towering over them, made limbs sway, and fallen leaves dance and scuttle across the ground.

"Be careful you don't twist your ankle on a pine cone," Eli warned. "I'm too old and out of shape to carry you back to the car." She quickened her pace, her long legs matching him stride for stride. Within minutes, they broke through the tree cover and found a space among the others who were similarly inspired this Sunday morning. Eli arranged their collapsible chairs side by side and unburdened her of the food carrier that had bumped against her hip during their trek.

"After you," he turned up a palm. When she sat, he spread the blanket over her lap. Glory had worked up a light sweat and didn't really need the added layer, but his thoughtfulness warmed her heart. After he dropped beside her, she scooted closer to him and laid half the cover over his legs.

"I'm aware I'm not the easiest person to surprise. I steered my own ship for nearly 60 years, Mr. Prior, so I'm working on it. Lots to get used to." He tipped his forehead against hers. "You're worth the effort."

"I should hope so." Her words were hushed, having sensed a change in the atmosphere. She linked arms with her husband, preparing herself for what was coming. The light wind swept down the hillside and began to dispatch the mist, hugging the shadowy pines, alders, and birch, and shielding them from view. The trees stretched above the low brush toward the patchwork of light blue, gray, and purple skies above them. Suddenly, a fiery orange ball burst over the distant ridges and burned through the haze of clouds, awakening sleeping birds who raised a chorus of tweets, whistles, trills. A few fluttered, startled from their nests, when the sun's onstage appearance sparked scattered applause from the audience seated on the hillside.

"Oh, it's incredible." Glory's voice trembled. Overcome by the resplendent birth of a new day, she didn't bother blinking back her tears, letting them flow unchecked. Her arm tensed against Eli's, holding him tightly. "Thank you." He patted the fingertips, clutching him. "You're welcome." Glory wasn't sure who she was actually thanking, but said nothing further to disturb the moment. The raucous cries of the wildlife around them had that part covered. She leaned back in her seat as tinges of pink and yellow crept across a sky that gradually brightened until the whole area was bathed in light, save for a clump of far-off clouds on the edge of the horizon. Following Eli's lead, she pushed off the blanket and welcomed the warmth of the sun's smile on her face. She couldn't help but smile back.

The two of them kept their seats as others eventually packed up. As Eli unzipped the bag he'd packed, Glory tearfully acknowledged strangers who took exaggerated sniffs of the Prior's breakfast as they hauled themselves back down the hillside or trooped farther along their hike. Appreciatively, she peeled back the silver foil-wrapped sausage and cheese biscuit Eli had prepared for their picnic.

"You love well, darling. How early did you get up to do this?"

"Early enough," he feigned a yawn, then took a bite of his sandwich. "But losing a little sleep and expending a little sweat to wrangle you out of the house was worth it." Eli indicated the sky, which was now fully awake. They chewed in silence as the area emptied. A few people stood by the railing, protecting them from the drop-off, aiming cameras at the tree line. Though shadows had started to gather, they didn't eclipse the freshness of the morning.

Eli folded up his napkin and mustard packet inside his foil and stuck it inside the bag. "A few minutes ago, you said thank you. I assumed you were talking to me, but you weren't. Am I right?"

"Trust you to stir the embers. No need to rekindle the fire." Glory brushed a flake of biscuit off her bosom. "I was merely expressing my gratitude for the moment. Wasn't it amazing? Can you believe I've never witnessed this? Mama and Daddy attended sunrise service Easter mornings, but they let Davis and me sleep in. They probably considered it their once-a-year date. After he left, they stopped going." She slowly chewed her last bit of breakfast, hating to finish and hating to continue the discussion.

He crossed his arms behind his head and stretched out his hairy legs. "You're deflecting, Glory. It's okay. You know, I felt it, too. That that wonder, the awe of beholding something so much greater than yourself. It's similar to the way I feel when I stand on the shore and gaze at the waves. Today, though, today felt different somehow. More."

Following the direction of his eyes, Glory stared at the expanse of variegated green hues extending for miles beyond their rocky outcropping. It was broken only by pops of red, yellow, and brown, leaves that were readying their autumn wardrobe, and dead branches and trees that had snapped at their base. She frowned at the clump of dark clouds chugging toward them from the west. Their steady march made Glory fear the abrupt end of her rare excursion. So focused on an internal perspective, Eli seemed unaware of their impending threat.

"When you look at a book, you know those words don't appear out of nowhere and get bound and stitched together. There's a writer, an author experiencing this sunrise. Same thing. It emphasized the power, the unmatched magnificence of creation, of the creator, an author." Eli's whispered comment was barely discernible enough for his wife to hear. Yet his message came through loud and clear. Like her, Eli had been raised with a Bible in his hand and a hymn on his tongue.

At that moment, thunder rumbled, and a far-off, jagged streak lit the storm clouds the sun hadn't completely chased away. A teenager and her friends scampered to grab their blankets. Another man snapped a picture before his hiking partner yanked him from the overlook and toward the path. Glory sighed, "Well, Eli, I suppose the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away."

The patter of rain on the roof roused Adele, who'd hovered over sleep most of the night. She flopped to her back and threw an arm over her face before flipping the pillow to the cooler side. Turning her back to the hazy glow sneaking through the window blinds, she grumbled, "Why did I think moving to the middle of the bed would change anything?"

"Lord, please give me an unbroken hour of rest." Just as she started to drift, heavy thunder rattled the window panes. What seemed like seconds later, Adele heard the doorknob thunk against the wall and footsteps pad quickly to the bed. When she felt the mattress sink slightly, she rolled to her left side, snuggled Bennett against her middle, and drew the covers over them both without opening her eyes. She didn't bother extracting his thumb. She was sure he'd stuck it in his mouth. They'd both suffered through their share of storms and needed whatever comfort they could find. Her lids felt sticky when she opened them to bright sunlight, and she wondered how much longer she'd slept since her son had curled up beside her.

"Since you dragged him into bed, don't you mean, Adele?"

"Maybe I need a dog." "A big one," she murmured into Bennett's hair. "I definitely sleep better with someone beside me. With Ben beside me." Adele eased her arm from under the child without dislodging him and crept around the bed. Deciding to forego brushing her teeth to avoid unnecessary noise, she eased from the room and shut the door with a soft click. A peek at the clock over the electric range announced it was 9:30. She bit her lip. Do I wake him so he can eat breakfast and dress for church or do I let him sleep in? WWBD. What would Ben do? It wasn't that her husband had replaced Jesus in her mind. She hadn't mounted Ben on a pedestal to pray to him or expect him to respond. She thought of him first because he had always been the decision maker. The wise, quick-thinker who heard the question and answered it immediately. Adele was the flip side of their coin. She held up a finger to test the velocity of the wind and agonize over its direction. Losing Ben had been the impetus for coming to Gilmore. She wouldn't have implemented this plan to reclaim what was hers by right if he hadn't up and died. But now it was her responsibility to carry through without his stabilizing daily presence.

"Can I do it?" Adele spooned grounds in the filter and fit it in the coffee maker. "Should you do it?" The spoon clattered to the counter and dark granules rolled everywhere. She grabbed the dishcloth from the sink and wiped the grounds into her palm. Adele wondered over the source of those doubtful words. Should had never entered her mind. That was a given. While the coffee brewed, she went to the family room for her Bible and journal. Shaking, she fumbled her materials, and everything hit the floor. Pages spilled and pens scattered. Adele fell to her knees to pick up the jumble, glad the

The carpet had muffled the noise. She shoved the pens in the pocket of her robe and straightened the thin, crinkled pages before she closed the Bible and rested her chin on it.

As a child, Adele's daddy had taught her to treat it as more than the good book. She was to consider God's word a treasure to keep safe and hide in her heart. "But how am I supposed to get it in there? Won't it hurt?" She'd flattened her hands against her tiny chest.

He'd set his baby girl on his lap. "Not always. However, it might sometimes, precious one. I'm not going to lie. Just not in the way you might think. You remember how we play hide-and-seek?"

She nodded. "That's my favorite."

"When we play that game with your friends and I'm the seeker, you don't want me to find you. You look for the best hiding places and stay as quiet as possible so you're the last to be found."

Adele poked out her lips. "But you always find me first."

"That's because you run behind the same tree every time." Her father tickled her feet that were swinging back and forth under his legs. When she settled down, he continued, "Now, when it comes to hiding God's word in your heart," he tapped the Bible. "That means you read it and study it all the time because you want to understand it. You run to it first like I run to that tree and I run to you. In order to get to know God and his word, you must spend time with him loving him as your father. And after all that time in his presence, his word wiggles its way down deep inside you. Not only in your mind, but into your heart. Nobody can take it away from you. Even though they witness it by the way you think, talk, and act, you tuck it inside you in your favorite place, but you want to seek him and find him."

"But why did you say that could hurt? Reading is fun, and I like to hear you tell me Bible stories," she scrunched up her face, puzzling it out. Hiding God's word sounded like it should be a good thing.

Her father inhaled deeply. "Let me see how to explain it." Adele waited, noting how he cocked his head to the side, like when he molded his clay animals or wrote things down in his diaries. That meant he was working on something important and wanted to get it right. She tried to keep still.

"Sometimes the lessons in here are hard to understand or believe. We might think they don't apply to us, but everything within these pages has meaning and application. Um, that means usefulness to our lives, baby girl. It's like when I have to spank you or send you to your room or take something away that you enjoy. I'm teaching you about consequences and telling the truth or correcting you when you do wrong. Jesus paid the price for our sin, but we have to deal with the consequences of our choices. Even Daddy, it's hard, but it's okay. God has to do that sometimes and we hide that in our heart too so we can see how much he loves us and wants the best for us. We have to work at seeking and understanding, believing and trusting him when it hurts and we don't want to. Does that make sense?"

The young Adele had nodded that day, still confused. This morning, the older Adele understood a little more, though God's ways were far beyond her most of the time. "I'm hiding these scriptures in my heart, just like you taught me, Daddy, and I'm teaching Bennett to do it, too. But it pains me sometimes."

Nestling the Bible in the crook of her arm, Adele stood and walked to the kitchen table to wait for the coffee to finish. She took the pens from her pocket and opened her leather journal. Some of the pages had gotten crimped when she dropped them, so she unfolded the corners. One wrinkled sheet was hanging out of the pocket in the back. Adele slowly extracted the scripture she'd torn from her father's journal and read over and over to ensure she'd never forget it. She couldn't say this passage from Isaiah chapter 59 was hidden anywhere. Rather, it had seared both her heart and her mind, and it hurt. She read it out loud. "Therefore, justice is far from us, nor does righteousness overtake us. We look for light, but there is darkness. For brightness, but we walk in blackness. We grope for the wall like the blind, and we grope as if we had no eyes. We stumble at noonday as at twilight. We are as dead men in desolate places. We all growl like bears and moan sadly like doves. We look for justice, but there is none, for salvation, but it is far from us."

Her lips flattened. At one time, justice had seemed far from her, but now she could almost touch it. "There's no sh about it. I'm going to do what I came here to do. Starting with returning to that famous quotes group. Come tomorrow night."

Chapter 14. "Must be a kink somewhere." Glory yanked at the hose. Water gushed from the nozzle. She snatched the weeds at the edge of the bed and aimed the stream at the fragile green sprouts that had greeted her that afternoon. "I should take a photo and show it to Frederick. If it weren't for him and his gardening tips, I would never have grown something back here." Satisfied that she'd soaked the new spinach, she directed the stream to the row of carrots. This was her first year of planting more than spices on the shelf in her kitchen, and she'd fredded over planting these vegetables, particularly this late in the year. It had taken much encouragement and expert help to convince her to venture outside the house and expand her interests beyond books.

She let the water flow on the next row, careful not to wet her skirt, and gazed up at a flock of starlings swooping through the silvery sky. "Eli's right. If I'm not careful, I'll become a hermit. Davis wouldn't want me to pay that heavy a penance." Glory glanced over her shoulder at the chair, bumping against the fence. Still empty, save for a few red-tinged leaves the maple shed. She had to admit that part of her desire to start a garden back here was to engage Dude in more conversations, to get to know him better and possibly lure him into helping with it. Perhaps if he had more positive outlets, he'd invest in something other than the bottle.

The back door opened and Eli poked his graying head around it. "Hey there, beautiful folks have arrived. How's it looking over there? I'm surprised you need to water them. What with the rain we've had?" Glory had shooed her husband away when he'd offered a hand with the seeds. As a result, he tended to keep his distance. She pointed at the new growth. "That was Sunday. But look, we have cabbage. And over there, the spinach. I'll plug the rest of these cucumbers, but we'll harvest green onions and garlic before you know it." Gloria admired her handiwork. "We," she says. "Maybe you can give me a tour tomorrow and I'll finally get to see it up close and personal. But in the meantime," Eli leveled a thumb in the direction of the room behind him. Her exterior smile belied her interior frown because she knew he meant the famous quotes group and not the kitchen.

"Okie dokie. I'll be right in. Give me a minute to clean up." Eli wedged a foot in the door and leaned farther onto the stoop. "Good gracious. I said I was coming. Yesterday you accused me of never leaving the store, and now you're trying to rush me back in. I can't please you, dear." Glory raised her hem and stepped over the puddle formed by the water dripping from the raised beds. "I'll give you 5 minutes before I send Adele out here to get you." When she pretended to spray him, he snorted and ducked inside. Glory turned off the water at the bib and took her time curling the hose around her arm, pushing the boundaries of her 5-minute reprieve, skirting the rivulets trailing down the paved area, she made her way to the back door that Eli had kept open with a brick they used for that purpose. Picturing the evening that awaited her, she groused, "Whoever came up with this idea must have been out of their mind." She smacked her forehead. "Oh, that's right. I did."

Adele plopped down a plastic bowl next to the plate of cherry tomatoes and cucumbers she'd seasoned with salt and pepper. She opened a large box of goldfish crackers and filled the empty container. Her food joined platters of cheese and salami, grapes, and what looked like brie oozing from pastry. Oilia entered the cafe area bearing a dish of sausage balls. "I thought we were keeping it simple tonight. Since we're starting at 7:00, we were supposed to eat dinner before we came and share light snacks."

"Someone didn't get the memo," Adele chided the baker, indicating the appetizer and the brie. "You know, we can't send this baby home after serving him only a handful of crackers shaped like fish. That would be lame, and this host doesn't do lame." Oilia touched her chest, her smile large enough to include Adele and Bennett, nearly hidden behind his mother. "Now, little man, you've seen me enough by now that I won't brook any shyness on your part. Why, I bandaged your boo-boos and read to you on our first date. Want a sausage ball?" Adele peeked at her son. He edged around her legs. "Thank you, Mrs. Brown." He accepted the plate in a napkin.

"If you're Mr. Prior's cousin, why aren't you a Mrs. Prior, too?"

Oilia shook her head briskly at Adele to prevent her from shushing her child. "Good question. Because I got married a long time ago to someone who isn't a Prior, and that wasn't my last name anyhow, because Mr. Prior and I are cousins way, way, way down the line." She stretched her arm and indicated a distance far from her body. "His grandmama's half-brother was my uncle's second cousin once removed or something like that." Adele squinted at her but couldn't quite do the math.

Bennett took a bite. "Where is your husband? Is he coming tonight?"

Adele noticed the baker's eyes harden a bit and she jumped into the conversation. "Bennett, let Mrs. Brown put down her platter and be about her business. Oh, look. There's Mr. Graves. Why don't you go ask him about Oscar?" The boy popped the rest of the sausage ball into his mouth and scampered over to greet his favorite dog owner, leaving his shyness behind along with his empty plate.

Adele touched the other woman on her arm. "I'm sorry, Oilia. He didn't mean to be rude. Bennett's naturally curious and didn't know not to ask."

Oilia brushed off the apology as she squeezed the platter between the cucumbers and the brie on the concrete bar top. "Did I say he shouldn't have asked? My Mr. Brown is long gone. Not in the same way as your husband, maybe, but about as permanently. Left me to raise Mallerie and Jason on my own without even a howdy-do. But God is good anyhow, and I'm not going to worry about it." Adele was getting used to the woman's forthright manner that aged her about 20 years. Ailia's words didn't sting the way they would have a month ago.

"I suppose she's bandaging my boo-boos, too. Anyway, fill your plate. We'll have a full house soon. Oh, look lucky there. It's as I said, the gang's all here." Oilia waved hello to No and Dale, entering the cafe as Eli exited the kitchen with Frederick at his side. "Let me go find my children and put them to work."

Braced for Glory's appearance, Adele worked to maintain an impassive expression while keeping watch over her son. Unable to resist the aroma, she forked three sausage balls onto her plate, along with some cucumbers and tomatoes and a hunk of baked brie. Mouth full with the first food she'd eaten since that morning's apple, she leaped through the books and the racks, nodding her head to the soft jazz emanating from unseen speakers. As she let down her guard inch by inch, out popped the weasel.

"Hello, Adele. Good to see you. I wasn't sure you were going to brave our little group again." Glory proffered her cheek to Eli. "These two must be attached by an invisible rubber band." Adele forced the food down her throat. "Hi, Glory. Of course, nothing could have kept me from tonight. Honey, ready to get started? Folks will need to get home, especially our little folks." He gave Adele a one-armed hug. She sensed his wife bristling as she accepted it, albeit stiffly. Adele relaxed when he stepped aside to make way for Jason and Mallerie, hopping from table to table, arranging pads of paper and jars of writing implements. She expelled a shaky breath between the tiny O her mouth formed as the two strolled away hand in hand. "The king and queen in their castle."

"Anybody ready to kick things off with a quote?" Standing at the front of the room, Glory twisted her wedding band around her finger, hoping no one noticed the wet splotches at her hemline from rushing her garden cleanup. Spying Bennett perched on Eli's knee made her stop short of wringing her hands. Something about that boy's mama set her teeth on edge, but he eased her frazzled nerves. "Y'all have the floor." Relieved to cede the limelight, Glory sat beside her husband and the four-year-old and waited for everyone to find their places. Undercover of chairs scraping on the wood floor, she whispered to him, "Do something. Say anything."

Eli plopped the child onto Glory's lap and reached under his seat for the half-full crystal bowl marked famous quotes. He stirred around the slips of paper, unfolded one, and read, "The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis."

"H, let's see." Eli shrugged when he flipped it to the reverse side. "Nothing but that. Perhaps the customer thought the entire book was a famous quote."

"I'd agree with that." Frederick's enthusiasm was apparent. "My son and I read it together recently, and he was amazed at how relevant it is."

"Of all books," Glory cried inwardly, listening to the conversation around her. She saw Adele checking out the racks of used books. "What do you have over there?"

"I spotted The Screwtape Letters on the shelf earlier." She removed the book and carried it to the seat she'd found at Ailia's table. She turned page after page. Frederick loosened his tie and draped his suit coat over his leg.

"There was this part that described the safest road to hell. Simple things like playing cards that distract man from what is good. The gentle slope."

Dale slapped his thigh. "My mama could have written that section herself. Come Sunday, we couldn't think about a game of Goofish, or else she'd laid down a sermon longer than the one we'd heard at church. She called cards the devil's game."

No Emmy snorted. "I wonder what she'd think if she could see you playing solitaire for hours on end now that the kids are gone, shuffling those cards over and over. And the way I see folks do it on their phones at the nursing home, probably because it's easier to play a game than to watch their loved ones slip away." From Charles's far-away stare, Glory could tell how painful his visits to his wife must be. She tried to comfort him. "Take what Lewis said to heart, Charles. Look on the past with a grateful eye and with love on the here and now."

Glory thought she spied a wistful expression on Adele's face, but it disappeared almost immediately when Jason walked to the bar and filled a plate. "Look on the past with grateful eyes. Is that a quote you can use to advertise? I haven't read the book, but it makes sense to me." The teen munched on a slice of cheese on his way back to his seat.

Oilia raised a hand. "I agree with you. That's a good word right there. And thank you for steering us back on track and reminding us why we're here. To plan for the big to-do in November. We're not supposed to be having a book discussion group. While some of us continued our weekend fun, the rest of us were already hard at work. This morning I drove the food truck to the community college. And then I came back here lickety-split to ready the dough for opening tomorrow. And let's not forget making these sausage balls."

Frederick laughed when Oilia took a breath. "The Screwtape Letters is right. Women do talk more when they're tired."

"Well, Mr. Lewis never met my Glory," Eli retorted.

"And he never met my husband either," Glory rebutted quickly. "I don't think anything ever quiets you."

"I don't care how tired you are, Glory. But that's what makes you such a good couple. Your differences compliment each other." No's reassurance bridged the troubled waters between her friends and diffused the tension. "The same is true for Dale and me. When we got married, we didn't completely lose ourselves in each other. And you two had so much more self after living on your own so long. But your individuality strengthens your union."

"Myself didn't strengthen my union," Oilia grumbled, swirling the liquid in her glass. She smiled when Adele patted her back. Glory wondered at the camaraderie between the women. She loved the baker as a member of Eli's family, but they had yet to establish a similar rapport.

"Lewis talks about that in his book, too, regarding our spirit life. Something about our self-will." Frederick snapped his fingers. "I think I have it here." Adele volunteered. "When he talks of their losing their selves, he only means abandoning the clamor of self-will. Once they have done that, he really gives them back all their personality and boasts, I am afraid, sincerely, that when they are wholly his, they will be more themselves than ever."

Glory's eyes narrowed as she listened to the younger woman read. Frederick pointed a finger at Adele. "Yes, that's it. God gave us specific gifts and personalities, but we can't do much good on our own. None of us, but all of him. When I design furniture, it's with certain woods and materials in mind. I think my chairs are great, but what good are they in my factory or in a showroom? They're not artwork. They become beautiful and useful once the customer is sitting in one at the kitchen table or on his back porch. I must let go of what I planned for it in order for that chair to come into itself, if you will, and serve a purpose."

Glory shook her head. "That analogy works as far as you being the creator or designer, Frederick. But how does it apply if I'm the chair? I don't think it's the same thing. And I'm sorry, it's a great quote from The Screwtape Letters, but—"

"But what?" Oilia asked. "You don't believe it? And by the way, Frederick, I love your example."

"Of course you would, Oilia. You're working for your cousin who expects me to give up myself and all my life's work. But I don't understand it. Maybe I want to be a kitchen chair, but you designed me to rock back and forth in the bedroom. What does abandoning my self-will mean exactly? How does giving up who I am, becoming less of me, make me entirely more than who I am?" Glory's wide sleeve flapped over Bennett's head when she threw out an arm toward the shelves and carousels around them.

Eli's mouth worked, but uttered no words. Glory reached around the youngster and rubbed her husband's knee to soften her accusation. "My folks weren't interested in me becoming more like the god Screwtape was afraid of. What with all their shoulds and couldn'ts. They wanted me to look and act like them. They tossed my brother out on his rump because he wouldn't accede to their will, which they pretended was God's. That's the only abandoning I was party to."

"You didn't get along with your mom and dad," Mallerie scooted closer to her own mother.

The bookseller sniffed. "I don't know who in my generation ever considered getting along with their parents."

"You, Frederick." His laugh was dry. "Well, I was raised by my grandfather, then my aunt and uncle. But I'd have to say I've never used those words when it comes to my relationship with them. Obeyed, definitely."

"Amen," Eli could have been perched on a church pew.

"Ran from," Dale rubbed his lower back.

Glory winced and nodded slowly. "Cried over," Adele hugged her son.

A few ms chorused in agreement. "Buried," Frederick's low tone could have pronounced a benediction. Glory waved a hand, her eyes closed. She felt Bennett shift on her lap. When she peeked at him, he was gazing up at her, unblinking. "But got along with. No, I'll have to yield to my wife on that point." Eli squeezed her hand. No one made a sound for a minute, save for Jason's scrunching. Finally, No suggested wearily, "Eli, perhaps you should reach into the bowl again."