Chapter 1
Stephanie's point of view
The bell over the door sounded like the start of a cage fight. It was one of those choices I made in the early days of the shop, when I thought a touch of whimsy might put people at ease. Fourteen years later, all it did was make me grind my molars whenever someone walked in at 8:57 am, three minutes before opening, waving around a half-dead potted plant for “ambience.”
Today, that someone was my daughter, Emily, who at twenty-three had yet to master the art of not pissing off her mother before caffeine. She breezed past the register, toddler on one hip and the aforementioned foliage on the other, like she was auditioning for a local production of “I Can’t Believe I’m Still Doing This for Minimum Wage.”
“Mom, are we going for cozy-jungle or funeral-parlor chic this week?” she said, plopping Olivia, age two and already able to throw shade like a pro, on the counter beside me. Olivia immediately reached for the label gun, which she knew was off-limits. Her eyes sparkled. I let her have it. Who was I to deny the next generation their taste for forbidden machinery?
“I’m thinking existential despair with a hint of swamp,” I said, pulling a sharpie from behind my ear and prepping the day’s sidewalk sign. The sign was my favorite part of the job. Yesterday’s: “We sell books. If you want life advice, try Dr. Phil.”
Emily rotated the plant, examining a yellowing leaf with all the hope of someone who thought that talking to a plant might change the outcome. “You got any new arrivals for the display?”
I handed her a stack of the usual suspects: murder memoirs, “empowering” romance, and a self-help book called “Stop Apologizing, Start Winning.” We both snorted at that last one.
“Is this for your cult?” I asked, nodding at the plant.
Emily grinned, ignoring the dig. “Book club’s not a cult, Mom.”
I gestured at the circle of armchairs, which had migrated over time from the back corner to dead center. “Sure it isn’t. That’s why you’re meeting at ten on a Thursday. It’s very casual, the secret society vibe.”
She gave a one-shouldered shrug and started rearranging the display. “Lila said she’d bring muffins. You want one?”
“Tell Lila I’ll eat a muffin when she picks a book that doesn’t feature at least two dismemberments,” I said, and Emily rolled her eyes in the exact same way I did, which was infuriating.
Olivia peeled labels off her chubby thigh and stuck them, with scientific precision, to the counter. “Gran-ma, ‘fwozen’!” she declared, blue eyes wide.
“Frozen’s in the kids’ section, O,” I said, then leaned in, lowering my voice to a stage-whisper. “But you’re not getting it until you promise not to tell your mom that Grandma let you have an extra donut yesterday.”
She solemnly zipped her lips and, with great effort, managed to keep them zipped for four whole seconds. A personal best.
The bell over the door shrieked again. This time it was Lila herself: strawberry blonde, cardiganed, and already apologizing for nothing.
“I brought muffins!” she sang, as though I might have missed the five-alarm bakery aroma wafting through the shop.
Emily gave her a thumb’s up and Olivia immediately abandoned me for the promise of food. Lila’s eyes darted from me to the empty circle, as if she expected me to sprout extra book clubbers at will.
“They’re lemon poppyseed,” Lila said, lowering her voice to a murmur. “Donna’s trying keto, so I made her egg bites. Is that weird? Should I not have—?”
“It’s fine, Lila. She’ll eat the bites, then eat a muffin, then cry about it and blame me. It’s tradition.” I waved a hand at the armchairs. “Take a seat. I’ll grab coffee.”
Lila smiled, the kind of smile you give someone who just handed you a puppy, and hurried to arrange the baked goods. I ducked into the back, passing through the “employees only” curtain and into the world’s tiniest kitchen.
I fired up the ancient coffee maker, then checked my phone. Two texts from Evan, my ex-husband, which was one more than strictly necessary for any given morning.
The first: “Noah locked himself out of the garage again. Your keys?”
The second, three minutes later: “Never mind. He used a screwdriver. I’m raising a criminal.”
I snorted and typed back, “If you’re lucky.” Then I deleted it and sent, “Noah’s resourceful. Give him a break.”
It was only 9:15. My family was already a full-contact sport.
The next book clubber to arrive was Roxy, who would have fit right in on a motorcycle gang’s HR team. She wore black denim, Doc Martens, and a “Women Want Me, Fish Fear Me” t-shirt, which I admired for its raw disregard of the dress code I’d posted and everyone ignored.
She banged the door open with her boot and barked, “I brought vodka. For the coffee. What?” She raised an eyebrow when I didn’t respond immediately.
I just gestured to the kitchenette. “If you poison us, I’ll haunt you.”
“That’s the plan,” Roxy grinned, and she stomped behind the counter to fix her morning cocktail.
By 9:45, the only regular missing was Donna, who was always late but never fashionably so. Donna’s style was less “bookish” and more “bargain bin at Hot Topic,” but she wore it with the sincerity of someone who truly believed every day was Halloween. She flapped in ten minutes late, breathless and clutching a copy of the week’s selection—“Bleeding Hearts: A Memoir.”
“Sorry!” she called out, eyes darting everywhere. “I had a therapy call at 9 and you know how those go. The more I talk, the more they want to schedule me. I’m a one-woman jobs program for the state of Illinois.”
I snorted. “Glad you’re doing your civic duty.”
She winked at me, then immediately zeroed in on the muffins. Lila tried not to stare, but it was impossible. Donna ate like she was being timed.
I poured myself a mug and sat in the chair that everyone had, through years of trial and error, determined was the “host” chair. I’d tried rotating it, but the club resisted change more than my hair resisted dye.
“Okay, you mutants,” I said, raising my mug, “Let’s get started.”
There was a chorus of “mornings,” then an awkward silence, the kind you only get when everyone is thinking about something else entirely. In this case, the unspoken question: Who was going to go first?
Lila, ever the eager one, raised her hand.
“Lila,” I said, “It’s not kindergarten. Just jump in.”
She gave me a sheepish smile. “Well, I liked the first half. The way she described the rural town, it reminded me of my grandma’s stories. But I don’t know why every single romance has to end in a funeral. Do people not believe in happy endings anymore?”
I shrugged. “Not in literature. Or, you know, in life.”
Roxy cut in, “I thought the crime parts were pretty sick. That bit with the jawbone? Five stars. I’d let her kill me.”
Donna nodded, muffin crumbs dotting her lips. “Same. I felt seen.”
Emily piped up from behind the register. “You guys are all deeply unwell.”
“Pot,” said Roxy, pointing, “meet kettle.”
“Fine, but I’m not the one who got an actual stalker from a book club sign-up sheet,” Emily shot back, her eyes flicking at Donna.
Donna gave a theatrical sigh. “That was two years ago. Get new material.”
“I’d get new material if you’d stop providing it,” said Emily.
Lila, always the peacemaker, leaned forward, voice dropping to a whisper. “So, um, who’s picking next week?”
There was a brief wrestling match—Roxy vs. Donna, naturally—before Roxy won by virtue of being louder and, if we’re honest, more intimidating.
“I’m going with ‘Fifty Shades of Dead,’” she said, brandishing her phone with the book cover pulled up. “It’s got murder, sex, and bad puns. All the food groups.”
I made a note in the battered spiral I used for club business, which doubled as my therapy journal and sometimes grocery list.
Olivia wandered back over and crawled onto my lap, content to use my forearm as a crayon canvas. I let her. I’d learned long ago that stains wash out, but small children grow up and move away. You take the mess when you can get it.
The meeting wound down with the usual plans for next time and more than a few casual threats of violence if Lila ever went off decaf again. By 11:15 the women were gathering their things, the circle of chairs dissolving back into normal bookshop geography. I looked around at the crumbs, spilled coffee, and half-dead plant on the windowsill and felt, in spite of myself, a little bit satisfied. It wasn’t the life I’d planned, but it was the one I’d made. And it had its moments.