The Bookstore Sisters(2)
As for the bookstore, she’d been convinced it would only land them in bankruptcy once their father had passed on, the year after Isabel had moved to New York. He’d had an emotional attachment to a place that was failing, and Sophie had inherited that trait. When the sisters had argued, Sophie had hired a lawyer and won, although Isabel didn’t know what exactly her sister had won, other than outstanding debt and a store filled with dusty editions that were piled to the ceiling. The back room, which had once been Isabel’s favorite place to read, had stacks of myths, fairy tales, novels, and histories, along with books of maps, their father’s favorites, for he had always planned to travel the world someday. That day had never come, and he’d gone exactly nowhere. The idea of going nowhere haunted Isabel; she had taken a few trips, to Mexico and California, but each time she had she’d thought, What am I doing here all alone?
The case between the sisters was heard at the small white courthouse on Main Street, where fifty of Shaun Gibson’s closest friends came to testify that the bookstore must remain and was, in fact, a historical site, for the building had been put up in 1670. The attached house was known as Red Rose Cottage, and the roses that grew there could not be found anywhere else in Maine and were thought to have been brought over from England when the first settlers arrived. A botanical expert was asked to testify and called the roses a national treasure.
The day at the courthouse had been a huge show of support for the bookstore, since there were only sixty people living on the island year round, and it seemed all of them had shown up. The island was a well-known summer place where the population swelled in June, July, and August. The summer people came and went and were considered outsiders even if they were second-generation visitors. The year-rounders all knew each other, and they knew they wanted a bookstore, and that was that, case closed. Afterward, Isabel and Sophie had never spoken again. They vowed they would never see one another, but then Sophie suffered a tragedy that Isabel couldn’t ignore.
Sophie’s new husband, a fisherman named Matt Hawley who the sisters had grown up with, had drowned during a storm. Although Isabel hadn’t been invited to the wedding, as soon as she heard the news of his passing, she’d left for home. She’d sped along the highway in a panic throughout the seven-hour drive, fearing she would be late, managing to get the last ferry of the day across. Matt had been a quiet lovely boy who’d grown up to be a quiet lovely man, and there had never been any question that Sophie would marry him one day. He’d had her name tattooed on his arm when he was all of seventeen, off on a tear with the other island boys to Boston. And that was as good as an engagement ring, better, Sophie always said, because you could lose a ring, but a tattoo was part of you, yours forever, yours for life.
Isabel had arrived late, just as she’d feared, entering the church in the middle of the service, the old oak door squeaking and giving her away. She hadn’t thought about clothes, and while everyone else wore solemn black, she had on a spring dress patterned with flowers. She hadn’t even bothered to comb her hair, and she looked a mess, as if she were a tourist who had mistakenly stumbled onto a local tragedy. Everyone spied the latecomer, and no one was surprised to see it was Isabel, who was thought of as selfish, a real New Yorker. Sophie had turned to see her sister, and after one look, she’d turned away. At the close of the service, Isabel went up to her sister, waiting in line with the other mourners. “Are you serious?” Sophie said when at last they were face to face. “You can’t even be on time to Matt’s funeral?”
“I tried,” Isabel found herself saying. She sounded pathetic even to herself.
“You shouldn’t have to try,” Sophie said. “That’s what you’ve never understood.”
After that, Isabel was far too embarrassed to gather with the other mourners in the parlor of her parents’ house, where Sophie now lived. Instead, she’d wound up at the Black Horse Tavern, where she drank far too much and forgot just about everything. It was the sort of evening when she knew she was making a mistake while it was happening. She danced with men she barely knew and those she knew too well, and she couldn’t remember how she’d made it up to her rented room above the bar. In the morning, Isabel woke with a headache and a huge desire never to return to Maine. She quickly packed her bag and went downstairs, hoping to escape before anyone took notice of her, but there was Sophie, having a coffee at the bar. Sophie had always been the calm, logical sister, but now she looked distraught. And there was something Isabel hadn’t noticed at the church. Sophie was pregnant.
“You’re deserting me,” Sophie said. “Once again. Dad went to the bar, you locked yourself away with your books, and I had to take care of everything.”
“I’m not deserting anyone. Mom and Dad are gone, and the bookstore is as good as ruined. Why would I stay?”
“Because we promised we would take over the bookstore,” Sophie reminded her. “We told Dad we would.”
They had said so, true enough, but they’d been children, two sad girls, who had lost their mother. Books had been Isabel’s salvation and her escape. She’d spent evenings in the fairy-tale section reading her way through the stacks of books, always preferring Andrew Lang’s color-coded fairy books. Sophie had favored biographies and history, the stories of women who had survived despite all odds. The island had seemed enchanted then, and when the moon was full, they sneaked outside to read by its light. Sometimes their father would find them asleep in the grass in the morning, their books still open. Sometimes Matt would come by to read books about sailing, as if he were predicting his future with stories of drowned men and the women who waited for them on the shore. Matt and Sophie were fated to be together even back then, but fate can turn dark when you least expect it to, and there you are alone and in mourning with no one to help you raise the child you’re about to bring into the world.