“Truth or lie?”

“Always truth.” She walked back around the counter and sat on the barstool beside me with her hands wrapped around her mug of tea. “So what’s the story?”

I huffed out a laugh. “Honestly, I don’t even know where to start.”

“Well, I never liked a book that started in the middle,” she joked. “So let’s start from the beginning.”

And so, I did.

I told her everything that unfolded with Finn, and when the tears fell from my eyes, she was quick to wipe them away. She didn’t offer any advice, and she didn’t push me with options of what I should and shouldn’t do. No, she simply listened.

Sometimes, all a person needed was another to listen to their uneven heartbeats.

When I finished talking, she gave my knee a squeeze. “So you’re not okay.”

“I’ll get there.”

“Yes.” She nodded. “You will. But until then, if you need a safe place to escape, you can always come here. Also, we always have a spot for you on the staff.”

“You don’t have to do that for me.”

“Yeah, but I want to, and you know my mom wouldn’t have it any other way. Even though I love this town, I know how overwhelming it can get sometimes. Plus, I get the feeling that your heart needs a break. So, if you want that break, you can take it here.”

“I might take you up on that offer.”

“It’s yours for the taking.” She paused and scrunched up her nose. “I always hated Autumn,” she told me.

“I wish I could say the same.”

Right as I was about to change the subject, the front door of the shop opened and in walked Jackson. He didn’t look the least bit intrigued that Josie and I were in the shop. In fact, he moved as if he couldn’t even see us. The way he traveled made it seem as if he was bored with everything in the whole wide world. He was simply moving to get from point A to point B with no real drive to even explore the idea of a point C.

A chill ran over my body as he walked straight through the set of wooden doors without looking toward either of us.

“Well, he sure is an intriguing personality,” I muttered.

Josie laughed. “That’s just the normal Jackson Emery for ya. He doesn’t really interact with people much when he comes in here—and he’s here every day.”

“Seriously?”

“Yup. One of our best customers, too. He sits in the back room for two to three hours reading, and he always leaves with new book purchases. I swear, most of the shop’s income probably comes from that man.”

“What kind of books does he read?” I questioned, curiosity striking me. You could tell a lot about a man based on the type of books on his nightstand.

“Only one genre—young adult.”

“Young adult? Really?”

“Truly. Weird, huh? He doesn’t very much seem like the young adult type, now does he?”

“Not at all.” Interesting… “Everyone calls him the devil in town, and when I crossed paths with him, at first, I had to agree. He was awful. A really mean person. But then…then there were moments when he was just so gentle. Like a whisper.”

Josie nodded. “Yes. He’s rough around the edges, but he’s not the devil—not by a long shot. But best believe he ain’t no saint, either. I don’t know much of his story, but it can’t be that easy of a read. His father is a handful, and Jackson is the only person around who takes care of him. His uncle helps out a bit, but he has his own tattoo business outside of Chester, so he keeps busy, leaving Jackson to care for his dad. I swear Mike Emery finds himself locked up more often than not from his drunkenness, and Jackson is the only one there to ever bail him out. That can’t be easy—having to be a parent to your parent.”

Josie was so unique to the town of Chester. She saw things and people in ways that no one else quite could. The same could be said about her parents. They saw the beauty in the ugliest shadows, and I adored that quality about their family. It took a special soul to see past others’ scars.

“How do you do that, Josie? See the good in everyone and find understanding for why people are the way they are?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “My parents taught me to zoom in, ya know? It’s easy to judge others from afar. It’s easy to look at someone from outside your world and make blanket statements and judgments on who those people are. Because when you see others’ flaws, you somewhat justify that your flaws are better than theirs. But when you zoom in, when you truly look at the person beside you, you’ll see many of the same things. Hope. Love. Fear. Anger. Once you zoom in, you realize we are all similar in so many ways. We all bleed red, and even monster’s hearts can break. Just gotta remember to always zoom in.”

To always zoom in…

I liked that more than I could express. I wasn’t the perfect person. I judged others without being aware of it at times, and that was one flaw I knew I had to work on. Just like Jackson, I, too was far from a saint. I needed to zoom in more often.

“After my dad’s accident, he turned to the bottle for a while, too. Did you know that?” Josie asked.

“No, I had no clue.”

“Yeah, we were young when the accident happened, so it’s not shocking. For a good while, he suffered from depression. People judged him hard, and if he didn’t have my mom to help him through the dark days, he could’ve easily turned into Mike Emery. And I could’ve easily become Jackson. I feel like the whole world could be Jackson or Mike, based on one left turn.”

“That’s true…” I swallowed hard. “I guess I never thought of it like that.”

“But then again, who knows? I could be wrong, and Jackson could seriously just be a total asshole who just sleeps around,” she joked. “But watching him with that dog of his is the biggest turn-on in the world to me.”

“His dog?”

“It’s an old black lab. You’ll see him in town with him. Just watch how he treats that dog, and you’ll realize more than just darkness lives in that boy.”

We spoke for a few more minutes before I found myself walking into the silent book area. As the door closed behind me, I inhaled deeply, looking around at all the beauties against the wall.

Hello, friends.

There were so many words throughout the space that I wasn’t quite certain where to even start. I loved the idea of falling into the pages more than ever now since my own story was quite a mess. I’d rather read another’s happily ever after than waste time debating my own.

As I walked through the aisles of books, my fingertips danced across the spines. I smiled at those who looked up toward me, and ninety-nine percent of the individuals smiled back, with warm, welcoming looks. But that one percent…

Jackson sat in the far-left corner of the shop. It was the darkest corner with only a small flood of light from a small window. My eyes fell to the book in his grip.

Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi.

Gosh, he was so complex. A big, muscular, mean man reading young adult novels.

Fascinating.

Right as I studied the cover of the novel, I felt his eyes on me. I lifted my head a bit, and his eyes burned into me with a look of complete disgust. The corners of his lips stayed turned down, and he slightly grumbled before looking back down at his book and flipping the page.

Knots formed in my stomach and my nerves twisted up with confusion of the boy who seemed to despise me more than anything. I tried to understand why he was the way he was toward me. I tried my best to zoom in on him and see his true colors.

“Hey, Jackson,” I said, nodding his way.

He looked up, then back down at his book. “No talking in here,” he muttered, flipping his page.

“I know, but I just wanted to say thank you for yesterday, for when you—”

“You can’t talk in here,” he hissed once more.

A chill raced down my spine. “I know but—”

“Listen, princess, I get that you might think you’re beyond privileged, and that rules don’t apply to you, but please, just take your comments elsewhere, cuz I don’t want to hear them.”

Wow.

Mean Jackson was back in full force.

“Just go away,” he told me, his voice hard and mean.

And without a single sound, I did exactly that.

9

Grace

As I walked up to Judy and Hank’s place after spending most of the day in The Silent Bookshop, I saw the panic in my sister before she even spoke a word my way.

She rushed out the front door, whisper-shouting, “Grace, listen, I’m so sorry, I didn’t know this would happen, and you’re going to kill me because I let it slip, but I didn’t mean to let it slip, and I’m so sorry!”

I cocked an eyebrow. “What are you talking about?”

“It’s Mama.”

“What about her?”

“She’s here, and she knows about Finn.”

“What? How?”

“Well, she doesn’t exactly know, but people were gossiping at the service about how they saw you and him fighting in town last night. They asked her about it, asking if you two were okay.”