“Not at all. In fact, I think I may have made a couple of friends.”
“Friends? The last time I talked to you, you were complaining that one was a goth and the other an old maid. You wanted to get on the first plane out.”
“I know, but things have changed. Faith has had a hard life and she’s going to get her hair cut today.”
“That’s my Amy,” Stephen said, chuckling. “You’ve persuaded her to have a beauty makeover.”
“I didn’t do it,” Amy said, not liking what he’d said. It made her sound as though she thought of nothing but makeup and clothes. “Zoë did it.”
Again Stephen paused. “Honey, are you all right?”
“Fine,” Amy said. “I’m just fine. What about you and the boys?”
“We’re great. Dad came over last night and we watched sports on TV.”
When he didn’t say anything else, Amy knew it was her cue to ask him if Lewis had smoked in the house, if they’d put wet beer cans on the wooden furniture, and if they’d cleaned up the pizza she knew they’d eaten. But Amy didn’t say anything. All that seemed truly clear in her mind was her dream.
“I don’t think you are all right,” Stephen said. “Hey! I have an idea. Why don’t I let your dad and mine take the kids camping and I come up there? I could be there tonight—”
“No!” Amy said, then drew in her breath. The last thing she wanted was for him to see her face as it was, but there was something else. She was enjoying her time alone and…“I mean, no. I have to play this out. I have to do what I’m supposed to do.”
“Supposed to do?” Stephen asked. “Amy, what’s going on up there?”
“Nothing. It’s nothing. It’s just…I don’t know, it’s interesting. Look, you better go with the boys. They’d never forgive me if I ruined their trip.”
“Sure,” Stephen said slowly. “But Amy, if you need anything, I’m here. You know that, don’t you? And you know that I love you, don’t you?”
“Yes, of course,” Amy said quickly, then hung up. She realized that she’d not told him she loved him and she almost called him back, but she didn’t. It was better to let them leave on their trip that they so looked forward to. A trip without her.
Amy got dressed quickly, spent fifteen minutes doing all she could to cover the bruises on her face, and left the summerhouse before the others did. She had an idea and she wanted to research it. What she wanted to do was see if she could find out anything about an Englishman named Hawthorne. Of course, the sensible thing would have been to stay in the house and search on the Internet, but there was something that seemed to be pulling her to the little bookstore.
When she opened the door to the shop, a bell rang and she smiled. The place looked like something out of an old movie, just as she hoped it would, with books piled everywhere. There were shelves full of them, and chairs and tables were covered. She could see that underneath the books the furniture was antique. She smiled as she thought that from the look of the place the furniture had been new when it was put in the store.
“May I help you?”
She turned to see an old man with white hair and a straight carriage that made her think he’d spent his life in the military. “I’m looking for something about the history of England in…I guess it would be the eighteenth century, the time of Williamsburg. Personal history. I’m not interested in the kings and queens.”
“I think we have what you need,” the man said as he started walking toward the back of the store.
He led her into a room that had been set up like a study in someone’s house. There was a deep-set window with a cushioned seat beneath it, half a dozen old pillows on the seat. A big comfy chair sat in a corner with a brass reading light above it. A coffee table in the middle was covered with books and even a pair of reading glasses.
“Here we are,” he said. “I think that if you look in this section, you’ll find what you need.” The bell on the front door sounded. “Ah, if you’ll excuse me, I will see to them. Take your time,” he said. “Take all the time you need.”
“Yes, thank you,” she said, as he left the room to go into the main part of the store.
Amy liked the smell of old books and she liked the look of the shelves bowing under the weight of what had to be thousands of volumes. She went to the far wall and began to read titles. That case seemed to be about medieval history. But what she’d seen in her dream was later than that.
Turning, she looked out the window. There was a field full of wildflowers behind the store and the sunlight on them was beautiful.
As she looked back at the room setting, she thought how much she loved it. Stephen had often told her that she’d read so many historical romances that she should start writing them. “Maybe I should,” she whispered as she looked at the book titles.
She spent an hour happily rummaging, pulling one book after another out and looking at it, then sliding it back into place. Even though the store was in a tiny town in Maine, the owner certainly did have a good collection of titles on English history. They went from the Norman conquest to the Mitford sisters.
As Amy looked at the books, she thought she’d like to take the entire selection—and the room—home with her. She’d like to just pick the whole thing up and move it back to her own house.
I’d have my own summerhouse, she thought. Last year Stephen had said something like that, that they could build a little house in the back for her. “Why would I want that?” she’d asked.
“Just to get away from us,” he’d said.