Her plan for the rest of the day had been to get into her pj’s and curl up on the couch with Flossie to binge-watch a favorite television series. Then had come the buzz at the gate that made her heart thunder and her skin flush… and the delivery of a most unexpected package.
I hope you’re doing okay today. Say hi to Aaron for me. I’m sorry I threw your books in the pool. I was a dick. – Abe
Sarah stared at the note card again, still not certain she was reading it right. The first two lines, they turned her throat thick, but the rest… He’d been so high that day that she’d have bet her business he had no memory of the ugly incident. Sarah had never forgotten it: she could still feel the wrenching ache of the sobs that had overwhelmed her as she tried futilely to fish out books that had been well and truly drenched.
Abe, meanwhile, had moved on to throwing the pool furniture into the shimmering blue water.
Her fingers trembled as she picked up a leather-bound copy of Jane Austen’s Persuasion. It matched the other Austen novels he’d sent her, the set a lovely reissue packaged for collectors. Beside the fancy collector’s editions lay cheerful paperbacks with laughing couples and/or dogs on the covers.
She stifled a wet laugh. He’d clearly chosen those at random, but it was cute that he’d remembered she liked romances with animals in them. Half the time when she’d read to him or talked to him about her favorites, she’d thought he was mostly asleep. It hadn’t mattered—she’d just liked being with him.
The most surprising book in the package was the one about the entrepreneur who’d gone from rags to riches on stubborn grit and sheer determination.
It gave her a funny, fluttery feeling in her tummy to realize Abe really did take her business endeavor seriously. It wasn’t mockery, not when he’d gone to the effort of choosing these other books with her likes specifically in mind. He’d thought she’d like the book because she was an entrepreneur too.
Her eyes burned.
Putting down the book in her hand, she took another look at all of them, then got up and put the books neatly onto the “to be read” section of the bookshelf in her living room. Like so many booklovers these days, Sarah read a lot electronically—she loved being able to inhale a few pages on her phone while she was stuck in a queue or waiting room, loved even more that she could download a book any time of day or night—but she still also cherished printed books, always bought the print editions of her favorites, adored curling up with a paperback on a Sunday afternoon.
Maybe because to her books represented education and comfort. Security.
She loved walking into the room and seeing her favorites, complete with spines broken from how often she’d read them. Her books held so many memories—this one, she’d first read while her stomach was in knots the night before she went to sign the papers that would officially create her company. And that one she’d been given by Lola on her last birthday.
Today, as she arranged Abe’s gift to her satisfaction, she patted the spines of the leather-bound editions, smiled at the paperback covers.
Picking up the torn wrapping paper and the note card afterward, she put the paper in her recycle bin before returning to the couch and to Flossie. One hand lying on the warm bulk of her dog, she turned the card over to look at the image on the front. She hadn’t paid much attention to it earlier, more focused on Abe’s strong black scrawl on the other side.
It was a drawing of a fairground.
Sarah’s breath stuck in her chest for a long second. She’d asked Abe to go to a fair once. It had been toward the end of their marriage, when her husband was home so rarely it had felt as if he was actively avoiding her. That night, he’d turned her down to party with the guys instead. She’d gone to the fair alone, had ended up sitting in her car watching other couples walk by arm in arm, laughing and excited to be together
Had he remembered? Or was this just chance, the note card grabbed at random off a stand at the counter when he went to pay?
More importantly, what did she do about it?
Her hand went to her phone, but she hesitated, the memories of her awful loneliness while she’d been with Abe holding her in place. Curling her fingers into her palm, she picked up the television remote instead.
She had to keep her distance if she was to have any chance of protecting her battered heart. Because this Abe? The one who sent her flowers and books and who dropped by to make sure she was all right? He was more dangerous than the man who’d broken her to pieces.
ABE ATE, TALKED, MANAGED TO SOUND NORMAL enough that neither Molly nor Fox saw anything amiss, but all the while he was waiting for his phone to buzz. Even after he returned home around ten that night, following a jam session that had ended up turning into an impromptu dinner at Noah and Kit’s, he was poised to grab the phone.