Book of Rules/Chapter 1
I hadn’t seen my aunt Carrol in about five years. I just got wrapped up in college and then my masters program and all told I hadn’t been home since the summer of my sophomore year. We still talked on the phone and I still helped her with her account books but it wasn’t the same and now it never would be. What Carrol didn’t tell me in our rather frequent calls is that she had cancer. It was some sort of very aggressive cancer, the doctors discovered it about four months ago and even then the outlook was grim. She declined treatment because it had spread too much.
Three days ago I excitedly told Carrol about my Thesis defense and my plans to graduate and finally come home to help out with the bookstore. She sounded tired but happy for me. I didn’t know that she was in the hospital. She never said anything about it. She just told me about this new hire that I could be in charge of training when I got back into town. She asked when I would be home. I had already bought a plan ticket for tomorrow. Carrol’s last words to me were “I’ll maybe see you then”. Last night she died in her sleep. She never told me she was sick because she didn’t want to distract me from school when I was so close to graduation.
My parents were always a bit distant with me. I don’t think they really knew how to raise a child and were maybe just a little scared of the whole concept. Maybe they still are, they started traveling almost as soon as I was off to college. Carrol was really the one who taught me all the important things that parents normally handle.
I was about eight the first time I found my way across town and into her bookstore. It was a truly magical place. It was originally an office building, Five stories tall. The first floor is dominated by a coffee shop and study rooms, relaxation rooms, Carrol even had a Yoga Studio and a locker room with showers installed a few years back. There’s also a loading dock and freight elevator but costumers never see that part of the building.
The second through fourth floors are filled with books. Thousands of books, possibly hundreds of thousands. I had been pushing for a full inventory for years and Carrol always told be that if I wanted it done I could do it myself. I was always hesitant to start because at least half of the stock predated bar-codes. There’s a section on the second floor behind the cash registers of the really old and rare books. Luckily the insurance company demanded a full inventory of those. There are several first editions in that collection, several of which could fetch a couple hundred thousand at auction.
The Fifth floor was originally used for storage, and parts of it still are but about six years ago Carrol got the city to sign off on turning it into apartments for her family and some of her employees. There are something like 20 bedrooms spread out between seven apartments. I have a room there as well even though I’ve only slept in it once. It’s a single room apartment that’s connected to Carrol’s with an inside door. It doesn’t even have it’s own kitchen, just a bedroom, living room, and bathroom.
A bookstore that size needs surprisingly few employees. She had a manager for each floor, a dozen girls who worked the coffee shop or stocked shelves after school, and any family she could badger into any other jobs that needed doing. I’m not sure how Carrol avoided a discrimination lawsuit. I’m the only male who ever worked in the shop, and that’s because I was family. Carrol loved to get family involved in the business. I was stocking shelves when I was ten and Carrol’s two eldest daughters have been press-ganged into work for a while now. Sara is 15 and can legally serve coffee in the cafe while Samantha is 12 and can legally work mostly because her mother is the owner of the business but not in food service and not on schooldays. Jessica is the only one that Carrol didn’t have working somewhere in the shop and that’s only because she just turned nine a month ago.
The day of waiting before I flew home was the worst day of my life. Here was this bright vibrant woman who I would never speak to again. I had dozens of questions, one of which was what was happening to Carrol’s daughters? She and Jack got divorced almost 10 years ago. Carrol didn’t even know she was pregnant with Jess when it happened. Jack didn’t take things well. He was always an ass, but after the papers were signed and the divorce finalized he tried to break into the bookshop to steal some of the rare books. Carrol was the sole owner of the shop and had been long before she met Jack. The man never disputed that fact, even in court. He just grabbed two of his deadbeat friends and smashed the front door while breaking in.
Officer Valerie Vasquez was not yet the family friend that she would be when she and her partner saw the door of the shop. Jack ended up pulling a gun. He killed Vasquez’s partner and Vasquez put him down with a single lucky shot to center mass. Tweedledee and Tweedledum did the smart thing and surrendered the second shots were fired. The two of them are eligible for good behavior in about five years, Jack on the other hand is in a wheelchair in a penitentiary up state and will be for a few decades more.
Even as I boarded my flight I still had a dozen questions and worries. I had managed to get a hold of Valerie the just before take off and she told be she was watching the girls. That was a relief but I still wanted to know what the long term plans were. She mentioned that Carrol closed the bookshop just before going into the hospital last week. Carrol wanted it to reopen after her funeral. I just couldn’t handle that and was glad when the ‘no electronics’ sign turned on.
I don’t remember the actual plane ride, just the back and forth of anxiety and grief. Five hours trapped in my own head with no distractions. The day before I had packing and shipping the last of my belongings to distract me. Last night I had getting a hold of my parents as a distraction. They’re somewhere in central Africa at a wild life preserve and had low battery on their Sat phone. They won’t be back for the funeral, They likely won’t even be back for Christmas. I didn’t really expect anything else, they’ve always been distant. Dad sucks at expressing emotion and mom thinks that animals and forests are more important than people. It’s no wonder that I spent most of my childhood and almost all of my teen years around aunt Carrol. Well, except for the five years that she was married to Jack. He liked me about as much as he liked books, which is not at all. I still don’t know why Carrol married the man.
Jack would always be a mystery.He was almost blatant in his cheating on Carrol and for five years she didn’t seem to care until one day she just snapped out of it and kicked his ass out and filed for divorce. The man had a silver tongue and could get whatever he wanted from people until Carrol kicked him out. After that he just came off as slimy and unpleasant. After Jack went to prison I spent the next five years selling coffee and stocking books for Carrol.
Landing shook me out of my dark thoughts. I disembarked from the plane and made my way down to baggage claim. I was only standing at the carousel for only a moment when a small form slammed into my side hugging me. I had a second to look down and see Samantha’s red puffy eyes and under her dark bangs before Sara grabbed me from behind. I looked over to see Val standing with Jessica and a little girl about Jess’ age that looked much like a mini version of Val. I’d not seen Isabella since before I started college. That would make her maybe 8 years old now?
After a few moments of just standing and holding Sara and Sam the two reluctantly broke away so that I could grab my bag from the carousel.
The ride home from the airport was too quiet. Just silence that wanted to be tears. It was awkward and painful and I didn’t know what to say to make it better because I wanted someone to make it better for me as well.
When we got to the store I found that I couldn’t see anything. The tears flowed freely for a bit and soon everyone had joined in. We finally made our way upstairs to the apartments where I learned that Val was living across the hall. She stopped to talk to another woman living in an apartment a few doors down but I just couldn’t stand to interact. I Made my way to my old room. It was exactly like I left it. Depressingly empty. There was a desk a chair, and a bed. That’s it. A door for a closet with no clothes and a door to the bathroom with likely no toiletries.
I just couldn’t deal with all that right now and decided to go to sleep. Which is when I discovered the thick book under my pillow.