Page 4 of Bonfire and Bliss Bookstore

Rosie: Keep it up and I’ll have pumpkins and bales of hay lining the brewery driveway first thing tomorrow!

Babs: I’ve got a surprise for tonight.

Tally: Oh god, I’m scared to ask.

Rosie: Is it another alien penis?

Stew: Mr. Mayor!

Fletcher: Ladies. We’ve had this conversation before. This is a town chat. Meant for important town business. Please take this conversation elsewhere.

Rosie: Prude!

I snort as I pocket my phone. The town chat is one of my favorite things about the small New England town I was born and raised in, and the home of one of my dreams come true: my Bonfire and Bliss Bookstore.

My most frequent customers are Hope Harbor’s Liberty Ladies, a group of women who insert themselves into everything town related. Barbara Wilcox, who we all lovingly call Babs, and Rayna McGovern are two of the loudest members. But there’s also Mindy, Angelina, Ruby, and my mother. Though my mother rarely looks at the town chat. She’s not big on electronics. She prefers her flowers.

Even though the chat is only supposed to be used for important town business, a group of us likes to use it for more lighthearted things. Especially my younger sister, Tally, who recently moved back to town and now owns the adorable bakery across the street from my store, and Rosie, her best friend, who runs the bustling local brewery.

I don’t think anyone loves the town chat as much as Rosie. And what does she adore the most about it? Winding up Fletcher Matthews, our mayor, persona non grata to Rosie.

I grin as I think what a fabulous story they’d make.

I spend half my life imagining tales about strangers, and the other half with my head in a book reading other people’s stories. “Head in the clouds or head in a book”; that’s what my dad always said when I was growing up. Though lots has changed since I was a little girl, that has not.

The familiar pinch hits me—this will be my first fall without my daddy. There have been a lot of firsts this year, though not all have been bad. Tally returning home full time after spending most of her life as a traveling chef has made the difficult time easier. Plus, my store is celebrating its second year of business in just a few short weeks. I’m hoping we make it to next fall; running a successful business has proven trickier than I imagined when I first stenciled the beautiful bonfire and maple tree on the front glass window. Another thing I did with my dad. God, I miss him.

This is also my first fall without Dick the douchebag, my ex-fiancé, Richard. Tally and I have taken to calling him Dick. You play stupid games, you earn stupid names.

Dick never understood my love for the season. Never understood my love for books, either. They say hindsight is 20/20, but my vision must have been diabolically bad if I thought he was the one.

I understand love stories. Hell, I spend the majority of my life thinking about them. I still can’t work out how I didn’t realize Dick wasn’t my romantic hero.

I shake my head. I’m not wasting another second thinking about that fool or how he ended our engagement because I refused to sell my silly little bookshop hobby so I could follow him across the country to work for some start-up in California last December. A month after my father died.

Now, in spite of him, and because I can, I’m decorating the shop in all its autumnal finery early.

I reach for the sunflower wreath, surrounded by golden-brown and crimson-red leaves, and set it against the door. Some may say it’s too much, too soon. But how could anything as beautiful as fall be too much?

It’s the season of magic, of cool crisp nights and golden-sunshine afternoons. Of a cozy blanket wrapped around your shoulders and a book in your hand. Of pumpkin spice everything. Pies, coffee, martinis…I even found pumpkin spice Oreos last year.

Now, with Tally’s bakery just across from me, it’d be easy to convince her to make every treat under the sun with pumpkin in it. There’s nothing my sister loves more than trying new recipes. Well, maybe her boyfriend, Jesse Walker. He works on my family’s flower farm—Darling Daffodils Farm—which he now part owns, too. He and Tally fell in love in the spring after she came back to help my mother during wedding season.

I glance toward her bakery, Whisk and Wildflowers, wondering if I have time to stop in and grab something sweet before I head to the Montgomerys’ house. Probably not. Once Tally and I start talking, there’s no stopping us.

My phone continuously buzzes in my pocket and I pull it out to see what the Liberty Ladies are saying.

Babs: My surprise tonight IS town business. In addition to talking about how the stalker got that sweet girl to fall for him, we’re going to do a cleansing.

Rosie: You should preface the stalking thing before Stew complains again.

Babs: Ah yes. It’s a book. About a stalker. He ties her up. It’s delicious.

Fletcher: Ladies!

Tally: What kind of cleansing?

Babs: Relationship cleansing. Penny needs to clean that ex-fiance from her aura so she can finally move on and find THE ONE.