Chapter Twenty Six

By Tuesday morning, Ash had almost forgotten the break in. Almost in that it occupied almost none of her thoughts at all. Those were reserved for Pen and the two nights they'd now spent together, Ash being insistent that she spend at least every other night in her own bed.

It seemed sensible, even if she did miss the warmth of Pen's body beside hers.

But she'd done everything she was supposed to do, followed up with Arjun, who had treated her to ‘cop coffee,' which had turned out to be a cappuccino from the restaurant on the corner, and filled in the insurance paperwork. Arjun had had George sign all the papers as the manager of the shop, given that the place technically still wasn't Ash's.

Which was what she was pondering when the tall, bulky man came into the shop.

"Good morning," he said cheerfully, with a slight accent. He had long hair that was dark and graying, tied back in a ponytail at his neck. But he wore a nice shirt, clean trousers, shined shoes, and was carrying a large box.

"Morning," Ash said from behind the counter. Now who could this be?

"Publishing rep," said the man with a grin, like he could read her mind.

"Ah, right," said Ash. "Um, George?"

"What now?" George yelled back from the cellar.

"Publishing rep?" shouted Ash. She turned and smiled at the man. "I'm new here," she said by way of an explanation.

"Got it," he said, giving her a friendly smile back. He seemed nice, comforting in a way that Ash didn't really understand.

George trotted up the stairs. "Ah, right then, shall we go and sit in the kitchen, have a cup of tea while you show me what you've got?" He turned to Ash. "Unless you want to…?"

"No, no," Ash said. "Go right ahead, don't mind me."

The two men disappeared into the kitchen, leaving Ash alone with her thoughts.

Her thoughts that were rapidly turning to signing paperwork. Maybe she should just go ahead and do it, maybe Pen was right. Probably Pen was right. After all, no one else had shown up by now, had they?

She'd prefer to talk to her mum about Aunt Mary first, but time was ticking and Snythe had left three messages for her by now, each one slightly more irate than the one before. So maybe she should just go and sign the papers, make the shop really hers.

And then what?

She'd come here all confused about the shop but certain about her life. Now here she was more or less certain about the shop but confused about her life.

She could live here, that was the truth. She'd been here only a few weeks and Tetherington had grown on her in ways she could never have imagined. Just this morning she'd plucked yet another book from the shelves and begun reading, finding that she was seeing more and more of herself in the pages, finding that it was nice, safe to read something where the ending was pre-ordained and the story was simply the journey of how two people reached that ending.

The community was pleasant, she could see that now. Could see how sacrificing a little privacy, a little independence for the support and strength of a group of people could be a fair exchange, a nice one even.

She could live with people banging on her door if those same people were the ones that helped her pick up broken pieces.

And then there was Pen. Beautiful, odd, forever happy Pen.

What was she supposed to do about a woman that made her feel weirdly complete and yet exasperated? All of the books here said that all she did now was wait for her happy ending and… and she was starting to believe them. Starting to think that Pen was what had been missing from her life.

It was easy. So easy. Too easy perhaps. The way they'd fallen in together, the way Pen made her smile, the way she didn't feel embarrassed or shy or any of the other things in front of her. Did that mean that Pen was the one?

Maybe.

Ash would like to think so, but she wasn't naive. She was well aware of the fact that this was her first experience with a woman and maybe she was blind to flaws and faults that would appear over time.

Time was the issue though, wasn't it?

She and Pen needed time to see things through, time to build something or destroy something. Time was what all the books on the shelves could skip over so easily. Flick a few pages and months had passed and lovers loved each other.

Ash didn't have pages to flick. She had to actually put the work in, actually change things. But, she thought, if the possibility of the shop weren't there, she'd still feel the same way. Even if she had to go back to London tomorrow, she'd want to see where things went with Pen. Which made her think that this was serious, that she really did want to figure out where things were going.

She was about to call Snythe to make the appointment when George and the rep came back out of the kitchen, George thanking the man who stopped in front of the counter.

"Yes?" Ash asked politely, phone still in her hand.

The man cleared his throat and his darker skin blushed a little. "I, uh, I was just wondering when Mary would be around? You see usually I deal directly with her, there must have been some mix up, I mean, I'm sure I'm in her diary, I just…" He slowed down, seeing the look on Ash's face.

Ash swallowed. "Yes, I see, unfortunately, I have to say that Mary passed away a few weeks ago." She was about to say more, but the man's face crumpled, the lines around his eyes joining up, tears spilling, his lips shaking.

"Oh," said George. "Oh, dear." He took the man by the elbow, steering him back toward the kitchen.

Ash stepped to the front door, turned the sign to closed, locked it, and followed them in, wondering just what the hell was going on.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," the man said. "Lo siento. I'm sorry." He took a tissue that George offered him and blew his nose. "You must think that I'm some kind of mad man," he said, smiling waterily at Ash. "Let me start at the beginning. My name is Jesús Delgrano. I was Mary's… partner."

There was a click in Ash's brain as the pieces started to come together. Jesús. Jesus. Mary wasn't religious, Pen had assured her. But Pen had asked someone, hadn't she, an old woman, and the woman had said that Mary was alone until she found Jesus. Except she hadn't found Jesus. She'd found Jesús.

"Her partner?" George said. "But… But you've never, I mean… I mean, I'd know."

The man smiled. "Would you?" he asked. "Mary and I, we had something special. Something that worked for us. I travel a lot for my job, as you can imagine. But I always arranged my trips here with a vacation attached. Once a quarter I come here—"

"And Mary closes for a stock-take," George said, understanding. "I thought it was odd that she never wanted me to help her. She said she knew the books best."

"She knew that she wanted to spend a week in bed," grinned Jesús. "And don't pull faces like that, we're not so old that we can't enjoy pleasures of the flesh."

"But… but why didn't Mary tell anyone?" Ash asked.

Jesús shrugged. "She said she shared enough with the community, and when it was time, she would tell them. Though I think some people suspected, or even knew, we weren't always as discrete as we thought." He looked down at his hands. "And I am a little younger than her. Perhaps that played its part." He looked up again defiantly. "But I am retiring next year and the plan was always that I would come here, that we would spend time together to find if we wanted more than what we already had."

"Oh God," George said, sitting down. "That's so sad."

"No, no," Jesús said. "Please, don't think like that. What we had was beautiful and good and everything that either of us wanted." He bit his lip. "I left a wife and a son in Spain a long, long time ago now. I had a normal family life. But this was more than that, it was true love, like a fire inside your heart and I am lucky to have had even a taste of it."

"I'm so sorry," Ash said. "I'm so sorry you had to find out like this. But… why didn't you phone or write or something?"

"I did," Jesús said. "I texted and got no answer. But Mary was so busy, so involved, it didn't strike me as so odd that she didn't reply. And we didn't text often. We had our own lives, separate from what he had together." He smiled again. "It was our way, we always said, and it worked for us."

Which was fair enough, Ash thought. She was beginning to see that her own narrow definitions of what a relationship could be were far from being correct.

"If you don't mind me saying," said Jesús. "You have me at a disadvantage here. I'm afraid I don't exactly know who you are?"

George looked at Ash and Ash sighed and finally, finally made her decision.

"I'm the new owner of the bookshop," she said, the words filling her with tingles as she said them. George grinned at her. "I'm Ash Wells, Mary's niece."

Jesús frowned. "No," he said.

"No?" said George and Ash together.

"No," repeated Jesús a little more certainly. "No, you're not Mary's niece."

"How do you know?" asked George, looking annoyed.

Jesús looked at Ash. "Well, if you'll forgive me for saying so, you're a little too old, and far more strikingly, you are not exactly the right color."