The Bookstore on the Beach Read online

  Praise for the novels of Brenda Novak

  “The Bookstore on the Beach is a page-turner with a deep heart. You’ll cheer for these admirable, complicated women. You’ll be breathless (and smiling) when you read the surprising end. (Don’t peek!)”

  —Nancy Thayer, New York Times bestselling author of Girls of Summer

  “This heartwarming story of sisters who bond as adults is sure to please the many fans of Novak as well as those who enjoy books by Susan Mallery and Debbie Macomber.”

  —Library Journal on One Perfect Summer

  “I adore everything Brenda Novak writes. Her books are compelling, emotional, tender stories about people I would love to know in real life.”

  —RaeAnne Thayne, New York Times bestselling author

  “Brenda Novak is always a joy to read.”

  —Debbie Macomber, #1 New York Times bestselling author

  “Fascinating characters, powerful conflicts and complex emotions make any Brenda Novak book a must-read for me.”

  —Sherryl Woods, #1 New York Times bestselling author

  “Brenda Novak doesn’t just write fabulous stories, she writes keepers.”

  —Susan Mallery, #1 New York Times bestselling author

  “Whenever I see a new Brenda Novak book, I buy it and read it, pronto. I can always count on her for a solid, exciting story.”

  —Linda Lael Miller, #1 New York Times bestselling author

  “Potently emotional, powerfully life-affirming.”

  —Booklist (starred review) on This Heart of Mine

  New York Times bestselling author Brenda Novak has written more than sixty novels and has won the National Readers’ Choice, Booksellers’ Best and other awards. She is a mother of five and married to the love of her life.

  Also by Brenda Novak

  A CALIFORNIA CHRISTMAS

  ONE PERFECT SUMMER CHRISTMAS IN SILVER SPRINGS

  UNFORGETTABLE YOU

  BEFORE WE WERE STRANGERS

  RIGHT WHERE WE BELONG

  UNTIL YOU LOVED ME

  NO ONE BUT YOU

  FINDING OUR FOREVER

  THE SECRETS SHE KEPT

  A WINTER WEDDING

  THE SECRET SISTER

  THIS HEART OF MINE

  THE HEART OF CHRISTMAS

  COME HOME TO ME

  TAKE ME HOME FOR CHRISTMAS

  HOME TO WHISKEY CREEK

  WHEN SUMMER COMES

  WHEN SNOW FALLS

  WHEN LIGHTNING STRIKES

  IN CLOSE

  IN SECONDS

  INSIDE

  KILLER HEAT

  BODY HEAT

  WHITE HEAT

  THE PERFECT MURDER

  THE PERFECT LIAR

  THE PERFECT COUPLE

  WATCH ME

  STOP ME

  TRUST ME

  DEAD RIGHT

  DEAD GIVEAWAY

  DEAD SILENCE

  COLD FEET

  TAKING THE HEAT

  EVERY WAKING MOMENT

  For a full list of Brenda’s books,

  visit www.brendanovak.com.

  Look for Brenda Novak’s next novel

  WHEN I FOUND YOU

  available soon from MIRA.

  Brenda Novak

  The Bookstore on the Beach

  To Emily. You are such a beautiful woman—inside and out.

  It’s hard for an author to switch editors after sixty books,

  but you made it as easy on me as it could be.

  I appreciate your inherent kindness, your measured approach

  to life, your degree of empathy for others

  and your hard work on this novel in particular.

  No one can “trim the fat” quite like you can. Thank you.

  Contents

  Quote

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Reader’s Guide - The Bookstore on the Beach

  Questions for Discussion

  A Conversation with the Author

  For whatever we lose (like a you or a me),

  It’s always our self we find in the sea.

  —e.e. cummings

  1

  Tuesday, June 8

  Today her daughter was returning for the summer. Mary Langford gazed eagerly out at the street in front of her small bookstore, looking for a glimpse of Autumn’s car and, when she saw nothing except a large family going into the ice cream parlor at the end of the block, checked her watch. Three-thirty. Autumn had called at lunchtime to say that she and the kids were making good time. They probably wouldn’t be much longer.

  “You’ve been quiet today,” Laurie commented from where she sat behind the counter, straightening the pens, tape, stapler and bookmarks.

  Mary turned from the large front window she’d recently decorated with posters of the hottest new releases. “I worry when she’s on the road for so long.”

  “She’ll make it, and it’ll be great to see her and the kids. They haven’t been back since Christmas, have they?”

  “No.” She picked up the feather duster and began cleaning shelves—a never-ending job at Beach Front Books, which she and Laurie owned as 50/50 partners. Autumn lived in Tampa, Florida, far enough away that it wasn’t easy to get together when Taylor and Caden were in school. “And I doubt they’ll come back for the holidays this year.” Fortunately, they were more consistent about returning for the summer—except for last summer, of course, which was understandable. Mary hoped she’d be able to count on that continuing, but with the kids getting older, nothing was certain. Taylor had only one more year of high school before heading off to college. Caden had two. Mary feared this might be the last time, for a while, they’d all be together in Sable Beach.

  “You could go visit them,” Laurie pointed out.

  Autumn had invited her many times. Remembering the arguments her refusal had sparked over the years caused Mary’s stomach to churn. She wanted to go to Tampa, wanted to make it so that her daughter wouldn’t have to do all the traveling. Autumn had been going through so much lately. But the thought of venturing into unfamiliar territory filled Mary with dread. Other than to go to Richmond occasionally, which was the closest big city, she hadn’t left the sleepy Virginia beach town she called home in thirty-five years. “Yes, but you know me. This is the only place I feel safe.”

  Laurie rocked back on the tall stool. “Well, if the fear hasn’t gone away by now, I guess it’s not going to.”

  “No. I don’t talk about it anymore, but the past is as real to me now as it’s ever been.”

>   Although the store had been busy earlier, what with the influx of tourists for the season, foot traffic had slowed. When that happened, they often talked more than they worked. Beach Front Books wasn’t Laurie’s sole source of income. Her husband, Christopher Conklin, was a talented artist. He painted all kinds of seascapes, and while he wasn’t in any prestigious galleries, he sold his paintings in a section they reserved for him in the store as well as online.

  But Mary, who’d never been married, had no other support. Beach Front Books didn’t make a large profit, but no one loved the escape that books provided more than she did, and the store garnered enough business that she could eke out a living. That was all that mattered to her.

  “Autumn gets so mad that I won’t go out and see the world. Visit. Travel. That sort of thing,” she murmured, wishing she didn’t have the scars and limitations that had, at times, put such a strain on their relationship. “She keeps saying I’m too young to live like an old lady.”

  “She has a point.”

  Mary sighed. “I’m not young anymore.”

  “What are you talking about? You’re nine years younger than me. Fifty-four is not old.”

  That was true, but she’d had to grow up far sooner than most people. “I feel ancient.”

  “Next year, you should go to Tampa, if they ask you.”

  She shook her head. “I can’t.”

  “Maybe you’ll prove that you can.”

  Mary couldn’t help bristling. She didn’t like it when Laurie pushed her. “No.”

  “Autumn doesn’t understand, Mary. That’s what causes almost every fight you have with her.”

  “I know. And I feel bad about that. But there’s nothing I can do.”

  Laurie lowered her voice. “You could tell her the truth...”

  “Absolutely not,” Mary snapped. “Why would I ever do that?”

  “There are reasons. And you know it. We’ve talked about this before,” Laurie said, remaining calm, as always. That was one of the many things Mary liked about her—she was steady and patient, and that steadiness somehow helped Mary cope when old feelings and memories began to resurface.

  In this instance, Laurie might also be right. Mary could feel the past rising up from its deep slumber. Maybe it was time to tell Autumn.

  But there were just as many reasons not to—compelling reasons. And the thought of revealing the past, seeing it all through her daughter’s eyes, made Mary feel ill. “I can’t broach that subject right now, not with what she’s been dealing with the past year and a half. Besides, it’s been so long it’s almost as if it happened to someone else,” she said, mentally shoving those dark years into the deepest recesses of her mind. “I want to stay as far away from that subject as possible.”

  Laurie didn’t call her out on the contradiction her statement created. And Mary was glad. She couldn’t have explained how it could be real and frightening and always present and yet she could feel oddly removed from it at the same time.

  “Except that it didn’t happen to someone else,” Laurie responded sadly. “It happened to you.”

  * * *

  The scent of the ocean, more than anything else, told Autumn she was home. She lowered her window as soon as she rolled into town and breathed deeply, letting the salt air fill her lungs.

  “What are you doing?” Taylor held her long brown hair in one hand to keep it from whipping across her face as she looked over from the passenger seat.

  Autumn smiled, which was something she knew her children hadn’t seen her do enough of lately. “Just getting a little air.”

  “You hate it when I roll down my window,” Caden grumbled from the backseat.

  “I’m hoping I won’t be so irritable anymore.” For the past eighteen months, Autumn had been mired in the nightmare that had overtaken her life. She almost hadn’t come to Sable Beach because of it. But when her children had each pleaded with her, separately, to ask if they could spend the summer with “Mimi” like they used to, she knew they needed some normalcy in their lives—needed to retain at least one of their parents. Her grief and preoccupation with her husband’s disappearance had probably made them feel as though she’d gone missing, too—at least the mother they’d known before. She hoped by returning to the place that held so many wonderful memories for them all, they’d be able to heal and reconnect.

  It wasn’t as if she could do anything more for Nick, anyway. That was the ugly reality. She’d exhausted every viable lead and still had no idea where he was. If he was dead, she had to figure out a way to go on without him for the sake of their children.

  The second she spotted the bookstore, the nostalgia that welled up—along with memories of a simpler, easier time—nearly brought her to tears. When she was a little girl, she’d spent so many hours following her mother through the narrow aisles of that quaint shop, which looked like something from the crooked, narrow streets of Victorian London, dusting bookshelves or reading in the nook her mother had created for her.

  She’d spent just as much time at Beach Front Books when she was a teenager, only then she was stocking shelves, ordering inventory, working the register—and, again, reading, but this time sitting on the stool behind the counter while waiting for her next customer.

  God, it was good to be back. As hard as she could be on her mother for her unreasonable fears and idiosyncrasies, she couldn’t wait to see her. Until this moment, she hadn’t realized just how much she missed her mother. So what if Mary was almost agoraphobic with her unwillingness to leave her little bungalow a block away from the sea? She was always there, waiting to welcome Autumn home. Maybe Autumn had never had a father, or the little brother or sister she’d secretly longed for, but she was lucky enough to have the enduring love of a good mother.

  “There it is.” She pointed to the bookstore as she slowed to look for a place to park.

  “We’re not going to the beach house?” Caden asked, looking up from whatever he’d been doing on his phone.

  “Not right now. First, we’re stopping to see Mimi and Aunt Laurie. Then we’ll take our stuff over to the house.”

  A glance in the rearview mirror showed her his scowl. “I hope it won’t be too late to go to the beach,” he said.

  “I’m sure we can manage to get there before dark,” she responded as she wedged her white Volvo SUV between a red convertible and a gray sedan and grabbed her purse.

  Taylor spoke, causing her to pause with her hand on the door latch. “You already seem different.”

  “In what way?” Autumn asked.

  “Less uptight. Not so sad.”

  “Coming here makes me happy,” she admitted.

  “Then why were we going to skip it again?” Caden asked.

  Autumn twisted around to look at him. “You know why.”

  A pained expression claimed her daughter’s face. “Does this mean you’re letting go?”

  “Of Dad? Of course she’s letting go,” Caden answered, the hard edge to his voice suggesting he considered the question to be a stupid one. “Dad’s dead.”

  “Don’t say that!” Taylor snapped. “We don’t know it’s true. He could be coming back.”

  “It’s been eighteen months, Tay,” Caden responded. “He would’ve come back by now if he could.”

  “Stop it, both of you.” Autumn didn’t want them getting into an argument right before they saw her mother. They were at each other’s throats so often lately; it drove her crazy to constantly have to play referee. But she could hardly blame them. They’d lost their father, and they didn’t know how or why. And she had no explanation. “Life’s been hard enough lately,” she added. “Let’s not make it any harder.”

  “Then you tell her,” Caden said. “Dad’s dead, and we have to move on. Right? Isn’t that the truth? Go ahead and say it—you are letting go.”

  Was she? Is that what this
trip signified? If not, how much longer should she hold on? And would holding on be best for them? She couldn’t imagine her kids would want to spend another eighteen months swallowed up by grief and consumed with seeking answers they may never find. Taylor was seventeen, going to be a senior and starting to investigate colleges. Caden was only a year behind her. Surely, they would prefer to look forward and not back.

  Regardless, Autumn wasn’t sure she could continue to search, not like she had. She was exhausted—mentally and physically. She’d put everything she had into the past year and a half, and it hadn’t made a damn bit of difference. That was the most disheartening part of it.

  “I’m continuing to hold out hope,” she said, even though everyone she’d talked to, including the FBI, insisted her husband must be dead. It was difficult to see the idyllic, two-parent upbringing she was trying to give her kids—something she’d never had herself—fall apart that quickly and easily, and the heartbreak, loneliness and frustration of looking for Nick, with no results, created such a downward spiral for her. She knew it had been just as painful for her children. That was why maybe she should let go—to provide the best quality of life for them as possible.

  “What does that mean? Are you going to keep looking for him?” Caden pressed. “Is that how you’re going to spend the summer?”

  He could tell something had changed, that coming here signified a difference, and he wanted to reach the bottom line. But Autumn wasn’t ready to admit that she’d failed. Not with as many times as she’d tried to comfort them by promising she’d have answers eventually.

  She opened her mouth to try to explain what she was thinking in the gentlest possible way when she spotted her mother. Mary had come out of the store and was waving at them.

  “There’s your grandmother,” she said.

  Thankfully, her children let the conversation lapse and got out of the car.

  “Hi, Mimi.” With his long strides, Caden reached Mary first. Although he wasn’t yet fully grown, he was already six-one. And Taylor was five foot ten. They were both tall, like their father.

  Mary gave each of the kids a big hug and exclaimed about how grown-up they both were and how excited she was to see them before turning to Autumn.