Page 11 of Stars Shine In Your Eyes

“It was great. I probably should’ve slept, but I was so excited about coming to Elderflower Island to work with you. And I was on the last half of Tasmina Perry’s latest.”

“I couldn’t put that book down either,” Mari said. “I won’t keep you too long so that you can take a nap, but be forewarned—don’t sleep for more than an hour, or you won’t sleep tonight. I went through that myself. I live upstairs, so you know where to find me if you need anything.”

“I love how you’re actually living the fantasy in your home above the bookstore that you own!”

“Every day, I have to pinch myself,” Mari agreed with a smile. “It’s not that there aren’t plenty of difficult aspects about owning and running a bookstore, especially in a country that I didn’t grow up in. But with the help of Owen and his family, and all of the other welcoming people on Elderflower Island, it’s been so much easier for me than it would otherwise have been. Especially because I came here after my estranged father died and willed his store and home to me out of the blue.”

“Wow, it sounds like you have a lot of stories to tell.”

“I do, and I’m sure you’ll hear them all soon enough, but for right now, I’d love to know more about you. How did you get the idea to set up reading retreats as a profession? I read what you said on your website, and of course we talked about it on Zoom and over email, but I can’t help but wonder, was there some sort of incident or pivotal moment one day that made you want to completely change your career?”

Josie was silent for a moment as she sipped her tea. “Just like in a novel, there was definitely an inciting incident.”

“I don’t mean to pry, so you can tell me to butt out—”

Josie shook her head. “It’s not prying. It’s important backstory, where you need to know why the heroine is behaving the way she is.”

“Ah, I love someone who talks about real life with genre-fiction vocabulary.”

They both grinned at that. But then Josie’s smile faded. “I thought I was in love. I thought I had the rest of my happy-ever-after planned out. Perfect guy. Perfect life. Get married. Have children. White picket fence.” She paused for a moment. “And then one day, there was a knock on the door.”

Mari grimaced. “An unexpected knock on the door is rarely ever good in a novel, or in real life, is it?”

Josie sighed. “You can say that again. A woman I’d never seen before was standing on my front porch, holding a six-month-old baby girl.”

“Your boyfriend’s wife and daughter, I presume?”

Josie nodded. “Every time I’ve read books with that storyline, I always questioned, how could the woman not know that the man she was dating had a whole other life? I mean, how could anybody be that blind? How could someone be that lost inside their own fantasies that they couldn’t see what was right there in front of them?”

She took another sip of tea, as though that would help settle her stormy emotions. Even after all this time, simply talking about her boyfriend’s betrayal riled her up.

“But once it happened to me, I suddenly understood how we believe the people we love. He worked as a salesman, and he was always on the road. Or so I thought, anyway. I would see him once, maybe twice a week when he was in town. And he always told me how he was getting ready to switch jobs so that he could settle down with me. He frequently told me I was the love of his life and had made him rethink his career and his goals. And of course, dumb me, I rolled out the red carpet whenever he was in town. He had gone to an Ivy League school on the East Coast and wore sharp suits and took me out to the fanciest restaurants we had in Coeur d’Alene. I felt so lucky that he chose to be with me when he could have stayed in Boston and been with anybody else.” She rolled her eyes. “What a fool I was—he had.”

“You can’t blame yourself,” Mari insisted. “You are neither dumb nor a fool. From what you’re saying, it sounds like he did everything he could to set up the narrative that you were his one and only. I don’t know anybody who wouldn’t be fooled by a plausible story told by someone they love.” She put her hand on Josie’s shoulder for a moment, then said, “I’m really sorry you went through all of that.”

“I am too.” Josie sighed. “Coming out of such a screwed-up relationship makes me feel like I’ll never be able to trust a man again. Because no matter how great he seems on the surface, how can I trust he isn’t telling me a pack of lies?”

Mari didn’t reply for a moment. “I could say a bunch of platitudes about how not everybody is a liar and how there are a lot of great guys out there, but while both of those things are true, that doesn’t negate what you’ve been through. Nor do I blame you for being suspicious the next time you’re on the verge of being in a relationship with someone.”

Josie shook her head at that. “Nope. There are not going to be any verges or budding relationships. I am perfectly happy being footloose and fancy-free. And although I know this might sound strange, telling you my horrible relationship story is actually a very long-winded way of explaining why and how I started to put on reading retreats.” She paused to take another sip of tea. “I was so beat up inside over what happened that I couldn’t find solace in anything. Not until my mother came to my house, carrying a suitcase full of books. Turned out that she had booked me into a hotel for a week. Her prescription for me, in the hopes that it might help me find some joy again, was to just do nothing but sit and read for a week.”

“Your mom sounds great.”

“She is. And she was right. I was a freelance editor at the time, and I still do some work for my favorite clients here and there, but I was so down over finding out that I’d been duped by a married man that I didn’t even think I could concentrate on a single book. And maybe I wouldn’t have been able to if my mother hadn’t done such a great job of choosing books that she knew would make me happy. There were several Mathilda Westcotts in there, of course,” she told Mari with a small smile. “Along with some of my old favorites. It was a curated list of novels about women who had bad things happen to them, yet who overcame hardship to thrive. Gone With the Wind, Jane Eyre, of course. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, The Color Purple by Alice Walker, and a stack of others, including some newer titles too.”

She stopped speaking for a moment as she thought back to that week inside her head and her heart. “Sure, there were love stories running through some of the novels, but in every case, the woman at the center of the story triumphed through her own wits and hard work. It was a message I really needed to hear.

“I went into that hotel stay as one person and came out as another. I was sad and dejected at the beginning of the week, and though things obviously didn’t completely heal while I was reading, so much did. Coincidentally, that was when I found an article about two women who were putting on reading retreats in Vancouver. It got me thinking about whether I might be able to do that too. So I reached out to them and asked how they set them up. They were so kind to share their hard-won knowledge with me, because like any book lover, all they wanted was to spread the love of books. The best part was when they invited me to come and experience a reading retreat for myself.” She took another sip of tea, then said, “So that’s what brought me to creating reading retreats. Heartbreak and betrayal. Just like all good stories, right?” When Mari nodded, Josie added, “Everybody has a story. I know I’m not unique in having gone through something difficult.”

“No,” Mari said, “you’re not.”

Josie felt her heart go out to the other woman, even though she didn’t know her story yet. All she knew was that Mari still clearly felt pain over it. “Your story was difficult, too, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, and it wasn’t cut and dried,” Mari confirmed. “In a nutshell, my father left me and my mother when I was three, because he had a problem with alcohol. My mother put up with him until the day he was supposed to be watching me, but he left the door wide open, and I managed to get out of our apartment. I was found crossing a busy road in Santa Monica.” She shuddered as though she could still feel the terror of a small child in such a terrible situation. “The sad thing was, I think I knew that he loved my mom and me, but he loved alcohol more.”

“That sounds like it must’ve been really hard for all of you.”

“It was, and I never heard from him again. Not until the day a lawyer called and told me that my father had left me his bookshop and the flat above it. It was a real shock. I knew he lived in England and had a bookstore, and a big part of me had always secretly wanted to come here and see where he lived and get to know him. But while I never did get the chance to know him in person, everyone on the island has told me so many stories about him—not only that he stopped drinking, but also how kind and gentle he was—that I truly felt like I was getting to know him after all.” She paused for a moment before adding, “And then I found the books he’d written.”

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