Page 11 of The Bookbinder's Guide to Love

He closed his eyes. He wouldn’t be able to talk to Ford ever again. Tears burned and he rubbed his eyes hard with the heels of his palms.

He went upstairs and got the suit for Grandpa to be buried in. Stepping into the bedroom, he couldn’t help the wave of grief hitting him again.

Three

Sera sat at a long wooden worktable at the back of the shop, next to the door that led to the storage area. She had the paper ready, which she used to make herself until she’d found a supplier who made 150 gsm paper of good quality. She had already made the signatures, which were formed from several sheets of A4-sized paper that had been folded over. A signature was a group of sheets folded in half, to be worked into the binding as a unit.

After she folded them, she pressed them using a stack of old heavy books to make them flatter. She even had a book press, which she used later in the process, once all the signatures were put inside the cover.

But the next step for the signatures was to punch and bind them together. A4-sized paper, once folded in half, made an A5-sized journal, which was the perfect size.

Sera had started making journals for herself. As a way to tell her story. There was nothing constant about her life, and for a while she’d been obsessed with Anne Frank, as well as a series of fictional diaries about women in history. So she’d started writing about her life. Her foster mom Tawdra hadn’t had money to buy fancy journals but had tons of printer paper, so Sera watched a YouTube video and learned how to make her own journal. The covers had been infinitely harder at first. But later she’d found cardboard in the recycling and used that.

She shook her head, remembering how crude that first journal had been. But when she’d taken it to school, other kids had noticed, and soon she’d started taking orders and custom-making journals for her classmates. Nearly every time she made more journals, she felt like she was back in that bedroom she’d shared with Milly at Tawdra’s, and then she looked around, seeing how far she’d come.

The Sera in that bedroom wouldn’t have thought this was possible. But Tawdra had always been nice to her and even gave her some space in the garage as a workshop once she started making money.

She had learned how to do French binding, and that was her standard go-to. At first, she hadn’t covered the spines of the books, so the French binding, with its fancy X design, had looked prettier. Each of her journals was fifty-four pages long, which required nine signatures, with a kettle stitch at the bottom to attach each signature. This stitching and binding was almost automatic for her at this point, so she made quick work of them.

She was working faster than normal. Part of it was that feeling of everything falling apart. She knew the feeling well—it had happened each time she’d learned she’d be leaving one foster home and moving to another. She had coping strategies. But she hadn’t had to use them since she’d been eighteen.

Ford’s death and the unexpected gift of books had rattled her. Wesley—with his hidden smile, tall frame and that brooding look in his eyes—had also sent her for a loop. She’d been trying to ignore that he hadn’t looked like an asshole. In fact, until he’d revealed himself, she’d been checking him out.

Liberty came over as she was finishing the last one, placing a cup of Earl Grey tea next to her elbow and leaning back against the bench.

“I know you said not to draw a card,” Liberty started. “But I did.”

Of course she had. Sera looked over at her friend as she pushed the last of the bound pages aside and reached for her cup of tea.

“And?”

“Like I said, you know cards aren’t good or bad.”

“Which means this one is bad. Great. What else can happen? Ford died, his hot grandson is an asshole and now what?”

“His grandsonwashot. Is hot asshole your type?”

“No, definitely not,” she said. But a quick look back at her dating history revealed that she didn’t always make smart choices when it came to guys.

She did want to grab Wesley by the lapel of his oh-so-proper wool overcoat and kiss him. Partly to shock and partly just to prove to herself that he wasn’t as attractive as her imagination was trying to make him. “And if it was, is it better than hot weird?”

Liberty lightly punched her in the arm. “That’s not my type.”

“Sure.”

“So do you want to know what I drew?”

“Yes.”

“The Moon.”

Great. Thehidden enemiesone. But as Liberty mentioned, it wasn’t necessarily bad. Though it was hard to see the good in that card.

“What did you ask when you pulled it?” Sera wanted to know. She needed more details before she freaked out completely. Her stress level was getting higher, and no matter how many times she’d rubbed the jade stone next to the register, it seemed to keep ratcheting up.

She knew it was the fact that Wesley Sitwell had been in her shop making accusations, apologizing and confusing the ever-loving hell out of her.

“Should Sera worry about the toad?”

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