Page 4 of The Bookbinder's Guide to Love

Yes, because she hated confrontation, but she knew she couldn’t ask Liberty to do this for her. There was a part of Sera that wished she were more like Liberty. Her friend spoke her mind and didn’t worry about it. If she hurt someone’s feelings, she’d apologize for it later. But she never held her tongue.

“Thanks. I’ve got it. I’m more concerned about how I’m going to keep up with the demand for journals,” Sera said, changing the subject so she could get ready for her day and not worry so much about Wesley Sitwell.

“Are you running low?” Liberty asked with a note of concern in her voice.

And that concern was justified. The Amber Rapp thing meant customers wanted to have tea in Poppy’s shop, get their cards read by Liberty and then write a message to themselves that Sera put into the cover of a handmade journal. They wanted the full ritual in the hopes of bottling some of Amber’s success. If they didn’t have journals, that would affect everyone.

Sera wasn’t about to let down her friends. They were her found family.

“Yes, because I make them all by hand... I might need to hire someone else,” Sera said. It was nice to have something practical to discuss rather than Ford’s family.

“I think we should talk about hiring staff to run the register. That way we don’t have to ring up customers. I’m sure Poppy would agree.”

“Probably. She mentioned she was hiring two new servers for the tea shop,” Sera said. She sent a message to Poppy in their group text, telling her they wanted to hire more staff and asking if she was going to be back in Birch Lake on Friday for dinner.

Poppy texted back a thumbs-up.

“That’s taken care of. I guess that means Merle is going to be running the tea shop today,” Liberty said. “I know he’s Poppy’s cousin, but he gets on my nerves.”

“He’s okay. Just a little nerdy...and that’s saying something, coming from me,” Sera said with a laugh.

“You’re a bookworm, not nerdy,” Liberty said. “He is full-on nerd.”

“Why does that bother you?” As a tarot reader, Liberty herself wasn’t considered normal by everyone’s standards—but something about Merle always seemed to throw her off.

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Probably because he’s kinda hot and weird as hell.”

“I thought that was your type,” Sera said with a grin.

Liberty shot her the bird and then got up to take her mug to the sink. “Want me to draw a card for you before you go meet the old guy’s grandson?”

Did she?

“Yes, but only tell me if it’s a good one.”

Liberty shook her head. “All the cards are neutral, neither good nor bad. You know that, right? Life isn’t good or bad.”

Maybe. Sera wasn’t convinced. “Yeah, sure. But remember that time you drew the tower and freaked?”

Liberty had a bunch of different decks, some themed for Samhain or to specific areas of interest. But her everyday carry for tarot was the original Rider-Waite tarot deck.

“Only because my mom was supposed to fly that day,” Liberty said.

“That’s what I’m afraid of. What if you draw something that says ‘outlook not good’?”

“These are tarot cards, not a Magic 8 Ball. You know you can handle yourself. You didn’t con anyone out of anything. You met a nice old man who liked books and you went to his house for the last couple of years to talk with him. Where was the grandson then?”

Liberty had a point. The letter made it sound like she didn’t deserve the books that Ford had left her. Her old thought processes and behaviors were making her believe it. She wasn’t the orphan girl being shifted from foster home to foster home with nothing to call her own.

She had become friends with Ford, and she was going to miss their weekly chats about the classics in the library of his large Victorian house, which had seen better days. She hadn’t become friends with him in the hopes of getting anything.

They’d connected over a love of stories—he’d turned her on to the author Dodie Smith’sI Capture the Castle. As much as she appreciated their shared fondness for books, what she had really come to cherish was their unexpected friendship.

In her heart, she felt sad at the thought of never speaking to him again. Ford had made her feel like she belonged in a way she’d only ever found with Liberty, Poppy and the books on her keeper shelf.

She wasn’t going to let Wesley or anyone else take that from her. She’d been writing her own story since she’d been old enough to realize reality sucked. She’d been fourteen when she’d accepted that she’d cast herself as the best friend instead of the leading lady. When she’d turned twenty-one and met Liberty and Poppy, she’d seen in them something she’d never found in herself.

They were the leading ladies of their lives.

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