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“Why?”
“I know what you’ve done to make this place work and to keep it going. That hasn’t been easy.”
“It’s my job.”
“It’s more than that.” She eyed me. “This is your passion. Gwen wouldn’t have hired you if she didn’t think you were going to love this place as much as she does.”
My shoulders slumped at the mention of Gwen Sower, the woman who’d owned The Green Frog solo for more than forty years, taking it over after her husband died of a massive heart attack. She wasn’t in good health now, and I hated the idea of her finding out about this. Direct competition was the last thing she needed.Especially from a “concept” place.
“I visited her last week,” I said. “She’s okay. About as well as can be expected.”
“Vernon took her communion earlier this month and said about the same thing.”
When it came to Gwen, there really wasn’t much to say at all. She was about to turn eighty-seven, she had hearing loss, and she was frail from diabetes, not to mention bouts with breast cancer and heart disease. Gwen was simply... old. She was also too frail to run The Green Frog every day, which was why she hired me five years ago, right after she turned eighty-two. And lately, I’d been wondering how long she could keep living on her own. Every month seemed more fraught than the last.
“I’ll tell her you said hi.” I pointed to the paperback in her hands. “Can I ring that up for you, or are you still looking around?”
Mrs. Peterson regarded her selection. “Um, yeah, sure, I’ll take this.”
I guided her to the main register and went through the motions of the sale, scanning her member rewards card, running her credit card through the machine, placing the book in a bag, and telling her about upcoming sales as we headed into summer. Mrs. Peterson made some small talk back and left with a smile, one I mimicked as I walked her out of the store and wished her well as she headed to her car.
It wasn’t until after I pulled the front door shut that I truly let the weight of what she’d told me sink into my bones. Another bookstore in an already small town. Competition for the first time since The Green Frog had opened.
Dear God, how am I going to handle this?
CHAPTER TWO
ROBERT
Two thousand square feet.
Not much—but enough. Each square foot held the key to my future. All of them... mine.
“Feels good,” I told Jason. We stood just inside the front entrance of what was going to become my first real business venture, the first thing I could truly call my own since working on Wall Street hadn’t been very fulfilling. That life had been all about numbers on a spreadsheet, shares on a page, and money that danced around in infinity. This was different. This was reality. And this was true entrepreneurship. “No, not just good. This feels great.”
“Yeah, man, I’m excited for you.”
