Page 18 of Deal With The Devil

Aunt Minnie spent hours on the design, carefully blending and smudging her drawings until they looked practically lifelike.

Now, she’s added a new element to the design. Behind the glass window, there are many gift-wrapped packages on our table, enticing customers to enter the store. Next to it is a stack of all sizes of books, each carefully wrapped in brown paper. The large hand lettered sign next to the stack encourages customers to buy a mystery date with books they don't yet know.

I smile. Aunt Minnie isn’t here, yet her touch is undeniable.

I hold the door open to the shop, and immediately I'm engulfed by the smell of old and new books. It's cold in the store—barely warmer than outside—but I start smiling the second I enter anyway. Bookcases line the walls of this room and the one beyond, floor to ceiling, stuffed with books. There are books absolutely everywhere, overflowing the aisles, stacked in cascading piles placed precariously everywhere you can see.

It's a barely contained world of chaos and a good representation of what’s in Minnie's brain. I like to imagine that I am inside her thoughts when I dust a high corner or gently reorganize a pile of books. I can't seem to figure out what system Aunt Minnie uses when putting them together.

This is Minnie’s world. This is all her doing.

I carefully make my way to the cash register at the front of the store. Aunt Minnie pops up from behind the counter, her gray hair looking more disheveled and completely uncombed than usual. Her dark purple velvet muumuu is obviously in the way because she picks it up from the floor and shows off her thin, sharp knees as she kicks free of whatever is entrapping her feet. She mouths something as I come up behind her.

"Damn drapes."

Sure enough, there is a huge pile of black velvet drapes sitting on the floor behind the counter. I unintentionally startle her as I try to suss out what the situation is.

"Doing all right there, Aunt Minnie?"

She practically jumps out of her skin. She turns her head to face me, clutching her heart. "Oh! Oh, Talia. I didn't see you there. I was just trying to straighten out these drapes that I found. Would you believe that the elementary school is just giving them away?"

My lips twitch. "Do you have something in mind for them?"

She puts her hands on her hips, dragging a hand through her long gray hair. "Not yet. But I'll think of something."

Of that, I have no doubt. I slide past her and look at the stack of boxes immediately in front of the cash register. "What are those?"

She bends down and bungles the heavy cloth in her arms, picking them up with a groan. "Oh, those are the books that the Morgan family ordered. Apparently, they made a mistake and ordered them twice, so they won't be needing those twelve hundred copies of "The Night Before Christmas."

I squint at her. "Where else could they have ordered them from? We are Harwicke's sole bookstore." A little frown tugs at my lips. Minnie waves a hand. "You know what that means. They got them at a better rate because they bought them on some discount website or something."

I pick up the stack of invoices from beside the cash register and shuffle them, peering at the books. "They have to take them. We special ordered them."

Aunt Minnie shrugs. "We can send them back, can't we?"

"No. I was very clear with the guys from the Morgan Foundation who I spoke with on the phone. The books are not returnable. And we are not taking them back. They have to be picked up and signed for by someone from the Morgan family."

"I will call them, okay?" Minnie's lips twitch. "Those damn Morgans. It isn’t enough that they’re so rich that they have more money than God himself. They are the wealthiest family in town, and they’re the main source of charitable donations for the local hospitals and sports teams. They have all those ridiculous gala events at their fancy house that overlooks the town. It's outrageous, really."

I set the stack of papers down and look at her quite seriously. "They have to pick up the books. I know that they are trying to use their charitable foundation to organize some kind of Christmas giveaway. We have heard about it at Hope House. But they cannot just expect us to eat the cost of those children's books. They were expensive!"

Aunt Minnie drops the drapes, leaning on the counter. She looks out of breath suddenly, which is a little weird. "This is the fourth year that something has gone wrong with their order around this time of year. And it is never something on our end. It's always something on their end, like they don't have the right book or they don't have enough. Remember last year when they said that they ordered twice as many copies ofThomas The Tank Enginethan they actually did?"

I grit my teeth. "Boy, do I. Every single time this has happened, they have backed out and left us holding the bag. It's not right, and it’s not fair."

Minnie spreads her hands. "I know, the prospect of the Morgan family buying a thousand or more dollars' worth of books has always been too tempting for us to pass up."

I draw myself up, glaring at the tall stack of boxes. "This is the last time," I declare. "This is the absolute last time this is going to happen to us. I'm going to do something about it."

"Like what?" Minnie says, giving me a skeptical look. "What are you going to do, go confront the Morgan family? It's better to just eat the cost ourselves."

"With what money?" I ask, my words coming off a little more venomous than I really meant them to be.

Aunt Minnie goes quiet, something painful passing through her expression. I give her a little smile. I tilt my head.

"What?" I ask.

She shrugs one shoulder, her hands nervously gripping the front of her dress. "We can talk about it after the holidays. I don't want to stress you out right now."

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