Evie waves a dismissive hand. “That’s just Phantom.”
“Who?” Mom says.
“Lucky Karras. Remember the Karrases? His parents used to own the tiny boat-repair business a block away? They bought the big boatyard across the street. Father’s a boat mechanic. Mother runs the business.”
“That’s Nick and Kat Karras’s kid?” Mom says. “Josie’s Lucky?”
A warmth zips up my chest. “He wasn’t mine. We were just friends.” Good friends.
“Did you recognize him?” Mom asks without giving me a chance to respond. “I don’t think he recognized you.”
“He did,” I say, a little dazed.
“He’s been camped out here, watching the window for your U-Haul,” Evie murmurs, giving me a suggestive smile behind my mom’s back.
“Really would have liked to be warned about this before we showed up,” I say through pinched lips.
“Last time I saw him,” Mom muses, oblivious to Evie’s comment, “he was a snotty-nosed little punk with a head full of black curls. When did he grow up into a dark and disenchanted Holden Caufield?”
Evie snorts a short laugh. “A couple years after you guys left town? I call him Phantom of the Bookshop, because he’s in here all the time, brooding in the back.”
“I thought the Karrases moved?” I say, still stunned.
“They did,” Evie says. “Like I said, their business moved across the street.”
That’s not what I meant. I thought they moved out of town—gone. I had no idea he still lived here. All the times we’ve been in and out of Beauty for the occasional weekend over the past few years, I’ve never once seen him or heard about the Karrases.
“He was in that fire before we left town,” Mom says. “At the lake house.”
“His scars … ,” I murmur. The last time I saw him, it was about a week after the fire, and he was bandaged up, in the hospital, awaiting news about surgery. I remember his parents being worried, whispering with doctors when I’d come see him every afternoon at Beauty Memorial during visiting hours, but they said he’d be fine.
Mom and I left town in such a hurry, I never got to say goodbye.
“He had a lot of skin grafts,” Evie says. “I don’t know … I think it changed him, because he sort of withdrew after that. He’s been in and out of a little trouble ever since, but—”
“Whoa. What kind of trouble?” Mom interrupts.
“This and that. You know Beauty,” Evie says with a shrug. “Hard to know what’s gossip and what’s fact.”
“This town eats you alive, one way or another,” Mom says. “Hope he keeps his trouble out of this shop.”
“Don’t worry,” Evie assures her. “He just reads and sulks.”
I stare out the bookshop window, watching Lucky straddle an old red motorcycle parked across the street in front of a building with a sign that says: NICK’S BOATYARD. REPAIR AND MAINTENANCE. Matching his tattoo, an actual black cat sits in a patch of sunlight inside the boatyard’s office window.
How could that be the same boy I knew? Impossible.
As he straps on his Lucky 13 helmet, Mom clears her throat, catching my attention.
“Nope. Don’t even think about it,” she warns me.
“I was just looking out the window, jeez.” Is my neck warm? Grandma Diedre needs to invest in some modern AC in this stuffy, old shop.
“The Saint-Martin love curse is stronger here,” Mom insists. “Look at our record in Beauty. My grandfather kept three mistresses in a hotel across town. My dad left my mom for a business deal in California. My sister Franny … well”—she turns to Evie—“you know what happened to your own mother.”
“Mom,” I say sharply. Ugh. Talk about foot-in-mouth disease, my mom has it.
“It’s fine,” Evie says.
But is it? Evie’s father died of a stroke last year. He spent a couple of days in the hospital but didn’t make it. The funeral was awful; that was the last time we were in town, in fact, just for a short time. Evie coped, but her mom kind of had a nervous breakdown and never really got over his death—and Mom thinks that’s why Grandma encouraged her to rent out their house and run off to Nepal, leaving Evie to move in with us in the above-shop apartment. Mom says Evie’s mom was always Grandma’s favorite. You would think two adult sisters with kids of their own would be long past the Petty Jealousy phase, but I guess it’s something you never grow out of.
“Regardless,” Mom says, a little embarrassed, “everyone in Beauty knows I got hit by the Saint-Martin curse too. Tried to leave town to outrun it and ended up a single thirty-six-year-old mom of a seventeen-year-old. Now just imagine what the curse will do to you here, Josie. Heartbreak city, that’s what.”
Before I can protest, Evie picks up her paperback pirate romance and waves it, several slender silver rings clinking together on her thumb and index finger. She exclusively reads historical romance books. Earls and governesses. Princes and governesses. Governesses and governesses. If it involves the moors and a gothic castle, even better. She recently made the decision to give up real-life love in exchange for vicarious romance on the page. “Relationship-free and zero regrets.” Or so she claims …
“Not here for relationships of any kind,” I inform both of them.
Never had one, never want one.
Honestly, all I care about right now is building up my portfolio so that my father will agree to take me on as a photography apprentice in LA next year, after I finish high school. But I don’t say that out loud. It’s my own private secret. If there’s one thing that will break my mom’s heart, it’s not romance—it’s the thought of me leaving her. The ultimate betrayal.
I know it makes me a monster. I know. But the thing is, even though I may be cursed on this side of the family pie, there’s a whole other half of the pie that I don’t even know. Grandparents I’ve never met. Aunts. Uncles. Cousins. My dad even has a new wife, a painter. And once I’m eighteen, Mom can’t stop me from traveling to see my dad. I only talked to him about it in a general sort of way, but I think I can convince him to let me apprentice for him. And that would be such a dream—to learn photography from a real master.
To learn how to be a real daughter in a real family.
Maybe one that communicates better than this one does.
That’s my exit strategy. Beauty is my last layover town, then I’m going as far west as I can, seeking meaningful connections. People who eat dinner together and talk about their problems. People who do normal family things—backyard barbecues and trips to the zoo. Parents teaching kids how to swim and ride bikes. I want all that.
And I have a solid three-step plan to make it happen:
Step One: Prove to my father that I’m motivated and talented.
Step Two: Save up enough cash to get to LA.
Step Three: Graduate from high school before my grandma returns from Nepal.
That last one … that’s tough. Next summer, Grandma Diedre’s overseas tour in Nepal is up, and that’s when Beauty will go from Layover Town to Family Fight Zone. My mom knows this; we’re on borrowed time here.