Scrambling to her feet, she rushed after it, grasping at handfuls of air as the paper skittered past her feet, snagging momentarily on a distant gorse bush until another strong gust wrenched it free and sent it rushing over the cliff edge. She gasped as it took flight, joining the gulls to soar high above the sunlit sea toward England and Yorkshire, where Pappy had first met his beloved Martha. As she watched it shrink to a distant dot, Olivia thought of Pappy’s last words to her: “You need only the permission of your heart.” Her heart wanted everything she saw in front of her now: space to walk and to think, crisp natural light, fresh sea air, possibility. Pappy was right. She didn’t need anybody’s permission. Perhaps—and her stomach lurched as the thought developed from a murky seed of doubt to one of increasing certainty—she didn’t have to marry Jack.
And there he was, back in her thoughts. Jack Oliver. The man she was due to marry in three months, despite the doubts that kept her awake at night and dragged like lead weights on the ivory lace train she regretted choosing. “A bad case of the jitters. Totally normal,” her friends said, prescribing an antidote of gin and shopping when she’d confessed to her uncertainty. But it went deeper than the jitters. Far deeper. And then there was the letter she’d received three weeks ago. The letter she hadn’t told Jack about. The letter that confirmed what she’d feared, and cast the greatest doubt of all in her mind.
Her breathing quickened as the audaciousness and then the conviction of her thoughts bubbled up inside her. What if she called the wedding off? Adrenaline rushed along her skin in goose bumps, like a child anticipating something forbidden about to be done.
She couldn’t.
Could she?
Life was all about the wedding lately—endless decisions about chair covers and dessert wine and other things the guests would never notice. But what if she didn’t have to make those decisions? What if she stayed in Ireland and took care of Nana and managed the bookshop? What if she made a life here, in Howth, the quiet harbor town she’d grown up in where people moved with the ebb and flow of the tide rather than an unreliable tube service?
As she turned the bookshop key over in her hand, it struck Olivia that in answering the wedding planner’s questions, she’d ignored the most important questions of all: Was she happy? Did she really want to go through with this? What alternative future might she find if she dared to look?
On impulse, she took off her engagement ring and pushed it deep into the corner of her skirt pocket. Her hand looked strange without its glittering diamond solitaire, better for its absence. She’d never liked it, or the way it caught on her favorite jumpers and trapped dough between the prongs when she made bread. She’d have happily worn one of her mam’s vintage costume rings, bursting with character and story, but vintage wasn’t Jack’s style. Diamonds were Jack’s style, and as he’d reminded her, they are, after all, a girl’s best friend.
Just not this girl’s.
Holding the bookshop key, she began to walk down the slippery scree of the headland, following the trail that descended through the candy-colored rhododendrons, stooping beneath the dark tunnels formed from their gnarled roots and branches. She walked through the golf course and on into the village, the wind pushing always at her back as the words of Frances Griffiths’s memoir whispered to her and the melody of a much-loved song played at her ears and memories of happier times flickered through her mind. As she walked, she thought about the determined, inquisitive little girl she’d once been and the determined, optimistic woman she’d always imagined she would become.
She was sure she was still in there somewhere, among all the doubt and uncertainty.
She just had to find a way to believe in her again.
HOWTH VILLAGE SPARKLED beneath the extravagant May sun, tempting people outside with their coffee, despite the cool edge to the breeze. Olivia loved these spring days, before the arrival of summer’s tourists and wasps. These were days for eating the first ice cream of the year and for blustery strolls along the harbor wall. She watched a young couple buy fish heads to throw to the seals in the harbor, drawing laughter from the gathered crowd as the seals barked their encouragement.
At the café on the corner, she ordered a latte and gave her name as Liv. While she waited, she caught her reflection in the mirror behind the counter, hardly recognizing herself without her curtain of long auburn curls to hide behind. She touched her fingertips self-consciously to the nape of her neck, wondering what Jack would say about her pixie cut. He’d always preferred her hair long. Said it was more feminine. She hadn’t planned such a drastic change, especially not on the morning of Pappy’s funeral, but she’d heard “Moon River” on the radio in the hairdresser’s and remembered Pappy saying her mother used to look like Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday.
“Latte for Liv.”
Olivia took the cup from the server, smiling as she saw what he’d written in black marker on the side. Live. It shouted at her like an urgent instruction. Live! You must live! The irony was not lost on her.
Leaving the café, she put her head down against the brisk wind and turned up Abbey Street, past the rainbow-colored terraces and the old abbey ruins, past the pub and the church. Poignant memories and half-remembered stories were waiting around every corner: awkward teenage kisses here, exam sorrows drowned there, the doleful chimes of the church bells as she’d wondered how she would ever learn to tie her shoelaces properly without her Mammy to show her.
As she walked, the familiar voices of doubt and insecurity surfaced. What are you thinking? You don’t know the first thing about running a bookshop. You can’t call off the wedding. But another—more hopeful—voice chimed in. It’ll be all right, Liv. This is a good thing. A fresh start. You need only the permission of your heart.
She carried her doubt and determination along like awkward shopping bags, one in each hand, banging against her shins with every step. Only when she reached the top of the cobbled lane did her internal chatter shush, and her breath caught in her chest as she read the sign on the wall to her right. Little Lane. Lána Beaga.
She walked on, the cobbles familiar beneath her boots as she passed the thatched cottages: a bakery, a florist, a gift shop, a vintage clothing shop, and, at the end of the lane, the bookshop.
Something Old
It was like looking at a dear old friend, and her heart soared at the sight of it: whitewashed brick walls, two stories, four sash windows, an arched doorway, a rusting cartwheel leaning against the wall. The paintwork was chipped, the windows were dulled with rain spatters, the window boxes bloomed with weeds, and discarded flyers for harbor tours huddled apologetically in the doorway, but it was beautiful to Olivia. So many fragments of her life were anchored to this place, the safe haven where she’d sheltered among the magical places of other people’s imaginations when the awful truth of her reality was too much to bear. Books were Olivia’s salvation once upon a time. She hoped, with all her heart, they would be again.
The faded old sign above the door swayed in the wind on wrought-iron brackets, creaking a feeble Hello, Liv.
A smile curled at the edges of her lips. “Hello, Shop.”