Unfortunately for me, I was so busy avoiding Jasper that all my work sat on my desk while I ventured to four different grocery stores until I found the flavor of Jeni’s ice cream I wanted. What can I say? Eating my feelings is one of my favorite coping mechanisms. Just under shoe shopping but right above barhopping.

I click through the emails, making quick work of deleting junk mail, flagging important emails that require well-thought-out responses, and answering the rest with my standard prewritten response. Before Gran passed, I always helped her on the computer. I didn’t know all the logistics of her day-to-day work, but it was nice to have a grip on one part of the business when I was thrown in the deep end.

The paperwork, on the other hand?

Gran was a stay-at-home mom until Dad started going to school and she got bored at home. Her husband was at work and she was the only person in her group of friends who had only one child. She decided to take her newfound spare time and get a job at Dad’s school. She worked in the library, and although she always loved books, she said this is where it really went to the next level. It’s also where she started filing papers like a madwoman with no damn sense.

Organizing her files was a form of torture that could’ve broken the most hardened criminal. I collapsed in tears more than once. She filed so many scraps of paper with three or four words scribbled on them that I almost convinced myself they formed a secret message and she moonlighted as a treasure hunter. I was about two seconds away from going full-on National Treasure Nicolas Cage when Mona came in and helped me decipher the shorthand notes.

There was no treasure, but there was a mystery. Tucked in the back of her scraps, I found a business card from an executive at Prose and Fable, the online source to buy books and a perpetual pain in my ass. I don’t want to say they’re the only reason I shop local as often as possible, but they’re the only reason I shop local as often as possible. Since their rise in popularity, staying in business as a small bookstore has become harder than ever.

Gran never mentioned anything to me about them contacting her, and as much as I poked and prodded all the Dirty Birds, none of them seemed to know what she was doing with their phone number either. I should’ve thrown it away as soon as I found it, but as I grab a pen out of the desk, the business card peeks at me from the corner of the drawer.