Grandma swings a single gray braid over one shoulder. I need to stop wearing my hair the same way. Seriously. It’s giving me the creeps. “Why would I do that? Sales are sky-high since you took over. I’m old, but I’m not a half-wit. I’ve been looking at the P&L reports, Winnie. You’re better at managing inventory than I am.”

“Did we just enter the Twilight Zone?” Mom asks, looking around the room, squinting. “I didn’t see a logo or a sign.…”

“I’m closing the shop today,” Grandma informs us.

A collective gasp circles the room.

The Nook doesn’t close. Ever. Only on holidays. Only when it’s supposed to. The Nook doesn’t close unexpectedly.

“Until I can get some things squared away. Beauty can survive one day without books. We’ll reopen tomorrow … if we feel like it.” Then she inspects her nails and adds, “I put an announcement sign on the door over the nudie of Winnie. Bucky at the art gallery says there’s an industrial-strength solvent he’ll loan us to get that off later today, by the way.”

“Lord, give me strength,” Mom says to the ceiling.

Grandma turns to me. “Josephine, do you have something decent to wear? I need you to walk me to my taxi.”

I look around, as if there might be another Josephine in the room. “Me?”

“Mother, no,” my mom says sharply.

No fighting, no fighting …

“I just need to speak with my granddaughter in private for five minutes. I don’t bite, and she doesn’t look breakable.”

My mom starts to protest, but I speak up. “Let me put on my jeans. I’ll meet you in the lobby.”

After I hurriedly yank on yesterday’s clothes, listening through a cracked bathroom door to make sure no spats are breaking out in my absence, I jog through the suite, and Aunt Franny says, “Don’t be ashamed to use the panic button on your phone. I used it in Kathmandu. Zero regrets.”

Think that’s the jet lag talking.

“Be careful” is all Mom warns me, very seriously.

I’ve got this. It’s only a grandmother. Not an actual weapon of war.

That’s what I repeat over and over as I stride across plush hotel carpet and head down an elevator to the lobby, which is covered in framed paintings of Beauty in the 1800s and lit by a tasteful chandelier. Marble floors, the pride of our coastal town, gleam in the sunlight as I straighten my shoulders and catch up with Diedre Saint-Martin.

“You’re looking lovely,” she says. “Too bad about the freckles, but you can cover them up with makeup.”

“Thanks?”