I climb back into the moving truck, and as I pull on my seat belt, some rare emotion flickers behind Mom’s eyes. Whatever the opposite of excited is, that’s what she looks right now. Her anxiety over our move to Beauty started with Mildly Stressed, and on the drive here it escalated to High Anxiety, but now I do believe we’re up to Scared Shitless.

And Winona Saint-Martin isn’t scared of anything, so that leads me to believe that something big is waiting for us here—something Mom has failed to tell me about. Again.

Whatever it is, it must be bad. Worse than an old family story about doomed love.

“Seriously, you’re starting to freak me out,” I tell her. “Why are you so nervous about moving back here?” The reason we left when I was twelve is temporarily gone: the matriarch of the Saint-Martin family, Grandma Diedre. My mom’s mother. They had a major falling out. Shouting. Tears. Police were called. Huge drama, and some of it was about me. They’ve since made up … sort of ? But whenever we come back to visit, it’s never for more than a day or two, and things are always strained.

Our family is kind of messy.

Mom’s distracted and not listening to me, as usual. “Crap. Think that was one of your grandmother’s friends who just passed us,” she tells me, eyes on the rearview mirror. “She’s probably on her phone right now, calling up half the town to alert them that Diedre’s harlot of a daughter is crossing the border.”

“You’re being paranoid. Grandma would never call you that.” Probably. Fifty-fifty chance.

Mom snorts. “Oh, to be young. Be glad I shielded you from that old bat the past few years. Thank God for Mongolia.”

“Nepal. You know Grandma’s in Nepal.”

My grandmother and my mom’s older sister, Franny, joined the Peace Corps and left to teach English in Nepal last week. Just like that, Grandma temporarily gave up the independent bookshop that had been in our family for generations and handed over the keys to my mom—someone she doesn’t trust to post a letter in the mail, much less run an entire business. And between you and me and this bargain-priced moving truck, my mom isn’t exactly the most reliable person in the world.

Which was why Grandma and Aunt Franny running off to Nepal and leaving us as stewards of the family bookshop was a shock to all. Aunt Franny’s daughter, my nineteen-year-old cousin Evie, is currently minding the store and will be helping my mom run it while attending college and shacking up with us in my grandma’s above-shop apartment.

“There’s no reason for you to be nervous. Grandma’s gone. Aunt Franny’s gone. You can make a fresh start here in Beauty—”