Chapters (51)
- Cover
- Praise for A Season for Second Chances
- Also by Jenny Bayliss
- Dedication
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Thirty-three
- Thirty-four
- Thirty-five
- Thirty-six
- Thirty-seven
- Thirty-eight
- Thirty-nine
- Forty
- Forty-one
- Forty-two
- Epilogue
- Acknowledgments
- Discussion Guide
- About the Author
- What’s next onyour reading list?
“I don’t hate you!” He sounded hurt.
He was offended? She raised her eyes to where a damp patch bloomed shades of sepia and brown across the ceiling, something else she needed to find a budget for.
“You’ve been carrying a me-shaped chip on your shoulder for the last twenty years!” The exasperation in her voice rang out in the small room. “You hated me when I went to Braddon-Hartmead, because you thought I was getting an advantage that you were denied, and then when I didn’t use my advantage to make millions, you hated me for that too. I can’t win with you.”
“That’s not— I never hated you for it, Nory, I just . . . Everything’s so easy for you. I’ve had to struggle for everything I’ve achieved.”
“And you don’t think I have? I had a private education, but it didn’t magic me into an easier life.”
“Yeah, well.”
This was Thomas’s stock phrase for when he didn’t have an answer.
“I know I was lucky in lots of ways. But it’s not fair for you to keep punishing me for it.”
Nory remained silent then, waiting for the final barb.
But instead he said, “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to . . . I guess I’m just used to us being this way with each other. It’s how we are. It doesn’t mean . . .”
“I don’t want this to be the way we communicate anymore, Thom. I’m tired of it. I’ll see you at Christmas, yeah?”
“Yeah,” Thom agreed. “See you at Christmas.”
Nory was thankful that business continued to be unrelenting in the shop. It meant she didn’t have time to think about Thom or Isaac, or her broken heart. For now, it was enough that she could throw herself into her work, seeking out perfect matches for her customers, sending them on their way with the Christmas presents they’d come in for but also a gift for themselves: a book they hadn’t known they’d needed or missed until Nory had placed it in their hands and they’d felt the rightness of it. Some books wrote themselves into people’s hearts as children and lived there, all but forgotten, until a bookseller recognized the spark and reunited them. Other books held their words close, waiting on the shelf to ignite a passion in someone who hadn’t even known they were wanting, until a bookseller introduced them. Booksellers were matchmakers of sorts. Too bad Nory wasn’t as good at reconciling herself with the people she loved as she was at rehoming books.
Forty
