“First, it will keep the boxes in order. Second, it will keep anyone from digging too deeply into the boxes. Third, I’m going to need you to have a much better attitude here, prince of accidental larceny.”

Eli groaned.

But Daniella wasn’t finished yet. “Because after we stack the boxes, I’m going to tell you my plan to get us all out of this mess.”

And for the first time since he walked in, Eli looked like maybe the sun would come out again.

7

All Mimsy

10:25 A.M.

Rinn

All Rinn wanted to do was get out her phone and start filming the bookstore.

The morning light was filtering into the room just right, and all the books looked like they had a magical glow. The store wouldn’t look like this again until sunset. She liked to take advantage of the light whenever she could, for content’s sake. But instead Rinn was stuck behind the register with no phone.

No. She wasn’t stuck. She was only stuck if she believed she was stuck.

Rinn took a deep breath. There weren’t any customers waiting to be helped. There was hardly anyone in the store. Just Myrna standing up and moving from her chair in the gardening section to the chair by the home organization section. No line at the register. Not even anyone casually browsing closer and closer to the checkout.

She could go get her phone. As long as Rinn returned her phone to the office by the end of the day, Jo would never know.

Rinn made a decision.

She worked her way through the stacks. She bobbed and wove her way through the sections. Philosophy to art. Art to cookbooks. Cookbooks to picture books. Picture books into chapters books into the YA section. Every store had its own flow, but this one—the one at Wild Nights—made intuitive sense to Rinn. It was an intellectual flow of ideas that was familiar and worn and well trod.

She made it to the break room in under a minute.

When she walked in, Rinn stopped short for a moment. Daniella and Eli were frozen, each of them with a box in their arms.

“What’s going on?” Rinn couldn’t put her finger on it. But something was off. She’d never seen two people just freeze up like that. Holding heavy boxes of books and looking as though they had been caught with their hands in the cookie jar. “You guys okay?”

“Peachy keen,” said Daniella. But it wasn’t with her usual sarcasm, as Rinn had expected. There was something overly bright and exaggerated in her tone—not undercutting and deprecating enough. Not laced with the usual level of bitterness. It was almost as if Daniella were panicked.