But she found her footing quick enough. Daniella hadn’t lived through her father’s death and her mother’s grief only to be unable to keep her eye on the prize. “Then what do you suggest we do? Have Eli go to jail? Let the bookstore close?”

“Are those really the only options?” AJ raked his hand through his hair again.

“Yeah. That’s it. Save the nine thousand dollars in inventory. Attempt to save the bookstore. Off-load all of these faulty Jordans onto the market. Hopefully we can flip them onto some other unsuspecting schmuck and at least make back our money. If we get really lucky, we can make some money off this. That’s literally all we have got.”

AJ shook his head. “You’re too mercenary for me, Danny.”

Daniella clenched her teeth. “Fine. I’m the mercenary bitch. But at least when the chips are down, I know what call I’m making. Do you? Do you know what side you’re on? Or are you just gonna hide in the mystery section and wait it out?”

AJ said nothing. He shook his head, turned, and walked out the door.

“If it’s any consolation, you’ve got me convinced,” said Eli as soon as they were alone again.

Daniella chucked a handful of plastic stars at him in response.

10

O Captain! My Captain!

11:12 A.M.

Imogen

Before Imogen could reach the break room, she was waylaid by Madame Bettache, who was flagging down Imogen from over in the classics/literature section.

Madame Bettache was a French Tunisian woman who had moved to Chicago shortly after her husband’s death. She had deep brown skin and perfectly coiffed hair. She had a collection of scarves—Hermès, Imogen had later found out—that were given to the widow by her late husband as presents after each of his many business trips. Imogen had never seen the same scarf twice, and Madame Bettache came into the store weekly.

Imogen knew all of this because Madame Bettache had told her.

She reminded Imogen distinctly of one of her aunties. And so Imogen had started to call her Madame Auntie. Without Madame Bettache’s knowledge, of course.

About a year and a half ago, Madame Auntie had come in saying she wanted a copy of An Unnecessary Woman for her book club. She had confessed to Imogen that she really only joined the book club for the social aspect.

That was when Imogen had known that Madame was a gossip.

But her original book club only met monthly, and Madame had gone from coming in once a month to once every two weeks to once a week. She had been picking up book clubs the way her husband had picked up scarves. For a while, Imogen had thought it was all for the chatter and the sense of importance that belonging to a book club must give to Madame.