Chapter 31: Last in Line

Joelle's POV

The bookshop on Harbor Street had room for sixty chairs, and four hundred people came.

They lined up down the block in a thin autumn rain, with umbrellas and thermoses and first editions in plastic bags.

Maud had made a sign that said *LARK ELLERY, IN PERSON, FINALLY* in glitter paint.

The shop owner cried twice before the doors opened.

I sat at a table by the window with a stack of paperbacks and a fresh box of pens.

For nine years I had signed these books in my head at the kitchen table.

Now a woman in a raincoat set one down in front of me and said, "I read this one on my mother's last night."

"I'm sorry," I said.

"Don't be. It helped." She smiled through tears. "Could you write *For the long night* in it?"

I wrote it, and I signed my real name underneath.

The line moved.

A teenager with green hair told me the ending of *The Salt Road* had ruined her week.

A man in his sixties said his wife made him read it aloud to her and he now owned the whole series.

Ivo stood against the back wall with his arms folded, in a gray sweater.

Whenever I looked over, he was already looking at me.

At four o'clock the owner brought me tea.

"There's a woman in line who says she knows you," she murmured. "I thought you should hear it before she gets here."

"Who?"

"She's in a black coat, with pearls."

I knew before I turned.

Hugh's mother came up to the table, slowly, in a black wool coat with her pearls underneath.

She held a paperback against her chest.

The line behind her went quiet.

"Joelle," she said.

"Ma'am."

"I bought this on Friday. I read it on the train." She opened it to the title page. "I'd like it signed to Ivo's mother."

I stared at her.

"I wasn't able to apologize to her," she said. "I would like to send it to her grave."

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