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“Well, I haven’t found any books like that,” I say, “or a box of index cards, either. I’ll definitely keep an eye out.”

“Let me know. Those pulp novels are collectible now.” He lifts the book on his lap, its dust jacket illustrated with a black and white photograph of some glamorous golden-age-of-Hollywood starlet. “In the meantime, can I have the honor of being your first customer?”

“I can’t sell anything,” I protest. “I haven’t gotten my Certificate of Authority yet.”

“How about I pay in cash? You can record the sale later if you want to be aboveboard about it.” Wren opens the cover of the book he’s been holding. “It says here seventy-five dollars.”

“It does?”

“Sure. Look.”

He holds out the open book. Leaning forward, I squint at the pencil marks on the endpaper. “Sold,” I say.

“I’ll pay five dollars for the latte, too, so that’s eighty.” Standing, Wren places four twenties on the chair and weighs them down with a stone. “Nice doing business with you, Audrey.”

“You too, Wren.”

I gather up the bills as he walks away. It was never my intention to open Red Barn Books to the public, especially not in the middle of a pandemic. I can’t argue with the cash in my pocket, though, especially after all the money I’ve spent since moving up here. First there was the hefty bill from Spectrum. Then there was the canister vacuum I bought at the Home Depot in Glens Falls, along with cleaning supplies and tension rods and curtains for my bedroom windows. The microwave I picked up from Walmart since the stove won’t work until I pay AmeriGas to replace the rusted propane tank. The shopping cart of groceries I grabbed from the half-empty shelves at Price Chopper. Not to mention the gas it takes to keep the van running and the credit card payment that’s due tomorrow. If a few nostalgic customers stop by Red Barn Books from time to time, I’d be stupid to turn them away.

I’m washing up in the kitchen when something Wren said hits me: Evelyn wrote for a women’s magazine. Leaving the mugs in the sink, I dash back out to the barn and pick up an issue from the stack of Mademoiselle magazines on the front table. It’s dated September 1956—well before Wren was born, I’m sure. Finding Evelyn Cabot’s name in the table of contents, I open to a fashion spread of a woman in an evening dress with fitted top and flared skirt, a thin belt cinched around her tiny waist. Across from it is a half-page ad for the girdle that supposedly makes that tiny waist possible.

I’m confused. From what Wren said about her, Evelyn wasn’t the type of woman to squeeze herself for the sake of fashion. Then I spot it: a thin column titled “A Woman’s Place.”

In my head, Evelyn’s voice sounds like Rosalind Russell’s in His Girl Friday—fast and smart and full of vinegar—as she describes how she parlayed the purchase of a decrepit farmhouse into the premise for a series of articles about life in upstate New York. I’m beyond impressed as she casually tosses off the incredible facts that she served in the marines and traveled to Korea. My sense of time accordions in on itself as I realize the guest editorship Evelyn was awarded is the same one Sylvia Plath wrote about in The Bell Jar.

The column is short as a piece of flash fiction. I’m primed for more before I even get to the end. The next one, though, about setting off from Manhattan on her big adventure, makes me feel inadequate by comparison. I’ve never had anything close to Evelyn’s confidence. Instead of going away to college, I stayed at home and commuted to the closest campus. The thrill of being accepted into Iowa for graduate school was undercut by losing my dad so soon after earning my MFA. Winning that fellowship in California was an amazing opportunity I was mostly too numb to appreciate. The night I met David—well, that’s as close as I’ve come to a trust fall, and look how that turned out. Evelyn left the city brimming with enthusiasm. I fled in a fog of grief. We may have taken the same roads to Schuywich, but her journey was born in bravado, while mine was driven by despair.

The beep-beeping of a horn stops me from turning to the next magazine in the stack. I follow the honking summons down my driveway, where a postal truck is idling at the road.

“I think you’ve been waiting for this one, Miss Beacon!” The carrier holds up an envelope in her latex-gloved hand before putting it in my mailbox. I wave as she drives away, wondering how in the world she knows what I’m waiting for. She’s right, though. I tear open an envelope from the State of New York in which I find my Certificate of Authority.

“Finally!” I’m about to activate my online storefront when I notice another official-looking envelope, this one from the Department of Agriculture. I stop in my tracks as I read the letter it contains.

“Shit,” I say aloud. It looks like my broken water heater wasn’t the only thing I overlooked in my rush to purchase Red Barn Books. I knew the property was preserved when I bought it, meaning it can never be developed or subdivided. That’s fine by me. I love the idea of a hundred-acre buffer between myself and the rest of the world. Apparently, though, there’s more to it than that. According to this letter, the land has to be recertified annually with a boundary review or I’ll lose my tax credits and be fined a percentage of the purchase price—a penalty that would ruin me financially. The property was last certified in 2015. I’m five years overdue.

“Shit,” I say again, tapping in the contact number for the local representative of the agricultural extension that’s listed at the bottom of the letter. I place the call, filled with foreboding that my venture in Schuywich is about to end before it even begins.

Chapter 9

January 19, 2015

Schuywich, New York

My darling Evelyn,

Do you remember how I snuck downstairs in the middle of the night that first time you visited me? Mother put you in the parlor, along with the upright piano none of us played and the china cabinet full of dishes too precious to eat from. I thought you’d be awake and waiting for me. Instead, you were snoring on the sofa.

I nudged your knees aside to make myself room. “Evelyn, are you up?”

“Sure, baby,” you mumbled, pulling me close.

“Why are you really here?” Over supper, you’d enthralled my family with a story about interviewing me for your article about women’s summer camps, but we both knew that was a fiction.

“You wrote that I should come visit.” Beneath the blanket, your hands found my breasts. “So here I am.”

“What happens now?”

You kept one hand on my breast. The other traveled down my nightgown and tucked between my legs. Electricity shot right through me. Never in a million years did I think something this exciting would happen to me in my parents’ dour home.