(DISCONTINUED)

○ 1.4 :: Gemma ○

Dedicated to tooswegalicious because I love her profile picture and it always makes me smile when it appears in my notifications whenever she votes.

[[Thank you for voting every chapter.]]

[[[ Gotta find a way to get that picture to me, girl.]]]

PSST... YOU GUIZE... I NEED A NEW COVER

*

We continued talking long after both of us had drained our cups. The basic things were covered: like our favourite books and authors, our hobbies, and all the general stuff you're typically meant to talk about when you first meet people. I'd noticed that she'd gracefully skipped over the subject of family even though she'd asked me about mine, only mentioning her son every now and then. I could tell she really loved him, and it was clear that even though he didn't visit often, he was a true mummy's boy.

"So what made you want to open a bookshop?" I asked finally, voicing the question I'd been wanting to ask for hours now. It was clear that the shop was dear to Anne's heart, and I'd figured out it was something to do with the family that she hadn't wanted to discuss. Her green eyes darted from the fire over to me before they flicked back to the flames, looking more distant than before. I looked down into the cup in my lap, noting the remnants of cocoa powder in the bottom of my mug. I felt guilty for being so nosy, for asking about her family (albeit in a roundabout way) when it was clear she'd rather not discuss it.

Anne finally looked away from the burning wood and stared down into her cup like I had been not a second before. She suddenly seemed so much older - hunched in her rocking chair with a mug in both hands - and the flames did nothing but bring out the evidence of age that were so faint when you looked at her in a normal light. "My daughter," she said after a few minutes of silence, her voice so quiet that I had to strain to hear her over the flicker of the embers. She didn't say anything else, but I still itched to know more.

"Gemma?" I asked hesitantly, immediately regretting it when pain passed momentarily over her features, just like it did when I'd mentioned the name back outside before I was hired.

"Yes."

"Is she...?"

The word dead hung between us, heavy in the air.

"She'd always wanted to own a bookshop," Anne announced, blatantly ignoring my unfinished question. A gentle grimace of pity formed on my mouth when I realized the obvious answer, but I looked down towards the old floorboards to conceal it. Nobody liked to be pitied. "She loved reading. If you needed her, you could always guarantee that she was curled up with a book somewhere. Even when she was out with her friends she had her kindle or her phone out, reading something." Anne took her feet off the footrest and pushed it away slightly, tucking them underneath her in a motion that seemed much too innocent, too childlike for a moment like this.

"Anne," I called to her, because she didn't seem to be in the room at that moment. Even as when she spoke, she seemed so detached. "You don't have to-"

"I want to," she cut in. "I need to."

I put my mug down on the varnished wood beside my feet and tucked them under me like Anne had, settling deeper into the beanbag. "Okay." Silence stretched on in the room, both of us seemingly at a loss of what to say. "What was she like?"

"She was beautiful," Anne described. "That's only way to phrase it. She didn't look like me, no matter how much people said it, but she didn't quite look like her father, either." I mentally catalogued the slight pause before the word father, filing it under 'Sensitive, DO NOT OPEN'. "She was a brunette, but as soon as she turned fourteen she dyed her hair blonde. At one point, she dyed it pink." Anne chuckled quietly. "Of course, she pulled it off perfectly. She always did with everything." There was another pause, longer this time, in which I allowed Anne to reminisce. "She was always so outgoing and confident, not the type of girl you'd expect to love reading as much as she did. She got on so well with her brother, too. They would never admit it, but they adored each other." She leaned back in her chair, causing it to rock back and forth slightly.