One Chapter Ends

Chapter Six

everyone told her to take a leap

that life is nothing if not a risk

but it wasn't the leap that terrified her

it was the faith needed to take it

Hazel spent the next two days at the bookstore, half-working, half-hiding from the unbearable heat. Creating an email account for the bookstore, she sent out the same email to everyone in her mailing list. The idea Charlotte had suggested the other day, of holding an open day to gain more publicity, had taken root inside a corner of her mind, which was now busily producing plans and ideas to add to it and enhance it.

She sent the email to her own account and forwarded a copy of it to Natasha.

From: hazelmb@icloud.com.au

To: natashadean@gmail.com.au

Subject: Fwd.: OPEN DAY – UNTITLED THE BOOKSTORE COOMERA

Dear Customer,

An open day will be held on Saturday, the 10th of November, at Untitled Coomera (the bookstore). The address can be found on flyers advertising the event, which shall soon be emailed out. The open day will begin at 9am and end at 5pm, our normal opening hours.

Local musicians are invited to perform outside the store. Artists and writers in the area are also invited to display their works and make public readings, respectively. There will be snacks and drinks and all books in the store will be discounted, on sale for $10 each.

It will be a wonderful day for everyone and we look forward to seeing you there.

Sincerely,

The Untitled team

Hey, Nat,

Just thought I'd forward this to you. I know you're busy with uni and work, but just thought you'd like to be kept in the loop J

A new friend of mine suggested the above idea to draw more customers to the store, since we haven't been getting many since Granddad died.

I've also started going to Scrabble club once a week. I didn't mention it before because I didn't know if I wanted to keep going, but a new project's come up with one of the people in my group. It's a writing project. Can't say much about it right now – it's new and very personal for him – but just know, I'm keeping busy and I'm all good.

How are you going? Haven't heard from you in a while. Remember that hangover cure!

Love,

Hazel xo

After ensuring that the emails were all sent out, she set about creating a flyer on her laptop, easy to print out and distribute. If I'm going to do this thing, she thought to herself as she typed, then I'm going to do it right.

Printing it out was a little harder than she thought. Her mother had been waiting to ambush her in the kitchen that morning when Hazel had come downstairs.

Hazel had barely seen the determined gleam in her eyes before Melanie launched into the same interrogation-slash-spiel Hazel had been hearing for months: Had she made her mind up about a degree yet? No, she hadn't. She should really sell the bookstore, had she given much thought to that since their last conversation? No, she hadn't – as she'd said, she was going to keep it.

Then her mother had begun talking about that damned engineering degree again, going on and on, repeating all the things Janice had said about it, all the things Hazel had heard a hundred times over and was now being forced to listen to again...