Page 35 of The Bookbinder's Guide to Love

“Did you get your books back?”

Wes rolled his eyes. He almost wished he hadn’t involved his father and Oz in this to begin with. But he had. He’d been so ticked that Grandpa had left books to a twenty-six-year-old woman that he’d actually asked his dad for a favor.

And his dad had unfortunately delivered.

“I’m working on it.”

He pushed his way past his brother and headed down the stairs, where he could hear his father in the kitchen.

“Dad.”

“Son. You don’t have crap for groceries. I’ll order some and you and your brother can Venmo me your share.”

“Okay,” Wes said.

He went to get a cup of coffee and then leaned against the counter and took a deep breath. “Oz mentioned you want to go through the house, mark things for sale. I’m planning to stay here for the next six weeks.”

“Why?”

“I’m getting to know Grandpa’s friend and trying to figure some stuff out.”

“What stuff?” his dad asked.

Emotional stuff he knew his father didn’t want to talk about. “Book stuff. Also, Sera and her friends are attending the funeral.”

His father shook his head. “Now she’s Sera. What’s going on?”

“She and Grandpa were friends, like he was with Hamish,” Wes said, going to sit at the kitchen table, where he had been working on repairing the book. He was careful to keep his coffee cup out of the way of the pages.

“Really? That seems a bit unlikely since he was so crotchety. I thought you said she used him to get the books you wanted.”

“Yeah, about that. I might have jumped to conclusions, Dad. The books aren’t even worth that much,” Wes said.

“Then why did you send a letter on our letterhead?”

His dad came and sat down across from him. Wes started to get his back up, hearing in his father’s question some kind of accusation, but then he just let that go. His father wasn’t any better at interpersonal relationships than he was. Maybe he was curious. Maybe he wasn’t.

What could Wes say? He’d gone to his dad and not Oz to ask about the letterhead because he knew Dad and Grandpa were usually fighting about something. He took a deep breath.

“Because I fucked up with Grandpa and I saw his gift to her as a final way of telling me he hadn’t forgiven me.”

His dad leaned back in the chair, pushing it up so it was balanced on the back two legs. “Yeah, the old man did like to always have the final word.”

“Yeah, something he passed on.”

His dad almost cracked a smile. “What happened between you two?”

Wes put his head down, staring at the cream on top of his coffee as if that was going to make it any easier to find the words. It didn’t.

“I was an ass. I mean, he was bossy, but I was an ass, and I told him I didn’t need his advice,” Wes said. He could still remember Grandpa standing there in the shop where they’d been working together, watching him with that cold, icy Sitwell glare. Wes had known he’d gone too far, but he was twenty-four and an adult, goddammit. Wes still believed he’d had to stand on his own to get his business to where it was today. But surely there had been a better way to do it.

“Oz and I had a showdown like that,” his dad said.

“You did?” he asked. His brother and father had always seemed like two peas in a repressed pod.

“Yeah. And like Grandpa, I told him it was my way or the highway,” his dad said.

“How’d you get past that? And why didn’t you tell me?” he asked.