LITMIR.BIZ

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dispatcher to let her know I’d be having a fire the first thing that morning. She’d taken my information and address and the fire was set for eight o’clock.

      I took yet another shower and headed to the store. The first thing I did when I opened the door was take a deep breath. Peroxide and soap hit my senses.

      I smiled and savored the new scent. Today was going to be a good day.

      I made my way downstairs and started my daddy’s coffee. Normally, I would have made sweet tea for our customers as well, but the tearoom would be closed for three more days thanks to Cade’s boxes filling every table and chair. He’d promised to move all of the boxes out by Monday, and I was going to hold him to it.

      Princess came in through her pet door at the back of the store, and I immediately looked for her cohort. Thank God, he hadn’t followed her. As she approached, however, I could smell his cologne.

      “He’s a bad influence. You know that, right?”

      Princess looked up at me with innocent eyes.

      “Do we need to have a talk about you staying out all night long?”

      Princess snorted and headed for her bedazzled dog bowl for breakfast. She wasn’t going to be happy with the healthy meal that awaited her.

      “I never thought I’d have a teenager at thirty!” I yelled, but she ignored me completely and disappeared behind the pink curtain to the store room.

      Her bowl shuffled across the floor and from the sound of it, Princess was none too happy about the dried mealworms I’d put down for her. I hid a smile only a parent trying to get their kid to quit eating junk food would understand. While she ate in a huff, I prepared a bath that would do away with the scent of her new boyfriend. I knew I wouldn’t have to coax her into the water; after being out all night, Princess was going to relish rolling around in one tub and then the next. It was her favorite thing to do.

      Just having her home eased my mood. Her nose pushed out from under the curtain. It twitched as she stood there and smelled the scent of her bath. She knew something was up, but the draw of her favorite pastime caused her to come out and make a dash for the tubs. Seconds later, she was rolling around in the de-skunk water and then rinsing in the second tub. I sat down and watched her frolic in the water and just enjoyed the moment.

      When she finished, we both relished the time together as I toweled her off, rubbed her belly, and scratched her ears. Our favorite nighttime routine wasn’t too bad during the morning hours either.

      I looked at my phone and realized I needed to get busy. If I didn’t get the fire going, I wouldn’t have it almost out by the time we opened the store at ten.

      I gave Princess a final pat and said, “Mama’s gotta go to work.”

      Princess shook her body like a dog would after a bath, her little tail shaking last. Then she headed for her bed under the register. I had no doubt she’d sleep the day away.

      I grabbed the lighter fluid and matches I’d purchased and headed out the back of the Barn. As I approached my pyre, that same feeling of dread came over me that I’d had all day the previous day. There was something about burning books that just didn’t sit well with me. It was bad enough that I was breaking the law by burning something that the trashman would take, but voluntarily burning books was just wrong on so many levels. I knew the books couldn’t be saved. I’d created a business of selling used books and creating art out of those that were too damaged to resell, but these weren’t good for resale or book art, and because of that, I was stuck with no other recourse. It still didn’t make me feel any better. Today’s task was the greatest sin a bookseller could commit.

      I kicked the boxes at the bottom of the pile, then reached through to rattle the boxes on top as I yelled to make sure no critters had decided to nest in them overnight. When nothing scurried out, I sprayed the lighter fluid in between to make sure the bottom boxes were saturate. I bent down to light the pages I’d curled up for kindling around the base.

      “There she is!”

      I didn’t recognize the masculine voice coming from the other side of the fence.

      Holy schnikes, what if a child had hidden in the middle of the boxes! I quickly shook out the flame that had leapt to life on the end of my match and stood up.

      “Are you missing someone?” I yelled over the fence.

      A camera appeared in response.

      Fuzz Buckets.

      A picket sign appeared next. Bobbing above the privacy fence, it read: Censorship is un-American, written in bold red letters on a large white poster board. A second sign appeared: The Book Barn Princess dictates what you can read. It was written in cursive and was a little hard to read, but its message got across loud and clear. Especially when it was accompanied with a chant that was getting louder by the moment. “Stop the Book Barn’s Book Burn!”

      My heart raced. This was a nightmare. How had anyone found out about my plans? As the chants grew louder, I could only see two choices in front of me. I could abandon my plans and wait until they went away. Or I could get it over with and destroy the evidence. If I waited, the crowd could grow. Cade would hate that, and Mateo would be ticked off.

      I struck the match and lit the pyre in multiple places. It was in a full blaze when my daddy walked out the back door of the Barn. The crowd on the other side of the fence sounded like it had grown to around fifteen people from what I could tell by the volume of the voices and the number of women sitting on shoulders yelling obscenities at me.

      “Please tell me you’re not burning the books,” Daddy said.

      I looked at him and a tear slipped down my cheek. “Burning books is the last thing I ever thought I’d do. But I didn’t have a choice.” My voice hitched, and Daddy put his arm around my shoulder.

      “It’ll be alright. This will blow over.”

      No sooner had he said those words than Liza Twaine came around the end of the fence down by the river with a cameraman. His camera was on his shoulder, and a red light at the base of it was blinking a warning in our direction. He was documenting every last moment for the local news. Daddy tried to push me behind him, but I wasn’t about to let that happen. I moved up next to him to let the world know we stood together.

      “You’re on private property, Liza Twaine,” I said.

      “Why are you burning books at the Book Barn Princess?” Liza held a large microphone in her hand and turned her best side to the camera. She hadn’t been accompanied by cameraman for a long time. Not since she’d broken into Scarlet’s trailer to get the scoop on a story. That crime had gotten Liza in trouble with the law and the local townspeople. Since then she’d been demoted to her cell phone for interviews. Unfortunately for us, it seemed she’d gained back her status at the television station.

      Dagnabit! This day had started off so good. Now I knew what being a criminal was really like.

      “You’re trespassing,” I said. My tone was cold and my eyes squinty. I could blame it on the morning sun backlighting her, but I hoped she saw warning behind my expression.

      If she did, she ignored it.

      “Our viewers would like to know what drives a bookstore owner to burn literary works of art?” Fate screwed with me at that moment. It was almost as if it was thumbing its nose at me for comparing Liza to an out of control five-year-old the previous day. A box tumbled down from the top of the pile, bypassing the branch that was meant to hide it, and several books spilled out at the base of the pyre.

      “Why would you burn The Catcher in the Rye, Huckleberry Finn, Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre?” Liza directed the cameraman toward the classics catching fire.

      “You know good and well why we’re burning these books, Liza Twaine.” Daddy chastised Liza, and I thought for a moment she was going to quit. Her shoulders slumped ever so slightly in her sleeveless purple blouse. But fate was on her side today. A box on the outside edge began

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