way to the southern side of the harbor, down a one-way street still paved with eighteenth-century granite setts. The South Harbor is the working- to middle-class side of town. It’s pretty here. Quiet. A few shops. Waterfront warehouses. But Mom parks the U-Haul in front of the best thing in the South Harbor.
The Saint-Martin family business.
SIREN’S BOOK NOOK
OLDEST INDEPENDENT BOOKSTORE IN THE SMALLEST STATE.
Our street-facing family shop, known to locals as “the Nook,” occupies the ground floor of a white bay-windowed house that’s on the National Register of Historic Places because of its Revolutionary War connection. A private living space is on the second floor—an apartment that’s accessible around back via an exterior flight of rickety wooden stairs above a three-hundred-year-old cobblestone alley. Mom and I lived here with Grandma until I was in sixth grade, but since Grandma Diedre and Mom do a lot of bickering every time they spend quality time together, we stay with Aunt Franny when we come to town, which isn’t often.
Still. The quaint shop looks the same.
Generations of Saint-Martins all lived in this one building.
A large, paned window holds a display of books about ships, and over the recessed doorway, a wrought iron mermaid holding an open book juts horizontally from a pole over the sidewalk.
“Salty Sally,” Mom says cheerfully to the mermaid, earlier anxiety left behind. “Mermaid boobs looking perky, as always. Guess we’re stuck here together again. At least for the time being.”
Pushing open the shop door, I’m engulfed by scents of old and new paper. Musty foxing on parchment. Ink. Worn leather. Orange wood polish. It smells inviting, and the New England folk music playing over the speakers is familiar and haunting; my Grandma Diedre collects recordings of traditional sea shanties and local broadside ballads.
Back during the Revolutionary War, this building housed both the Beauty post office and a printshop—I come from a long line of people who worship the printed word—which not only published the local newspaper but also seditious leaflets urging the rebels that lived in our Crown-supporting Loyalist town to “rise up against our redcoat overlords.” Several of those leaflets are framed on the walls, and the original eighteenth century printing press crouches in the middle of the shop, now used as a prop to display books about Rhode Island history.
The shop appears empty of customers as Mom and I circle around the old press and head toward the shop counter. Behind the register, lounging on a stool that squeaks loudly when she moves, is a nineteen-year-old community college student with her mother’s long legs and her late African American father’s warm brown skin. Her nose—which is dusted with the same pattern of splotchy freckles that all the Saint-Martin women have inherited—is buried in a historical romance paperback with a pirate on the cover.
Evie Saint-Martin.
“Credit card only. No cash. We close in two minutes,” Evie says in a bored voice from behind her book in the same way a spooky butler would sound answering the door in an old-dark-house horror film. A ceramic cup of tea steams at her elbow, her own private fog machine.
“I need to pay half in a sock full of pennies, half in a check that looks like it’s been dug out of a trash can,” I say.
She lowers her paperback until big eyes outlined dramatically with Cleopatra-style makeup peer at me from beneath thick bangs that have been chemically straightened and smoothed with a flat iron.
“Cousin,” she says brightly, her grin broad and slow as she pulls me into a hug over the counter. We nearly knock over a display of mermaid-topped writing pens near the register. She grasps my shoulders and pulls back to look me over. “See? This is why you should post more selfies. I had no idea your hair is longer than mine now. You should let me snip-snip it into something strange and beautiful,” she says, eyes twinkling like a mad scientist.
Evie cuts her own hair. She’s strange in a very good way and a million times cooler than me. And though her parents moved back and forth between Beauty and a couple hours away in Boston, causing us to miss some time growing up together, we’ve developed a long-distance friendship over the last few years.
She shoves me softly. “Can’t believe you’re here. Thought you’d be arriving after dark?”
“We downloaded an app to avoid police radar,” Mom explains, sliding around the counter to wind long arms around Evie. “You’ve never lived until you’ve been in a U-Haul going