The Little Bookstore of Big Stone Gap by Wendy Welch Read Free Book Online Page B

dust, glue, and knowledge, all jumbled together. In our shop. Filling our shelves. Life was good.
    Even better, people were talking about us. Friends told friends, and our phone began to ring. We weren’t open yet? When would we be? Did we have such and such books, or were we interested in having them brought in for swapping? Life was very good indeed.
    Ultimately, we approached the Grand Opening with more than three thousand volumes we hadn’t gone into debt for, and a lot of friends we wouldn’t have made without the early swaps. Even better, nobody but Jack and I knew how close we’d come to looking like idiots who’d decided on a whim to start a bookstore and made it up as they went along.

 
    C HAPTER 4
    Follow Your Ignorance Is Bliss
    All you need is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.

    —Mark Twain (aka Samuel Clemens) in a letter to his friend, Mrs. Foote, December 2, 1887
    O PENING OUR DOORS JUST THREE months after buying the Edwardian presented many challenges, but also kept us from worrying about stuff; too busy hurling ourselves at an idyllic future to contemplate some very realistic potential pitfalls, we just kept smiling and didn’t look down.
    Yet as the Grand Opening loomed, we got less sleep and more butterflies in our stomachs as all those words we weren’t saying hatched into living, fluttering fears. The night before we opened, lying sleepless and silent in bed, I rehearsed a litany of things that could go wrong: no one would come, no one would come, no one would come. Finally I said into the darkness: “What if no one comes?”
    My husband reached down, picked up Bert (our terrier, asleep on my feet), and placed him in my arms like a teddy bear. Bert blinked, startled and bleary-eyed, as Jack said, “Go to sleep,” rolled over, and buried his good ear in the pillow.
    I lay there, clutching the bemused Bert until morning.
    Opening Day had been chosen to coincide with the annual Home Craft Days held at a nearby college. One of their shuttles stopped across the street from our store. We sneaked out in the wee hours and taped a flyer to the back of the shuttle stop sign: “Waiting for the bus? Why not spend a few minutes with us?” We got extra customers that way, and since we took the sign down as soon as Craft Days ended, the town manager only mentioned casually, a few days later when he happened to be passing by and just popped in for a cup of tea, that not everyone knew posting personal notices on public property was illegal within town limits.
    The Grand Opening had that surreal quality of a wedding when it’s yours. Is this really happening? Did we actually pull it off? And is that kid sitting in the parked car out front using an e-reader? (We decided we didn’t believe in omens. A firm sense of denial can be a dreamer-turned-business-owner’s greatest asset.)
    The mayor read a proclamation welcoming us to town and establishing our business. Adriana Trigiani, hometown girl and author of the bestselling Big Stone Gap series of novels, cut the ribbon. A shop full of ceremony attendees clapped; sure, they’d come to see Adri, but still filled our store to standing room only. They looked around. They bought things. We sold so many books that one shelf went bare again—but people were bringing books, too!
    Throughout Opening Day we met more of those who would become regulars. Bill Peace is a Korean War veteran; that first morning he entered our shop, turned right with a military click of his heel, and worked his way around the room title by title. It took him an hour and a half. We thought his thoroughness was due to our low inventory, but as the months have rolled into years, Bill keeps that same pattern.
    Thelma and Louise showed up as well; to this day, we don’t know what their real names are. Cheerful, laugh-a-minute addicts of gruesome crime novels, they made a beeline for our puny little stack of Tess Gerritsen thrillers and bought them all. Like Bill, they would