Read Chapter 16: The Night the Shop Flooded

The storm began at three in the morning.

Clara woke to Luc calling her name from the street.

Not her phone. Her actual name, shouted beneath Marianne's window.

She ran downstairs barefoot and opened the building door.

Rain came in sideways. Luc stood under the awning soaked through.

"The shop," he said.

Water was running under the rear door.

A blocked drain in the courtyard had overflowed, forcing rainwater through the threshold and across the back room floor. It was only a few centimetres deep, but books require very little water to become tragedy.

Clara switched on the lights.

"Oh God."

Three bottom shelves were already wet.

They moved without discussion.

Luc lifted boxes. Clara pulled books from low shelves and stacked them on tables. They used towels, buckets, a mop, two baking trays, and eventually the plastic storage boxes from Luc's apartment. At four, Sabine arrived in rubber boots after Luc called her. At four twenty, Nassim came with a wet vacuum borrowed from a neighbour. At five, Anaïs appeared carrying tarpaulins and industrial fans from a building site.

Clara stood in the middle of the shop, soaked to the knees, watching people save Marianne's books.

Something in her broke open.

Not grief exactly.

Its opposite.

At dawn, the rain eased.

They had lost 186 books.

It could have been thousands.

Everyone went home except Clara and Luc.

The shop looked wounded. Damp patches darkened the floor. Fans roared in the back room. Books covered every horizontal surface in untidy stacks.

Clara sat on the stairs.

Luc sat beside her.

"Insurance," he said.

"Yes."

"We document everything."

"Yes."

"The festival can still happen."

She nodded.

Then began crying.

Clara hated crying in front of people. She hated the loss of linguistic control, the swollen face, the need to be comforted. For months after Daniel left, she had cried in the shower and once in the frozen-food aisle of a supermarket, but almost never where anyone could witness it.

Luc did not say anything.

He put his arm around her.

That made it worse.

"I thought I was going to lose it," she managed.

"I know."

"I thought I was going to watch it happen."

"You didn't."

"It could still fail."

"Yes."

Clara laughed through tears. "You're terrible at this."

"You dislike false reassurance."

"Not always. Sometimes I want excellent lies."

He rested his cheek against her hair.

"Fine. The shop will live forever. Every pipe in Paris has sworn loyalty. No book will ever be damp again."

"Better."

"You will become extremely rich selling poetry."

"Now you've gone too far."

He smiled into her hair.

They sat until Clara's breathing steadied.

At seven, a woman knocked on the glass.

Clara wiped her face. "We're closed."

The woman held up a cardboard tray of coffees.

Behind her stood Monsieur Lefèvre with croissants. Then Mireille appeared carrying towels. Then two students from the poetry night. Then the Canadian father from Sunday story time.

Someone had posted about the flood online.

By eight, fifteen people were helping.

By nine, twenty-seven.

Customers arrived to buy damaged books at full price after Clara put up a sign saying PLEASE DO NOT RESCUE THE BOOKSHOP BY BUYING WET BOOKS.

They ignored her.

One student bought a warped copy of Jane Eyre and said, "Now it has weather."

Luc drew a sign for the window: SLIGHTLY DAMP. DEEPLY LITERARY.

People photographed it.

By midday, the shop had sold more books than on any ordinary Saturday.

Clara stood behind the till processing payments while volunteers moved around her.

Luc caught her eye from the doorway.

Community, he mouthed.

Clara smiled.

She did not need to say the word.