Some Other Time: A Novel by Angela Brown

Author:Angela Brown [Brown, Angela]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little A
Published: 2025-02-01T05:00:00+00:00

* * *

“Everyone on their best behavior!” Gabby shouts not ten minutes later when they step into the bookshop, a delicate set of bells jingling on the glass door. Two twentysomething girls—both dressed casually in jeans and cute, comfortable shirts—are seated on the floor, unpacking boxes of books. They glance up and wave. “Boss lady is back from her one-day detour on the heartbreak highway!” Gabby’s bag—which looks like something college-Maggie might wear—slaps against her side as she comfortably breezes through the space. “No one give her a hard time!”

Ellie pauses and looks around, her mouth agape, like she’s on a mission to catch flies. She has stood right here in this exact spot numerous times in her life—as a young girl out shopping with Bunny, as an employee here in her twenties, as a mother on the hunt for good picture books with her own daughter at her side. But right now, her feet planted on the charming white penny tile that makes up the small shop’s entryway, it all feels different. This store and everything in it is no longer someone else’s story. Today, for the first time ever, it is hers.

Magnolia Books.

At least, this is what’s painted on the front window, the one Ellie walked past on her way inside. Magnolia. Ellie’s favorite flower. The one that, in a different life, serves as the namesake for something—someone—else.

Maggie.

“So, are you going to tell me what happened?” Gabby asks. Her vintage T-shirt rides up a touch as she speaks, revealing an inch-wide sliver of her flat stomach.

Ellie watches her old roommate (Dear God, is she really friends with Gabby—the one who twice nearly burned down their apartment—in this bizarre, altered version of her life?) as she steps behind the store’s front counter—pretty, rounded, white, and accented with a few small potted plants. It is exactly the sort of thing Ellie herself would have picked (and apparently has), something to replace the store’s old dark wood that was inside this space when Ellie was last here several weeks ago to buy another round of sad self-help titles (Flying Solo: A Guide for a Happy Empty Nest; Uncoupling Your Heart: A Road Map to Healing).

But this is not the only change. Outside, the shop’s redbrick exterior has also been painted in a fresh coat of white, two classic potted topiaries on either side of the door, like Ellie always felt the longtime owners—a couple who had earned their AARP cards years earlier—ought to do. How, she privately wonders, did she not register these changes when she drove down this block yesterday?

Gabby opens and shuts some counter drawers, then drums a computer keyboard, its screen illuminating with life. She looks up at Ellie. Her clunky, presumably handcrafted necklaces, which look just a step above the macaroni jewelry Maggie once made, bang into each other when she moves.

“So?” Gabby asks.

But Ellie hardly hears her. She slides off her book bag, drops it in a heap beside her, and glides toward the walls of

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