The Bookshop Whisper. There was something peculiar about… | by Chelsea Judge | Bless Her Heart & Mine Too | Sep, 2025
There was something peculiar about Bluebird Books, a nearly forgotten shop nestled between a tax service and an antique clock repair store in downtown Mayberry Crossing. Most folks passed it by without a second glance — assuming it had closed down years ago. The windows were dusty, the lettering on the door was faded, and the chime above the door gave a low, ghostly ring, like it was too tired to holler anymore.
But those who found it always seemed to need something they couldn’t quite name.
On the first Wednesday of September, Calvin Dupree stepped through that door with a mind full of thoughts and no real intention of buying a thing. He was nearing sixty, a widower, retired postal worker, and part-time puzzle master at the senior center. He came for peace, mostly — quiet spaces, out of the way, where no one asked too many questions or told him he looked tired.
The bookshop smelled of lemon polish and paper. A ceiling fan creaked above, and a cat with the fattest cheeks Calvin had ever seen blinked once and went back to sleep.
“Good morning,” came a voice softer than rain. “You new?”
Behind the counter sat a white woman with cropped silver hair and round glasses that made her eyes seem impossibly kind. Her nametag read Betty, and she was knitting something in a soft shade of lilac.
Calvin gave a polite nod. “I was just… lookin’.”
“That’s how it always starts,” she said with a smile. “What are you lookin’ to forget or remember?”
He blinked. “Excuse me?”
Betty set down her knitting needles. “That’s what stories do, don’t they? Help us forget or remember. You look like someone who’s got a little too much of both.”
Calvin didn’t know what made him stay. Maybe it was the way she said it — not nosy, not pitiful — just true. Like she had books for the things nobody knew how to say.
He wandered the shelves, running his fingers along worn spines and forgotten titles. One in particular caught his eye: The Quiet Things. It wasn’t a book he remembered ever hearing about, and yet when he opened it, a folded piece of notebook paper slipped out and fluttered to the floor.
He picked it up. In neat, cursive handwriting, it read:
“The hardest part of grief is forgetting the sound of someone’s laugh. Write it down, every time you remember. Even if it makes no sense. That’s how you keep ’em close.”
–M.
Calvin’s throat tightened.
He bought the book, and every Wednesday after that, he returned.
Sometimes he and Betty talked about books. Sometimes they didn’t. Sometimes he helped her restock shelves, fix her old receipt printer, or change the light bulbs. She always had a chair ready for him by the window.
Over time, they shared stories — his wife’s humming while doing dishes, Betty’s late husband who used to pretend to hate her cats but secretly bought them gourmet food. They talked about sweet tea, aches that came with the weather, and the peculiar ache that came from being loved and then left behind.
One rainy morning, Betty handed him a leather-bound journal.
“For the laughs,” she said. “And anything else that deserves a second life on paper.”
Calvin opened it and stared at the first blank page for a long while.
He never considered himself a writer, but sitting in that dusty old shop beside a knitting widow and a yawning tabby cat, he began to believe there might still be more chapters in his story.
And maybe, just maybe, he wasn’t meant to read alone.
