The Last Bookmark

The bookstore was quieter than I remembered.

It had always been quiet, of course soft music, the hush of turning pages, the occasional ring of the front bell but this quiet felt different. Heavy. Hollow. The kind of silence that fills a place after someone leaves for good.

Margot’s Books & Bindings had sat on the corner of Elm and Grant for 43 years. It never needed a flashy sign or a website. People came because they knew, because it had a pulse, a soul stitched together with spines and bookmarks and the scent of ink on paper.

And Margot herself, always behind the counter in a shawl and sneakers, with a pencil tucked in her hair and glasses perched on the edge of her nose. She didn’t say much unless you asked her about the Brontës or Borges and then she lit up like a lantern. If you stood still long enough, she’d hand you a book you didn’t know you needed.

She handed me mine when I was twelve.

It was a battered copy of The Secret Garden, and it came with a green silk ribbon I still use as a bookmark. I hadn’t meant to stay that long, just ducking in to get out of the rain, but she saw something in me a kind of loneliness, maybe and placed that book in my hands without saying a word.

I was back the next day and the day after.

Now, decades later, I stood at the entrance for the last time. Margot had passed away quietly in her sleep, and the store, her home, her heart, was being closed down. Her niece, Harper, had flown in to handle the estate. She’d invited a few of us who had known her best to come say goodbye before everything was boxed up.

The walls were still lined with books, though a few gaps now showed where favorites had already been taken. The ladder still leaned against the poetry section, and the corner chair where I spent hundreds of rainy afternoons reading Vonnegut and Neruda still sat with a blanket tossed over the back, as if Margot had just stepped out for tea.

I moved slowly, letting my fingers trace the spines as if they were old friends. Some of them were. First editions, dog eared paperbacks, leather bound classics, obscure titles in French and Spanish. In the children's nook, I found my name scribbled in the guest book she kept for young readers. I’d signed it at thirteen: “One day, I’ll write something worth putting on these shelves.”

I smiled. I never told her, but I did. Three years ago. She had put it right in the center of the “Local Authors” section, beneath a handwritten sign that said: “Our very own.”

Harper met me by the counter. She looked tired, overwhelmed. “You can take anything you’d like,” she said. “Especially if it meant something to you.”

I nodded and walked around the old oak desk. There was a drawer I knew well the place Margot kept bookmarks. Hundreds of them. Handmade, gifted, collected. Some pressed with dried flowers, others painted with galaxies or poetry. I chose a simple one: a black strip with gold lettering that read: “Books are how we carry each other.”

I slipped it into my pocket and paused before leaving.

There was a bell by the door. A small brass one Margot had hung when the store opened. She said it was “for departures, not arrivals.” She only rang it when someone left with a book she loved. It was her secret way of blessing the journey.

I pulled the string and let the bell chime the sound was soft,pure,and final.

That night, I sat in my office, surrounded by shelves filled with stories, and opened The Secret Garden. The green silk ribbon was still in place, right where it had been the day she gave it to me. I reread the first chapter, slowly, aloud. When I closed the book, I held it to my chest, feeling the weight of all that had been.

Now, when my daughter asks for a bedtime story, I let her choose from Margot’s books. She picks by color, not title, but that’s okay. The love is there. I’ve started writing again, too. Nothing fancy, just little essays and letters and scribbles in the margins. But when I write, I hear Margot’s voice in my head, soft and firm: “Say what only you can say.”

The bookmark is framed now. It hangs above my desk, between a photo of the store and the dedication page from my novel.

Books are how we carry each other.

And every time I write, every time I read to my child, or recommend a story to a friend, I know I’m carrying her still.