Read Online The Do-Over by Kathy Dunnehoff - Free Book Online

uninterrupted reading. She’d hit a bookstore and hit it hard, with cleavage. First, because she wanted to know the exact definition of giddy. She’d never had need of the word before and felt compelled to know more about it, and second, she wanted to sit in her very own place and read until her eyesight was blurry, just because she could.
     
    She found just the bookshop in the Gastown neighborhood, her neighborhood. The place had dark green shelves, golden carpet, and the walls were plastered with clocks. There were regular clocks in black and silver but also sunflower ones, two sailboats, and a fairly disturbing clown. It was a unique place, and that was harder and harder to say about bookstores. In college the bookstores she’d frequented were all independents. There was an adventure to book shopping that the chains had diminished. You never knew if you’d find the book you wanted or a cat or free tea or a set of twin babies corralled up in a playpen in the corner.
    Once she remembered coming upon a stuffed cat, a dead pet some taxidermist had taken a run at preserving. Its golden marble eyes needed a dusting, but it was perched, somewhat naturally, in the self-help section. Personally, it hadn’t made her feel any better about the advice dispensed on the shelves below it. It wasn’t that she read that sort of thing, but she was certain she wouldn’t be able to embrace Living Life Authentically or even Making Love to a Man, with Zest when faced with a sawdust-filled, matted cat corpse.
    She had shopped non-fiction faithfully when she was pregnant with Logan. She’d bought every baby book in the world, read them, taken notes, and then discovered that no one knew anything about her baby. She’d had to figure him out over and over again. He’d changed with every stage, sometimes with every day. The early years were exciting and exhausting. Then when he’d started school, the family had found a rhythm. It was good, the stability, the predictability. When had it begun to drain her? When had she realized that even that would change, and he’d be leaving home?
    She stopped at the reference section. There were so many answers she felt in need of, but it amazed her that readers required reference for Shopping New Hampshire’s Furniture Outlets or finding Free Stuff for the Rabbit Lover .
    She reached for a small paperback dictionary. Portable was good for her current nomadic lifestyle. She smiled. Nomadic lifestyle, that was good. She flipped through the G’s, getting derailed for a few minutes by germinal , of or relating to a germ; get-up-and-go , which she had no idea was hyphenated; and gewgaw , a showy trifle. Giddy . She’d nearly forgotten what she’d been looking for. Causing dizziness . That didn’t sound very appealing. Not serious . Better. Frivolous . Frivolous had promise. She’d never been accused of that before. Maybe she’d enjoy having that hurled at her. Mara Jane Mulligan… she looked up frivolous . Your lack of seriousness is appalling. That was excellent. She flipped back to giddy . Silly . She turned to the S’s and the first definition hit her heart. Happy .
    “Anything I can help you with?” An older woman, her bi-focals attesting to her power as a reader, stood alongside her.
    “Yes.” Mara held up the dictionary, “I’ll take this, and I’m looking for something new to read.”
    “What kind of books do you like?”
    “I mostly read teaching methodology texts, but I want something entirely different. Something giddy. Something happy.”
    The woman blinked, then gathered herself like any good worker in retail sales would. “Romance? We have a humor section. Some of the newer mysteries are a lot of fun. Fantasy might be good.”
    Mara held the dictionary to her chiffon covered chest, the pages still opened to giddy . “I’ll take a mixed dozen.”
     
    Vampires had eyes like hers. At least the vampire described in the third book she’d read did. Blood red. She wondered if