Summary

As she has aged Aalyia has become unable to sleep well. It is sleep she misses the most, she says. As she lies awake she relives her younger years and misses her work in the bookstore. It was Hannah who had helped Aalyia get a job at the bookstore after her husband left her. The man who owned the store had agreed to hire Aalyia temporarily until he could find someone to represent the store. She’d worked at the store for fifty years. After the man who owned the store died, she inherited the huge oak desk she’d admired when she first entered the store. She describes an antique comic book that sits on her desk and describes how she got it by trading her plastic handbag to the boy who owned it when she was ten. Also on the desk...