by Alexie Aaron
“We’ve warehoused most of them until we can safely bring them into the space.”
“Is the place still haunted?” Molina asked, remembering how the paper penguin rose out of a pile of books.
“Enchanted,” Clara corrected.
“We don’t know,” Nash said. “When I renovated the tailor shop, it took a while for the enchantment to show itself. It may never come back.”
“Will you be sad?” Molina asked.
“No, because it brought me Clara.”
“And me Nash.”
“Did you check out his drawers?” Molina asked.
“Yes, I did. Aside from boxers from the turn of the century, Nash checks out.”
“Good. Well, my work here is done. Keep an eye out for that crazy broad.”
“We will. Have a good life, Officer,” Clara said and reached out and hugged the hard woman. “Come in and see us from time to time.”
“You can count on that,” Molina said and left the shop.
“Where are the workmen?” Nash asked.
“You can lock up. Kalaraja and Johan had a little tiff with the supervisor at the zoning office. I fear the two have to pad a few palms in order to get the new plans okayed.”
“Maybe I should go down and speak with them,” Nash said. “Explain that our crazy uncles don’t speak for all of us.”
“It couldn’t hurt. How’s the ticker?” Clara asked, running her hand over Nash’s chest.
“Strong as ever. The doctor adjusted two medications.”
“And?”
“And what?” Nash said, turning his back on Clara.
Clara frowned. “Did they have the results of your genetic screening?”
Nash walked over and locked the door. He took Clara’s hand. “Let’s go in the workroom. I think you better sit down.”
Clara knew the possibility that Nash’s heart condition was genetic was pretty strong. She steeled herself to the knowledge that she would never bear children of her own. She loved Nash and that was that.
Nash led Clara over to the couch and walked over to the bookshelf.
Clara knew it couldn’t be good news if he was going to pour her a drink.
“Nash, it’s okay,” Clara said softly.
Nash pulled out a battered hardcover book. “This is my copy of Dracula by Bram Stoker. It’s not valuable except for his words and what I have contained within. I found it battered and unloved at the bottom of a box at an estate sale in New York. I never shared it with anyone. Rita wasn’t interested in anything that wasn’t new. She didn’t understand the beauty of old secondhand things like you do.”
Clara closed her eyes and saw the words. She recited, “There are darknesses in life and there are lights, and you are one of the lights, the light of all lights.”
Nash slid out the item he kept in the secret pocket he had made in the book’s cover. “Clara, please open your eyes,” Nash asked.
Clara did and concentrated on Nash’s face.
“Clara, when you stumbled into my bookshop, you began a process that melted my resolve of being alone and living my life for my books. With every conversation, argument, and kiss, I wanted to live for you. I feared that fate had something else in mind. But no, the universe has blessed me with you. Clara, will you do me the honor of being my wife and bearing my children?”
“Children?” Clara questioned. “You mean…”
“The transplant surgeon examined my heart. According to his notes, my heart must have been damaged by complications at my birth. It was as if my mother’s death had robbed me of a fully functioning heart. Ron gave me another chance. The genetic tests and the doctors assure me, outside of an aberration, the children you will conceive with me will have physically normal hearts. With care, I will live to see our grandchildren, if we’re so lucky.”
Nash opened his free hand, and inside it was a ring. “It was my grandmother’s. You reminded me I still had it when you told me about how you watched your grandfather when your grandmother walked into the room. You said that he saw her as the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.”
“You remembered that?” Clara asked, touched.
“I remember every good and bad thing you’ve ever talked to me about. You’re like a living book, a growing and nurturing book that wraps around me with every chapter of our life. We’ve gone through the meet-cute chapter, moved on to the just friends chapter, and will continue to be friends as long as we live. We entered timidly into our romance chapter, and I found myself loving you so much that I was afraid that I was not good enough for you. I didn’t want to stand in your way of having children or living a full life with a man. I pushed you at Wendell, who would have taken care of you and, I think, amused you. But I realize, in doing so, you may have felt that I undervalued you. I assure you it was just the opposite.”
“Nash, do you trust me to love you whether you’re healthy or not?”
“Yes, Clara, I do.”
“Then, Nash, I accept your grandmother’s ring as a symbol of our love and trust for each other. I sense we will have some interesting roads ahead of us, but I shall travel them as your loving wife and, hopefully, the mother of your children.”
Nash pulled her into his arms and showered her face with kisses before sliding the antique gold and ruby ring on her finger. A book fell from the shelf where it had rested after he fixed it. He had picked it up off the floor months ago where it lay with a broken spine. It wasn’t that the book was valuable, but the words were inside. Nash picked up Safe Haven by Nicholas Sparks. Nash handed the book to Clara.
She took the book and admired how Nash had given the book a new spine. The book opened with a sigh. Clara read, “Love doesn't mean anything if you're not willing to make a commitment, and you have to think not only about what you want, but about what he wants. Not just now, but in the future.” Clara handed it back to Nash and asked, “Why would Elma Kis be ashamed of reading these books?”
“There is so much snobbery in the book-reading world,” Nash said. “I think that most of the canon doesn’t take in the beauty of genre books. Look how long it took Stephen King to be celebrated.”
Clara, who sensed a lecture coming on, eased back on the sofa and played with the ring on her finger, given to her by a man who thought she was beautiful. Sure, he was challenging, careful, and clever, but she loved that he was. He wasn’t everybody’s cup of tea, but he was hers. She loved him and would continue to love him until her last breath.
“Now take Dean Koontz for example,” Nash continued. “He writes the best husbands. I want to be as loving and brave as the characters he writes.”
Clara got up, set the book gently on the workbench, and walked over to Nash. “You, Nash, are a book’s best friend. You celebrate the best and nurture the writers still learning their craft. I’m honored to have met the Knight of Pages.”
“And I’m honored you’ve consented to be my wife,” he said. “Now let’s go home and start working on those children I promised you.”
The Sparks book fluttered on the workbench.
Clara watched as Nash picked up the book and tenderly returned it to the shelf. “You have had enough stimulus for one day.”
The two walked arm-in-arm through the bookshop they would one day share with their children. They would explain why the books would never stay in alphabetical order or why when the gloaming comes, they bring adventure to whomever they choose.
As the door shut, the remaining books in the workshop conversed with their neighbor. The Hemingway teetered and the Emily Post twittered. Superman from the Thirties to the Seventies proudly displayed the dent in its cover, which had repelled a bullet and saved Clara Tyler. The others spoke about the sacrifice Safe Haven made to stall Elma Kis until the police arrived. All of them knew how close the bad book had come to destroying not only the people who cared for them but literature itself. And above all, they honored the Penguin Classics books that bonded together to sav
e the day.
***
Remember back, as you close this book. Did you choose this book or did this book choose you?
Books Referenced in The Knight of Pages
Listed in order of appearance
Good Omens: Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett
Twilight: Stephenie Meyer
Rebecca: Daphne du Maurier
Mary Poppins: P.L. Travers
The Catcher in the Rye: J. D. Salinger
Common Sense: Thomas Paine
Mein Kampf: Adolf Hitler
Sorrows of Young Werther: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The Secret Garden: Frances Hodgson Burnett
A Little Princess: Frances Hodgson Burnett
Little Lord Fauntleroy: Frances Hodgson Burnett
Crime and Punishment: Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Heart of Darkness: Joseph Conrad
The Master and Margarita: Mikhail Bulgakov
Psycho: Robert Bloch
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Jeff Kinney
Anne of Green Gables: Lucy Maud Montgomery
The One and Only Ivan: K.A. Applegate
Jane Eyre: Charlotte Brontë
Far Pavilions: M. M. Kaye
Too Many Clients: Rex Stout
Etiquette: Emily Post
Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine: Gail Honeyman
The Book Lover’s Tale: Ivo Stourton
Gone with the Wind: Margaret Mitchell
Fer-De-Lance: Rex Stout
Some Buried Caesar: Rex Stout
Green Eggs and Ham: Dr. Seuss
Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien
Wuthering Heights: Emily Brontë
Cars and Trucks and Things that Go: Richard Scarry
Can You Forgive Her: Anthony Trollope
Orley Farm: Anthony Trollope
The Way we live Now: Anthony Trollope
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings: Maya Angelou
Storm Front (The Dresden Files series): Jim Butcher
The Fellowship of the Ring: J. R. R. Tolkien
Practical Magic: Alice Hoffman
Brothers Karamazov: Fyodor Dostoevsky
Double Whammy: Carl Hiaasen
Every Breath: Nicholas Sparks
The Great Gatsby: F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Metamorphosis: Franz Kafka
Emma: Jane Austen
Superman from the Thirties to the Seventies: Crown Publishers, Inc.
Fahrenheit 451: Ray Bradbury
War and Peace: Leo Tolstoy
Safe Haven: Nicholas Sparks
The Nightingale: Kristin Hannah
Dracula: Bram Stoker
Alexie Aaron
After traveling the world, Alexie Aaron, a Midwestern native, returned to her roots where she’s been haunting for years. She now lives at the top of the mitt with her husband and family.
Her popular Haunted Series was born from her memories of fleeting shapes rushing around doorways, an heirloom chair that rocked itself, cold feelings of mysterious dread, and warm feelings from the traces of loved ones long gone. From the Haunted Series, another series was born. The Cid Garrett P.I. series, which takes the reader on a more conventional paranormal adventure.
Alexie also writes the Cin Fin-Lathen Mysteries. These mysteries, set in England and south Florida, combine action and intrigue with a liberal dose of humor.
Want more information? Visit www.alexieaaron.com for updates, blog posts, podcasts, and much, much more.