Along the Cane River: Books 1-5 in the Inspirational Cane River Romance Series

by Mary Jane Hathaway

  “Remember books? But so few people read. Or they read only the new stuff.” He motioned to a thousand page book with a green dragon on the cover.

  “Every good book holds truth in it. The first year Charlie worked here, she nagged at me until I read that series. I still have it on my shelf. I’m sure a critic would reduce it to a coming of age story, or something about a boy discovering how special he is. But for me, it’s all about remembering our family, our past, and the things we once believed about ourselves before we got beat down and discouraged.”

  Austin stared at the cover and thought of his parents. They’d waited for Gideon to get out of prison, never forgetting their adopted son for a moment, even when he’d committed a terrible crime. He thought of the way they always treated Tom like their child, rather than placing him on a pedestal in the clouds now that he was a pastor. And as for Austin, they always told him how proud they were of him, but never made him feel as if he had to reach some exalted job position in order to make them happy. He was their son and they held him close even when he’d been at school or during the long back packing trip he’d taken one summer. They passed down their wisdom, their traditions, their faith. They remembered. And he’d failed to honor that.

  “Look at me, giving you a big speech when you just wanted some reading material.” Alice’s face had gone pink. “Never ask a bookstore owner why she sells books, right?”

  “Thank you.” He took the whole set from the shelf. “I’ll take these.”

  “Oh, you don’t have to buy those just because of my speech. I’m sorry I cornered you in here.” She held up a hand as if she wasn’t going to let him take the books. “I can get so passionate that I completely forget my manners. You should ask Paul about the first time we met. I accused him of being a book murderer and then tried to throw him out of the store.”

  He laughed, trying to imagine sweet-faced Alice, now with a baby in her arms, throwing anybody out of her store. “But he came back.”

  “He did. He actually moved into the apartment you’re renting.” She smiled, a softness in her eyes.

  “And when you saw him all the time, you just fell in love?” He’d heard that opposites attract but he couldn’t think of anything worse than fighting with a woman for a few decades, no matter how cute she was.

  “Not quite. I’m actually starting to wonder about that apartment. First Paul. Then Henry.” She cocked her head and fixed him with a unfocused look, as if she were seeing into his future. “Anyway, I guess I finally realized life was easier when you plow around the stump, instead of over it, although it took me a good while to stop fighting him and just listen.”

  Austin felt like he’d missed a step somewhere. It had been a long, hard day and right about now, a hot meal and a good book sounded just right. Rather than ask for a details, he just nodded.

  “Here,” she said, switching gears again, “borrow the first one and see if you like it.”

  “You run a bookstore, not a library. I think we’ve been over this.”

  “Silly.” She took the book from his hand and walked toward the register. “There have to be some perks to living in this old place, right? Paul complains that the wifi is about as fast as smoke signals.”

  “I have noticed a bit of a lag.” He followed her back to the desk. The building was beautiful and so much nicer than anything his college friends had at the moment. Now he was getting free books. Just like his job, he seemed to have lucked into a situation much better than he deserved. People said cheaters never prosper. Apparently, that wasn’t a hard and fast rule.

  Alice gently placed Aurora in the playpen and put the book in a bag. “Let me know what you think.” She stopped, reconsidering. “Actually, if you hate it, don’t tell me. I love this book. I might get offended.”

  “I’ll be sure to make up a glowing critique.”

  “I bet it’s on Cliffs Notes,” she said, laughing. “Or you could just ask Charlie to write you a little treatise on its finer points. I’ll never know.”

  He took the bag from her and forced a smile. Of course Alice was just making a joke, but Austin wondered if there was something in his face that said he was simply blowing smoke and crafting pretty phrases wherever he went. “Thanks again.”

  “Anytime,” she said and he could tell she meant it. As he walked out the back entrance and up the wooden staircase to the upstairs apartments, he felt his spirits sink lower and lower. Just when he convinced himself it was all in the past, it showed up again, hovering at the edges of every conversation and every new friendship. He was a cheater and a thief, no matter how hard he tried to forget.

  He unlocked the oversized oak door and let himself into the apartment. It smelled like warm bricks, books, and a late summer’s evening. The large fireplace dominated the far wall and he slumped onto the one recliner at the other end. The place was much too nice for someone just starting out but Tom and Gideon had talked to Alice and everything had been arranged before he’d even seen the place. He stared at the fancy iron work around the hanging lights and the floor to ceiling windows that faced the waterfront, and wished he didn’t feel like such a fraud.

  Opening the book, he glanced through the first few pages. His dad always said, watch out when you’re gettin’ everything you want. For years he’d thought that was a self-defeating little phrase meant to keep someone in their place. He understood the wisdom now. Much too late, he knew that sometimes a person will do whatever it takes to get what they want, and it doesn’t matter who they hurt.

  Chapter Three

  All changed, changed utterly: a terrible beauty is born.

  ―Yeats

  “Hey, did you hear your old house got fifty pizzas delivered to it?” Alice shook the rain from her umbrella and stowed it by the door. Her dark curly hair was damp and she looked tired.

  Charlie paused a second too long. “Wow, really?”

  “Yep. Paul heard from Bix who heard it from Barroni’s Pizza that someone placed an online order. Barroni’s called the number, checked the card, and everything seemed on the up and up,” she said. “It was so weird. They even cross-checked the order number with the online white pages and it said that was the new number for your house. But then they got there with the pizzas, and the owners said there was no back-to-school party and they had no idea what had happened.”

  “Some dumb kid pranking his friends, probably.” She lowered her head and pretended to look for a paper under Van Winkle’s furry backside. He had recently taken to sprawling on the desk instead of sleeping in his usual tidy circle and she was about to yield possession of the desk rather than fight him for what she needed.

  Alice walked around the desk and lifted Aurora from her playpen, giving her a kiss on each chubby cheek. The little baby squealed happily and batted at Alice with her fists. “They said they’ve had trouble like this ever since they moved in. Huge orders from take-out places, moving vans showing up every Tuesday morning at dawn, magazine subscriptions they didn’t order. Just crazy. They changed their number four times already. They’ve even had packages delivered full of dog poop.”

  Charlie closed her eyes for a moment. All that was meant for her. When she made the mistake of baring her heart to someone, they turned her online friends against her. Her guild took their revenge, they doxxed her, sending her personal info out into cyberspace. The only thing that saved all of that hassle from really following her was that she’d never given out her full legal name. They’d gotten enough, though. The people who bought her parents’ house last year were now living the nightmare meant for her. “That’s awful,” she managed.

  “It is, poor people. They’re thinking of moving.” Alice swayed from side to side, Aurora curled in the crook of her arm. She cleared her throat. “I hate to ask, but can you run an errand for me?”

  “Sure. Or I can watch the baby and you can go.” Charlie reached out without waiting for a response, but Alice shook her head.

  “No, I took too long at the post office. I thin
k she’ll be ready to eat again soon and I don’t want her to scream at you while I’m gone.” She peered out the front windows at the sheets of rain. “I hate to make you go out in this, but if the choice is between a wet baby, a hungry baby, and you…”

  Charlie smiled. “I don’t mind being the low girl on the totem pole.” She lifted Aurora’s little hand and gave it a kiss. “Where am I going?”

  “To the juvenile justice center. I had an idea I wanted to pass by Austin.”

  She froze, Aurora’s pudgy fingers still in hers. “Why don’t you call?” She hoped that Alice didn’t have any ideas about fixing them up. Austin was definitely not her type. Nobody was, at the moment.

  “See… Here’s the deal…” Alice shifted her feet as if slightly embarrassed. “I think there’s a better chance of having it approved if we do this in person.”

  “You mean if I do this in person, and I don’t know what I’m doing yet.” Charlie didn’t mean to sound snippy but she was already imagining a conversation with Mr. Golden Boy. She would explain why she was there, and he would smile at her, completely ignoring what she said. Or he might listen, then present it to his supervisors as his own brilliant idea. Or he might relentlessly pick holes in her plan instead of giving it any chance at all. “Maybe you can have Paul go down there. They’re already friends, right?”

  Alice sighed and slumped into the chair. “I need you to do it. Not me.”

  She made a humming noise and waited. This was sounding awfully suspicious.

  “The other day I asked Cora if the kids there had library cards. She said she’d ask around. She got back to me and said it seemed like none of them did.”

  “Okay. Maybe we can run a sign-up or something. But they’ll need a current―”

  “Phone bill, electric bill, driver’s license. Right. And honestly, are they going to go through all that trouble?”

  “Probably not.” Anybody who thought the kids would take that kind of trouble were many paper plates short of a picnic.

  “So, I thought maybe we could start our own library down there. Maybe in a corner of some room they don’t use much. The kids can borrow a book, sign it out, return it when they’re done.”

  Charlie almost laughed out loud. “Return it? You know that you’re not going to get these books back, right?”

  She lifted her chin. “Honor libraries work really well. Studies have shown that people steal from honor libraries less often than regular libraries. Maybe it’s the trust factor.”

  Trust factor. That was funny. Of course the kids trusted the people who ran the place. But nobody should trust them. She rubbed a hand over her face. “So, you have this idea for a free lending library. Why do I have to go?”

  “I’d like you to take a box of our newer books down there, some science fiction and fantasy and young adult stuff. Pick whatever you’d think they’ll like. Then show it to Austin, explain the idea. If he looks like he’s on board, maybe you two could talk to Cora.” She swiveled in the chair, making a shushing sound as Aurora started to fuss. “I’ve thought this over, and I really think you’d be so much better at this presentation than I would.”

  “Miss Alice, a free lending library… In a juvenile justice center.”

  “Hey, they have a room with a giant screen television and a game player and all the best games. Paul donated it and while I think that’s great, it irked me a little.” Something flashed in her eyes and Charlie was reminded of how Paul and Alice used to be on opposite sides of the technology divide. “I asked him why he didn’t donate ereaders. He said he’d thought about it but couldn’t figure out how to keep them in the building. They could be sold so easily, and books…”

  “Nobody really wants books,” Charlie supplied. She thought of the glossy hardbacks, the complete series with fancy dust jackets, the fantasy books as large as a doorstop that cost more than she had in her wallet at the moment. She hated the idea of some bratty teenager throwing it in a puddle. “Are you going to replace them if they get ruined?”

  “I haven’t decided yet. But if they don’t, if everything goes well, then I have another idea…”

  “Oh, you do have an ulterior motive. I thought so.”

  Her cheeks turned pink. “I thought if everything goes well, we might start stocking a few of the older books. Not the rare ones, but say a few poetry collections that aren’t in print anymore.”

  Charlie blinked. She wanted to say it was a great idea and Alice was a genius, but deep down, she really didn’t believe any of those kids would pick up a book, let alone some old poetry anthology. “I guess I better get a box sorted out. You’re sure about this?”

  “I’m sure. My mamere said that sometimes you get, and sometimes you get got. I’m okay if I get got this time. If they destroy the books or they all disappear, I’m only out a few hundred dollars and at least I tried.”

  Charlie headed toward the back to find a box, her heart feeling squeezed and achy. She knew what it was like to “get got”, and she had lost a whole lot more than a few hundred dollars. She’d lost everything she held most dear. Even Alice’s friendship, in a way. They could never be as close as they were. Not after what Charlie had done to Paul’s company. Someday the truth would come out. It was only a matter of time.

  As she stood in front of the young adult section, she thought of the couple now dealing with the vicious bullying meant for her. Some people might think the pizza prank was funny, but she knew it was only a half-step to seven moving vans showing up at dawn, and that was only a half-step to fifty death threats. Those credit cards they were billing didn’t belong to the pranksters. They knew how to fund their hate campaign, and it was always on someone else’s tab. Or maybe they were still working their way through her college account and she was funding all of the harassment herself.

  Her stomach lurched and she refocused on the shelf. There was nothing she could do about that anymore. It was in the past. As annoying as it was, her future was apparently trying to convince Austin that Alice’s idea had merit. Pulling one of her favorite sets of from the shelf, she stared down at the first cover. The gray creature holding an amulet might appeal to someone there, but the writing was probably light years beyond them. Setting the set in the box, she lifted down a steampunk series set during World War II featuring a prince and a girl shipmate. Charlie had read the series at least three times, always punching the air triumphantly when Deryn finally revealed herself to be a girl. She’d understood what it was like to have so many obstacles smoothed away when she used another persona. But Deryn’s happy ending wasn’t Charlie’s. In the end, there was no prince to stand by her side and protect her from those who would punish her for breaking the rules.

  Dropping the set in the box, she wiped her cheek with one hand and took a few deep breaths. The girl in the story had faced court martial for being a midshipman when she should have been home in a dress. It had seemed so exciting then. Charlie never knew what could really happen when she revealed herself to her friends. Ex-friends, actually.

  Most people couldn’t imagine such deep online friendships. They thought real connection had to be face to face, or at least over the phone, but in the digital age, friendships sprang up over the simplest things. Add a few hours working through a level in a game every night, and those online friends seemed closer than family after a few years. They might not have known what she looked like exactly, but they knew her hopes, her dreams. They didn’t hear her voice, only read her words, but they knew more about her than people she saw every day. Those friends were the first to see her digital art, the first to try out her programs, the ones who cheered her on through every difficult project. Sure, she may have gone along with their occasional anti-girl bluster and their sexist comments, but she hadn’t meant to hide who she really was. Well, maybe a little. But by the time she’d grown up enough to care, it seemed too late, somehow.

  Yanking a few books from the shelf and stuffing them in the box, Charlie sighed. As unfair as it was, she had to take
a little responsibility for what happened. She’d been so young when she’d started playing Ultimate Voyager. She knew it was easier to be invited into a guild if she presented herself as a male player. And later, when she started programming, she saw firsthand the way girls were treated in the tech and science departments. Every day, she saw the guys receive the better assignments and get more feedback. They picked up mentors as easily as she collected Van Winkle’s hair on her black clothes. They formed study groups that never publically advertised their meeting times. It was never said out loud, and it would have been denied if she’d spoken up, but it was clear. It was much easier to be a guy in the computer sciences department.

  Staring down into the box, Charlie wondered what her life would have been like if she’d been truthful way back in the beginning. She would have been part of a guild eventually if she had created a female avatar and used her legal name, Mary Charlotte. Maybe it wouldn’t have been with the top-level young programmers and hackers that she used to call her friends, but she would still have the life she’d worked so hard to build.

  She hoisted the box into her arms and headed back to the main area of the bookstore. In her first year she’d considered asking Paul for help, but was never sure how to approach the subject. Of course he understood how hard it was for women in technology. He wasn’t blind. He probably saw it in his own company. She didn’t think for a moment that Paul agreed with the silent preferential treatment of men, but she never heard that he’d done anything to protect or promote women who worked for him. She figured it was just the way it was, and she’d better get used to it. Little did she know, being passed over as a project leader had been the least of her worries.

  Stopping at the back door to slip on her jacket, she tucked plastic bags around the box so it wouldn’t get wet on the way to her car. The gas gauge was nearly on empty but she couldn’t afford to put anything in the tank until she got paid at the end of the week. Charlie stared out at the pouring rain and wished she could turn back the clock. She’d go back years, all the way back to the beginning when she created her first online persona. She’d tell her teenage self to not to spend a lifetime in silence afraid to say something wrong, that she had a voice that was clear and strong. The funny t-shirts and converse shoes and bright pink hair were all just coverings that could change at any moment. None of those things were really her. Who she really was, the person she was created to be, wasn’t something she should ever hide.