Book Lover, The

by McFadden, Maryann

  I’ll keep going with Gatsby. Maybe I’ll have it finished when you come back in a few weeks. We’ll see. I’ll be counting the days.

  She looked up at the ceiling and closed her eyes. She was counting, too, but weeks because there were just too many days. She turned the page over and was disappointed to see there were just a few more lines.

  I almost forgot, my hand is getting better. Nothing broken, just sprained. Thanks for asking.

  See you soon.

  Thomas

  P.S. Sorry, but I have to ask again, is there something wrong? I talked about your voice, but mostly I’ve been thinking about your eyes. When you were here last, your eyes were full of worry.

  She read the letter two more times before folding it carefully and slipping it back into the envelope. And then she closed her eyes again, her hands sinking in the warm water, resting on her soft belly. She let out a humorless laugh at the pathetic state of her existence. How many women held a trip to a prison as the most exciting thing in their lives?

  RUTH WOKE SUDDENLY IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT, needing to pee. A second later, her heart began to pound. Then it was as if the box of galleys she’d carried in hours ago suddenly landed on her chest. She could barely breathe. She sat up quickly, swallowing. Deep in her chest her heart still thudded against her rib cage.

  She got up and went to the bathroom, her legs trembling so badly that her feet danced on the cold tile floor as she sat on the toilet. She then stood in front of the mirror, staring at herself. Jesus, was she having a heart attack? It couldn’t be. It was probably the popcorn she ate right before bed, lodged in her esophagus. Yes, it was indigestion, she was certain. It had to be.

  She went downstairs and found Tums in a cabinet, chewing two while her tea heated in the microwave. All the while the lines of an article she’d read recently kept popping into her head in big capital letters. How heart attacks are different in women. How they feel just like indigestion and it’s better to be safe than sorry. But she was healthy as a horse, she kept telling herself.

  As she sat at the kitchen table, she noticed that her hands were shaking now, too. The last thing she wanted to do was sit in an ER all night, only to be told it was nothing. And God only knew what that would cost. Her health insurance was bare bones, the best she could manage.

  Maybe it was just her nerves. She’d decided today she was going to cut hours at the store—which seemed like an oxymoron since she was staying open later. Looking on the computer at what had come in during this last week of the month, which was always a tense week because it was her last chance to scrape enough together to pay most of her bills, if not all—well, the figures weren’t good. Something had to give; she just wasn’t sure what. She’d promised herself she wouldn’t sell another piece of her mother’s jewelry, no matter how gaudy it was, because it had been her mother’s, after all. Still, if it bought her a little more time. But time for what? She didn’t see anything changing in the weeks ahead. She’d been playing this Peter and Paul game for years now. The pressure in her chest shifted suddenly and she felt… something, she wasn’t sure, in her shoulder. Her already pounding heart began to race. Stop it! She told herself. You can’t panic.

  She took a sip of the tea and felt it go down, hot and soothing. She took another deep breath, and another, her nerves vibrating throughout her body. The box of galleys still sat on the floor beside the table, and she reached in and pulled out another handful of books, to distract herself. She glanced at one after the other. Then she pulled out the tiny box that had come separately, and yes, it held just one trade paperback. A Quiet Wanting by Lucinda Barrett. She hadn’t heard of it, or the publisher. On the cover, a woman sat on top of a picnic table with her back to the reader. In front of her stretched a circle of tall pines, a wall of green branches, but the woman was looking up, beyond the treetops.

  Ruth opened the book, turned a few pages and came to the dedication: For Ben, For always…

  She took another sip of tea and began reading.

  She embraced her sadness like a secret lover she met each evening on her solitary drive home…

  It wasn’t until she sipped and found the cup empty that Ruth realized how much time had gone by. She looked at the clock on the stove. It was 3:40. She’d been reading for almost a half hour, and she was on page thirty-five.

  And her chest…it felt just fine.

  Relieved, she stood up and put the cup in the sink. “Come on, Samantha, morning will be here before you know it.”

  She picked up the book. More than anything she wanted to take it upstairs and keep reading. It was a haunting story of a woman trying to hold onto a marriage that was unraveling, yet she had no idea why. But she put it back on the table, deciding not to tempt herself. She needed the sleep.

  But the book was astonishing. She wondered who this Lucinda Barrett was.

  2

  THE DREAM BEGAN THE YEAR LUCY TURNED ELEVEN, the summer after everything in her life changed. Her mother got a full-time job, and Lucy was forced to watch her brothers, Jake and Charlie. Because she was so young, her mother made her promise to stay in the house or their tiny yard, in the old duplex in Morristown her father had rented before leaving. Resentful, expecting to be bored because they’d just moved again and she didn’t have any friends yet, Lucy was surprised when something magical happened instead. Although she already loved to read, now, with little other diversion, she began to devour a book a day, while her brothers, who were six and seven at the time, played war, watched cartoons, and ran around the yard with water pistols.

  She escaped in the lives and adventures of imaginary people who lived on those pages. On hot summer days, as she opened each book, discovering little nuggets of herself in these stories, it was as if a place inside of her opened up, one she hadn’t known existed. The outside world faded, even the squeals of her brothers, until she’d hear her mother’s key in the front door, and the real world came walking back in. It was The Diary of a Young Girl that gave her the courage to pick up a pencil and notebook and write her first story. It was as if every emotion she’d tucked inside her heart tumbled out onto those pages. And she knew with certainty what she was going to do with her life—she was going to be a writer.

  Now, walking the streets of St. Augustine on her way to visit her friend, Tia, another writer, it amazed Lucy the twists and turns her life had taken, and that here she was at thirty-nine, still trying to achieve that dream. And how nothing ever really turns out the way you think it’s going to. But she wasn’t going to dwell on all that today.

  As she turned onto Charlotte Street, marveling at the March weather which continued to be as mild as summer, she thought once again how lucky they were to live in St. Augustine. Back in New Jersey, March was a bitter month. Now Lucy savored the soft air brushing her skin like a silky scarf.

  She had fallen in love the first moment she saw it, five years ago, soaring above the sparkling blue harbor on the Bridge of Lions, then descending into the small city, seeming almost too beautiful to be real—cobblestone streets and horse-drawn carriages, a town green with a white gazebo, stucco buildings dating back hundreds of years, picturesque streets lined with graceful oaks veiled in Spanish moss. It had taken her breath in a moment of complete surprise, unlike any part of Florida they’d seen.

  How could she not agree with David when he said this was where they could start over? And what he’d left unspoken: where they could leave the past behind.

  When they’d first moved, jobs were tight in the legal field and David had decided to open his own practice again. It took him a long time to pass the Florida Bar and he began joking about it, wondering if he’d break some kind of record. But neither of them was able to focus on much back then. Lucy had left an accounting career back home, but here she took a mindless job in housekeeping at a bed & breakfast, where she wouldn’t have to interact much with anyone. When she got home in the afternoons, she worked on her novel while David continued studying, or took breaks and went to t
he beach with his new metal detector.

  It was ironic that she couldn’t focus on numbers anymore, yet she could spend hours on a particular word or phrase. When David passed the bar and opened his office—which took a year and a half—he insisted it was her turn, and she quit her job and finished the book, although they’d mounted considerable debt. And stupid her, she’d thought it would be scooped up by a publisher right away. Something good did come of it, though—she’d found herself going for long stretches without thinking of Ben.

  She turned toward the old fort that jutted out into the water, constructed of coquina shells over five hundred years ago to protect St. Augustine from invading enemies. The oldest city in the country, it was now a place of history, beauty and art. And ghosts, her mother pointed out with dramatic disapproval, when Lucy told her they were moving there. But Lucy didn’t mind ghosts. What writer would?

  When she came to the south end of town, she stopped a moment before going into Tia’s, staring at the shimmering marsh that stretched all the way to Anastasia Island, where the ending to her book had written itself in her head during those early days as she walked the beach. And where she had finally begun to heal. She savored the smells of fish and salt water, then turned to Tia’s apartment complex.

  It looked more like an upscale condo community than senior housing, the clusters of buildings in a buttery stucco, with arched windows and porticos to mimic the historic feel of the city. She’d met Tia, who’d introduced herself as Demetria, her full Greek name, at her first writer’s workshop, shortly after moving to St. Augustine. At the time, Tia was still living in one of the assisted living apartments. Now she was in the main building, where she could benefit from 24-hour nursing care.

  Lucy walked into the main lobby, signed the guest book at the front desk, and took the elevator to the third floor. Before even lifting her hand to knock, she heard Tia call to come in. Lucy found her sitting in a stuffed chintz chair beside a window with a magnificent view of the marsh. A view Tia was no longer able to see.

  Tia was a small woman, but now she felt frail as a bird as Lucy hugged her, the long battle with diabetes taking its toll. She looked lovely, as usual, in a belted shirtwaist dress and stockings, smelling of her signature lilac cologne.

  “Hello, my dear,” she whispered, and gave Lucy a squeeze. “I’m so glad you’re here.”

  “How are you, Tia?” Lucy asked, sitting in an identical chair across the room as Tia’s eyes followed her. She realized the older woman must still be able to see something, shadows perhaps.

  “Well, my hearing is getting better,” Tia chuckled, “as you no doubt must have noticed.”

  “You really heard me out in the hall?”

  Tia shrugged, then gave that little laugh that had such a lovely, musical quality to it. “I must confess, they do call when visitors are on their way up, but…yes, it’s true, when the eyes go, your other senses seem to sharpen.” She gave a little clap then, her way of transitioning a conversation. “All right, shall we get to work?”

  Tia had written nine novels during the course of her eighty-four years, and actually had one published, which she’d brought to that original workshop group where they met, beaming with pride that she’d gotten it taken by a major publisher.

  “That’s not a major publisher,” Regan, one of the others, had snapped. “They were minor at best, and they went out of business decades ago.”

  Lucy saw Tia’s face freeze, as her own mouth fell open. Just as she was ready to lay into Regan, Tia, who was still able to see back then, gave her a look, and she stopped. But after that, they formed their own group with two others also tired of the bitterness and negativity. The others had since moved away, and it had been down to just Tia and Lucy for the past year, reading and discussing each other’s work, although now Lucy read aloud for both of them.

  “So what are we going to read?” Tia asked.

  “I don’t have anything new, but I did bring you a copy of my novel. I didn’t want to tell you until I had it for you.” She got up and placed a signed book on Tia’s lap. “This is A Quiet Wanting, Tia. I published it myself.”

  Tia picked it up, her fingers sliding over the glossy cover, then touching the pages. “Oh, how I wish that I could see it. Could you describe the cover for me?”

  “It’s beautiful, exactly what I’d always envisioned—Hope sitting on a picnic table, the wall of green pines, the circle of blue sky above, where she seems to be searching for something.”

  “It reminds me of that one scene in the book.”

  “I know.”

  “So tell me, how did you do this? Was it very expensive?”

  “No, back in November when I made my decision, I found this technology called Print-On-Demand that I’d never heard of before, and for $600 they made my book and designed the cover I wanted. I got two copies, and now any time someone wants a book, they can print one at a time, and it doesn’t cost me a thing.”

  “Truly? Well, that’s wonderful. In my day you had to pay a lot of money to a so-called vanity press if you wanted to publish your book yourself, because they had to print a minimum of several thousand books, which usually ended up in your basement.”

  “It is great, but the big downside is that the only place it’s available for sale is online. And no one knows about the book, so no one is going to order it online.”

  “And what are you doing about that?”

  “Well, I ordered myself a bundle of them, so it is costing me, but I’ve already sent copies to some small bookstores, hoping they’ll read it and maybe want to sell it. You know all the real publishers send them galleys so they can order the book, so I’ve got to do the same thing. I’m getting another batch ready to send tomorrow.”

  “You know, I give you credit. This doesn’t sound like an easy road, but I think if I were a bit younger I might try it.”

  “Tia, your novels are amazing. I can’t for the life of me understand why they weren’t all published.”

  “Publishing is not an easy business, my dear, and certainly not for the faint of heart. I’ve made peace with it,” she said, waving her hand in dismissal. “And I had the one published, that was something, I must say.” Her eyes were still for a moment, and Lucy knew she must be thinking back on that glorious time. Then she looked up again.

  “I haven’t written a thing worth reading since you last came,” Tia confessed. “So what are you going to read?”

  “Ironically, now that I published the book, that’s taking all my time. I don’t have anything new, either.” They both laughed.

  “Well, then, why don’t you read me this?” Tia asked, holding up the signed copy of the book. “It’s not a manuscript any longer, it’s a book. And it always reads better that way.”

  “I’d love to, Tia.”

  Lucy took the book from her and opened it, reading the dedication as the afternoon sun set. It wasn’t until she was on Chapter 4, pausing to turn a page, that she looked up and saw that Tia’s head had fallen back on her chair, and she was asleep. Lucy covered her with an afghan, then grabbed her things, but when she opened the door, Tia said, “It wasn’t the book, Lucinda, I’m just very tired. Your book is beautiful. I’m glad you’re doing this.”

  Bolstered by Tia’s words, Lucy walked home and decided it was time to do something she really couldn’t put off any longer. Something that sent her heart fluttering. But if she was seriously going through with this, she had no choice. It was now or never.

  * * *

  RUTH SAT WITH HER STAFF AT THE WEDDING RECEPTION at the Chateau Hathorn, a stone mansion built in 1832 on the edge of Warwick Village. She looked at them, all dressed up, having a wonderful time, and dreaded breaking the bad news to them on Monday.

  “Your hair looks really nice, Ruth.”

  She turned and smiled at Megan, knowing she was just being polite. Megan, who’d worked for her all through college and was now her only full-timer, was dying to get her hands on Ruth’s hair. When Ruth was Mega
n’s age, if she’d colored her hair, it was something you tried to hide. But there Megan sat, bright blue tips on her cropped dark hair, with a breezy confidence that Ruth couldn’t imagine at such a young age. At sixty-four, she wished she could channel even an eighth of it.

  She patted her own wild mane self-consciously. After fussing for twenty minutes, she’d pulled the sides back in a pearl barrette. The long black skirt and velvet jacket were a staple, what Jenny laughingly called her “wedding uniform,” while trying to lure her to go shopping. They were classic pieces that would last for years, she’d argued. To which Jenny responded, “Yes, but now it’s time to retire them, Mom, they’ve had a good long life.”

  “Did everyone enjoy their dinner?”

  She looked up to see Kris, beaming as mother of the bride. A mystery and women’s fiction addict, Kris had come to work for Ruth about ten years ago, when her daughter, Cassie, started high school. Just then, the band started to play and Kris breezed off, as Megan and her new guy, Oliver, and Harry and Iris all jumped up to dance.

  Ruth sat there alone, thinking as she always did that there was nothing worse than being an old woman alone at a wedding reception. She sipped the Cosmopolitan Megan had brought her and sighed, her earlier unease in the church returning. She’d been late, getting Jenny settled to help cover at the store with Colin, who was invited, but chose not to come, much to her disappointment. But it wasn’t that, it was the moment they’d all stood, turning to the back of the church where Kris’s daughter stood between her parents, that the odd feeling came over her.

  Suddenly it was as if Ruth was seeing herself in that same vestibule, frozen on her father’s arm more than forty years ago. Unable to make her feet move as a hundred and fifty smiling faces turned and waited. Filled with uncertainty and terror, her father gently tugging on her arm, until she looked down the long aisle and saw Bill wink at her and smile, taking her breath away. How was it that she—tall, plain Ruth Baldwin—was marrying handsome Bill Hardaway?