The Bookshop on Autumn Lane

by Cynthia Tennent

  “I love the way you wear clothes,” he eventually said after he fastened his pants. He sat down and ran his hand along a silk scarf with butterflies I had left on the bedpost.

  “The credit goes to my mother.”

  “Really?” He seemed fascinated. I pulled out a Japanese silk yukata robe from the closet. “A lot of this is hers.”

  “Even the boots you always wear?”

  “God no. Just the good stuff. I like to shop at vintage stores and supplement her pieces, of course. All the boots and shoes are mine. My feet are bigger than hers were . . . and I lost her shoes when she—” I paused and shook my head.

  The morning sun played on the back of Kit’s hair, making me blink. “She what?” he asked.

  “She loved shoes.”

  “Tell me about her.”

  I don’t know why I felt compelled to open up. But last night had changed things between us. I snapped the button on my old jeans and grabbed the butterfly scarf.

  I brought it to my face. “Sometimes I imagine it still smells like Mom.” I folded it reverently and placed it on a box. “When I was young, she let me play dress-up in her closet . . .”

  “Women and their clothes . . .” Kit drawled.

  “Says the man who could be a J. Crew model.”

  “Tell me more.”

  I sat down next to him and hugged my knees to my chest. “Mom was warm and funny and thrifty. But her guilty pleasure was clothes. The one advantage to living overseas is that, whether we were in Europe or Asia, there were always great places to shop. Korea had amazing markets for finding off-label clothes. Germany was great for handmade clothing. Shoes were best in Italy. Mom spent her free time hunting for great bargains and vintage clothing. I got to go along whenever I wasn’t in school. My favorite moments were at home, playing dress-up in the mirror.

  “But her shoes were the best. I begged and begged her to let me wear them to school. But she always said ‘no’.”

  Kit pulled my toes into his lap and rubbed. “I can’t imagine you would have looked normal wearing grown-up shoes to school at that age.”

  I closed my eyes, enjoying the foot massage. “I tried once. I left the house one morning when she wasn’t looking. We were the same size then. I wobbled all the way to school.” It seemed so long ago.

  “What happened?”

  “My teacher looked at me strangely. The kids in my class laughed at me. But I didn’t care. I was wearing the beautiful black four-inch pumps that I loved. I fell twice. By noon my feet were throbbing. By the end of school I had started forming blisters. I took them off on the way home, regardless of the fact that it was cold enough to snow in Itaewon.”

  Kit dropped my feet and pulled me close. “Did she find out?”

  “Don’t all mothers have that sixth sense? When I got home, she was waiting. She looked down at my blistered, red feet and took the shoes from me.” I could still picture how she let them dangle off her index finger.

  “Was she mad?”

  “Not really. She helped me spread lotion on the blisters. I remember she said, ‘Shoes are the one thing you can’t really borrow, Trudy. It’s not just the fit. People’s feet have different places to go. You have to wear your own shoes in life.’ ”

  Kit pulled me onto his lap. “Your mother was a wise woman.”

  “You would have liked her.” I put my head on Kit’s shoulder and felt a peace I hadn’t felt in years. It was good to talk about her. “My father gave all her beautiful shoes away after she died. I was so mad. I stuffed as many of her clothes as I could into that old Samsonite suitcase and covered them up with my own clothes so he wouldn’t see them. I was lucky to have something left of her to save.”

  “Good for you. I suspect you carry more of your mother with you than her clothes, though.”

  That was a beautiful thought. I wrapped myself in it and stayed in the circle of his arms, letting the warmth envelope me.

  After a few minutes, I said, “You’ll appreciate the fact that her favorite reminder after that came from a book. Something about never knowing a person until you wore their shoes or walked around in their skin or something like that.”

  He put his arms around me. “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

  “I should have known. A bird story.”

  He kissed my nose and held me close, sensing my need to pause and catch my breath. Talking about my mother was like unraveling another layer of myself. For someone comfortable with nudity, it was a strange feeling to be exposed this way. I felt raw and naked.

  “I think you need another pair of shoes. The ones you had on yesterday were—” Kit looked down at my feet and his eyes went wide. “You did pick up all your clothes you dropped by those two coffins, didn’t you?”

  I froze. “I didn’t even think about it.” We tumbled out of bed and dressed like silly children, giggling the whole time.

  Before he left, he cupped my chin in his hands. “See you later.”

  I liked the way he said it. It sounded like it came with a guarantee. I trailed my finger along the tip of his perfectly formed ear. Nothing on his body that wasn’t perfect. Even his toes were shaped like Adonis’s.

  When he was gone I stood and stretched. It was a beautiful morning and I was ready to return to the Nightmare on Main Street next door. While Moby ate breakfast, I crept into the store from the back door and grabbed my clothes. The lone person in the insane asylum was the lady who had been with the deputy sheriff the other day. The only clue she might have seen me was a crooked grin that she covered with her hand.

  I dumped my clothes in the apartment and held the back door open for Moby. We both needed a long walk.

  Years ago, before I first came, there had been a fire at an old barn a mile away. It had swept across the field, almost reaching town. By the time I arrived in Truhart, nothing remained of the field but a charred and barren stretch that matched my mood during that fourteenth year of my life. Now nature had returned to the land. The autumn grass was golden and brittle and the sun flickered off the jack pines that had grown tall among the brush.

  Moby ambled from tree to tree, sniffing and marking his territory. I walked with my hands in the pockets of my coat, trying to stop smiling like a silly teenager. The shy little bird who was becoming my friend flitted above us, singing a sweet repetitive song over and over. Like a gentle reminder no one understood.

  This . . . “thing” with Kit was not normal for me. Despite the impression I gave off, I hadn’t slept with scores of men. The ones I had been with had been convenient. Like friends with benefits. I was with those men because we shared things. A love for vinyl records, a summer of working in a theater company, or a trip along the trailhead to Sentinel Dome in Yosemite. Ironically, Kit and I had absolutely nothing in common. We were as different as Lulu and the sleek black Ford truck he drove. Despite that, I felt something that I never felt with the other lovers in my life. He was so—nice. And smart. And decent. And sexy. I wanted to know him, read his moods. Understand him. His obsession with books, his affection for all things American, the fact that he hated tea and loved football. I wanted to find everything that made him happy and feed it to him on a platter, just because. And even though I felt no affection for those things and probably never would, I wanted to watch joy play across his face and know I had helped put it there.

  Maybe I would look back some day and say, Oh that was my Truhart phase—the time I cleaned out a bookstore with the British guy and we slept together. But, I doubted it. This didn’t feel like anything I had experienced. This time with Kit felt like I imagined Angkor Wat would feel. Like a temple in the jungle where I could discover something wonderful.

  He challenged me to think about so many things. To accept what I had been avoiding. Not just about Aunt Gertrude and the store and the town. Being with Kit was like having a mirror around. I didn’t need to look at myself to get through the day, but having the option of looking at my reflection made me more sure of who I was. I felt better because of h
im.

  I giggled and raised my face to the sun. “What the hell am I doing?” It was more of a hope than a complaint. I looked down to see Moby staring at me with raised ears, as if he wanted to answer me. Instead he wagged his tail and put his nose back down to the ground.

  I kicked a pinecone and shook my head. I was overthinking this. “Come on, boy. I’m hungry. Let’s get some grub.”

  We rerouted and had almost reached the back of Cookee’s when I heard the little bird again. I had an old packet of oyster crackers in the pocket of my coat I had been saving for Moby. I smashed the packet with my fist, making the pieces more manageable for the little guy, and spread the crumbs on the ground.

  “I’m going to have to remind Kit to tell me all about chickadees in the Midwest,” I whispered, trying not to scare him. I held Moby and watched the little guy eating just four yards away. When I turned to go I almost ran headfirst into the lens of a camera.

  “Oh!” I reached out and steadied the frail man with the hooked nose, whose camera I’d almost run into.

  “Shh . . .” he said with a finger over his mouth. He pointed behind me and I looked back at the little chickadee.

  “Isn’t he cute?” I whispered.

  “Do you know what that is?” he asked.

  I shook my head.

  “That’s a Kirtland’s warbler,” he said with wide eyes.

  “A what?”

  “A Kirtland’s warbler.” He said it again, with reverence. “Very rare.”

  The tiny bird must have sensed our attention. He grabbed a crumb and flew away.

  I turned to the man. “Rare, you said?”

  “Kirtland’s warblers have been on the list of endangered species for years. They can only be found in the spring and summer in this region of the state. That little guy is very late flying south. Just like me.”

  “Really?” A buzzing started in my ears.

  “Whole ecotours are scheduled around those little guys. I’ve been looking for them all summer. I can’t believe I was lucky enough to get close and snap a good picture of him.” He held out his digital camera for me to view.

  I nodded absently. “Are you absolutely sure that was a Kirt—Kir—”

  “Kirtland’s warbler?” He pulled a field guide out of his pocket. “Absolutely. See? The yellow breast, the blue-black wings, little broken outline of yellow around the eyes.”

  I studied the field guide. The picture fit. He was right.

  “And then there’s that lilting sound with that little upturn at the end as if he’s asking a question.”

  “I heard the song just now.” I heard it several times, in fact. I had pointed it out to Kit.

  “They love to make their home in a jack-pine forest. People thought they were extinct for a while. But they are making a grand comeback. I can’t wait to show my friends in the Keys when I head out next week.”

  I thought about the first day I’d met Kit. It was the first time I’d seen the warbler. And Kit hadn’t even noticed. He was too busy looking at books.

  “Do many people outside the area know about them?”

  “Birders and nature lovers do. Here.” He handed me the binoculars. “Can you see him at the edge of the clearing?”

  I put the binoculars to my eyes. But I wasn’t really looking. My mind was thinking about Kit. Something had been bothering me since I first caught him in the back alley. His fascination with the store and the books. And his strange disregard for the little bird.

  I handed the binoculars back to the older man. “You seem to know a lot about birds.”

  “Oh, I know a lot about this area. I get so excited about these things that everyone teases me that I’m the local expert on the flora and fauna of the county. Name’s Nestor Nagel.” We shook hands. “It’s hard not to love the area. Truhart has some of the best morel-mushroom picking in the state. Our rare plants like trillium and lady’s slipper are the pride of the county. And then there’s that little guy.” He pointed to the bird, who was back again.

  I didn’t want to ask. But I had to. “Have you by any chance spoken with the professor from England about all this?”

  “His lordship? Oh, I’ve heard all about him from Marva O’Shea. But I can’t say as I’ve had the pleasure. I head down to the Keys tomorrow. So I guess it will have to wait until next spring.”

  I walked him back toward Main Street and wished him luck.

  Then I returned to Books from Hell.

  The appetite I had earlier was gone. I let Moby inside the bookstore, my attention caught by the stacks against the wall. Kit had been very thorough in his organizing. He had taken each book one by one, opened up the first few pages, and then stacked them in the correct pile. I had teased him once that he was going to get a crick in his neck from looking down so much.

  I didn’t know much about people who studied birds. But it seemed to me that most whatever-ologists spent more time looking up. Not down.

  * * *

  I burst through the side door of the garage. “Where is Richie?”

  Doc greeted me. “Trudy! I was going to stop by the haunted house and talk to you about Lulu.”

  I wasn’t concerned about Lulu right now. I had passed her parked in the side lot. “Is Richie working today?”

  Doc nodded toward the office. “Until noon. Then he’s got practice. The team lost big last night. So they have extra workouts today.”

  I was already at the office door. “Richie.”

  Richie looked up from his phone with a guilty expression on his face.

  Behind me, Doc bellowed, “Richie, what the hell am I paying you for? Get off your phone and get back to cleaning out the back room.”

  Richie set down his phone. “I was just checking something.”

  “Check on your own time.” His father walked away and I caught the way Richie’s gaze followed his dad. I probably used that same expression dozens of times when my aunt was alive.

  I pulled up the chair next to Richie and lowered my voice. “Can you just do one thing for me before you start the back room?”

  He looked doubtful. “I don’t know anything about cars, Ms. Brown. You must have figured that out already.”

  “Yeah, but you know other things. You know how to look something up for me, right?”

  He twisted his lips and lowered his brows. “Uh, yeah.”

  “I don’t have a smartphone. Can you look up someone?”

  He pushed his phone toward me. “Feel free to do it yourself. I’ve gotta start on the back room before my dad fires me.”

  “No. No. That will take too long for me. I have dyslexia.”

  His mouth dropped open. “Really? Isn’t that where you read backwards?”

  “Not exactly. But it makes reading difficult.”

  “Man! That sucks! And you own a bookstore.”

  “Tell me about it!”

  Richie was looking at me with a whole new fascination that owning Lulu had never done for me. “Hey, that’s why people think you . . . um. . . have problems.”

  “Exactly. That’s why they think I’m dumb.” I pushed the phone back toward him. “Can you look someone up or not?”

  He picked up the phone and lifted his thumbs over the screen. “Who?”

  “Christopher Darlington.”

  “The weeny English-lord guy? Sure.” He thumbed the name and watched as the screen popped up with information. “There are a few Christopher Darlingtons. This one was born, like, almost a hundred years ago. Can you narrow the search?”

  “Try birds.”

  He shook his head. “Nope.”

  “Wait. That’s wrong. He’s a professor. Try Cambridge.”

  His eyes lit up. “Hey, here’s his lordship.” He turned the screen toward me so I could see the picture of Kit. It was a studio photo, the kind they use in yearbooks. He looked serious. And very professional.

  “What does it say?”

  “Let’s see . . . Christopher Darlington. Cambridge University. Professor of Nort
h American Studies.”

  I knew that part. “What else?”

  “Here’s an article in the Cambridge News. It’s titled Professor of American Studies Steps in Muck over American Author.” He turned the screen toward me. I shook my head. Something burned in the pit of my stomach. “What does it say?”

  He clicked on it so it appeared larger. “Let’s see . . . Christopher Darlington, professor in the Faculty of English, has made a bold statement that may land him in a quagmire in the literary community. His postulation that renowned American author Robin Hartchick wrote a second novel was enough to raise eyebrows on both sides of the pond. But his declaration that he will find the elusive treasure brought about scorn in the literary community—much of which came from his own father, Sir Charles Darlington, professor emeritus of British literature, Britain’s own national treasure.”

  Kit wasn’t here to research local culture, or birds, or anything about the region. He was in Truhart for one very specific purpose. And like a fool, I had invited him into the store and played right into his scheme.

  I had become accustomed to people who made me feel inferior. I thought Kit was different. The sting of his deception was almost unbearable.

  * * *

  I stood inside the front door, watching Kit rifle through the pages of a book. His brows were furrowed and he was talking to himself. He shook his head and moved it to a pile beside him.

  “Did you find it yet, Professor?”

  “Find what?”

  “Kirtland’s warbler. Ring a bell at all?”

  “Is that a children’s book?” he said absently, moving a stack of books against the wall.

  “It wasn’t written by Robin Hartchick. I know that. But maybe another lost book of his showed up since yesterday?” Kit’s hands froze on a stack of loose papers.

  The stillness in the room was broken only by the sound of someone practicing a scream in the haunted house next door.