Chapter 16
Dietrich didn’t wait for stories, he went after them. He didn’t invent situations or fabricate truths, he met facts and his subjects face to face, like he surely had today. He hadn’t expected to encounter a Crawley, yet all evidence said he just had.
He turned left out of Non Bookends, headed the opposite direction from the Crawley house and the rental car. Opposite from the direction the girl had run from. And would likely run to. He stayed along the sidewalk, peering in shop windows, guessing what would happen, and it did. She darted out and she ran. She was too small to be a real runner, but she was good. Not as good as Mr. Crawley must have been, the man Dietrich guessed to be her grandfather.
Dietrich watched the young woman. Amabile’s heartbreak, just like her heartthrob, was taking an odd form—tall, blond, and fast over forty years ago, but small, dark-haired, and fast today. Mentioning a runner hadn’t shaken the grandma as much as it should have. Maybe she didn’t know. Maybe it wasn’t her husband who had run as Marvin Shanks. But Dietrich’s being there had seemed to trigger something, possibly something she’d only wondered until now. That woman had scars, though; so did Oma and so did Amabile, some inside and some out. She also had something odd hanging on her wall. He touched the rounded chunk in his pocket. But none of that proved anything…yet. He needed time, maybe more time than he’d thought. Two weeks might not be enough, even though split-second glimpses of truth on the grandmother’s face today said a lot—the unexpected realization of the opportunity for revenge.
She needed time he really couldn’t afford. Women’s hearts could be fickle and faithful all in the same beat, love who they hated and hate who they loved. She had to simmer. In the meantime, he would gather more information on the man down the street before he met the grandmother again…or her granddaughter. Old newspaper stories would have details about Mr. Crawley’s coming and going overseas. Wedding pictures maybe. Facts to substantiate what had frightened him, and the grandmother too.
Chapter 17
Red wasn’t my color, in fact I’d argued against wearing it, but as Emerson led me into the large ballroom I understood why he’d chosen it. Frank was right…or maybe Jill was. Red was for Emerson.
Beautiful evening gowns and dark tuxedos filled the room. The gowns created a sea of understated pastels…soft hues that made the red of my dress stand out. The perfect complement to black—Emerson’s black I glued myself to. He did well.
“Perfect.” Emerson leaned my way as we walked, speaking from the side of his mouth, his eyes surveying the crowd ahead. “Exactly what I intended.”
“You mean, beautiful? Dazzling?” I pressed against his arm.
He looked at me, an approving tour with eyes as black as his hair and his tux.
“Yes, beautiful. Always. And I want you to spread some of that dazzle around for me tonight.”
“You mean talk more as we mingle?”
“No, I want you to mingle on your own. Your face is well associated with mine now, and that dress further distinguishes you enough we can be apart and cover twice the ground—as one. A senator’s wife has much to do with his success.”
Or his failure. I stopped. Red alone would look garish instead of distinguished. It could be a beacon of my grandparents’ dysfunction and my mother’s move across the city. Emerson needed his black to truly make us one, and not leave himself with me out there strobing like a solitary, beckoning light. “How about we split up at your next event?” I pressed closer. “I’m not ready to solo tonight. I don’t feel all that dazzling. A lot has been going on.”
Emerson slowed. He glanced at me, his black brows level above his eyes. “What has been going on? Anything you need to tell me before I begin talking to people?”
I searched for my grandparents in his eyes, the way I’d hunted for them in Miles’. Whatever had been brought to Grandpa’s and Grandma’s door—their love and their war—Emerson couldn’t have it brought to his.
People swept around us. Miles stood across the room watching, his wife at his side, perfect and at ease. No expected army officers daunting her life or dimming her expression, her gown the softest mint green I’d ever seen. “A senator’s wife has to be dazzling.” I turned to Emerson. “Even when she’s tired. Everything’s fine. I can be dazzling on my own.”
“That’s what I like to hear.” Emerson leaned down and brushed my cheek with a kiss. “You will be an excellent senator’s wife. Won’t you?” He squeezed my hand at my nod; then he ran off. Straight to Miles, who would help him run his senatorial race while I mentally ran from here to Non Bookends to erase the love and war that would trip Emerson up.
Chapter 18
“More books!” Grandma’s mailwoman breezed into Non Bookends, in shorts because of the mild fall temperatures, showing off legs even more muscular than mine. Her eyes lit up as the stack hit Grandma’s table, startling me off my seat. “Too much coffee?” There was a laugh in her smile as she headed back toward the door. “Tell your grandma I’ll be in tomorrow evening for some of that new reading material.” The bells clanged and she was gone, already speeding past Non Bookends’ front window.
“Oooh, what did Mavis get?” Two of Grandma’s flock crowded the table where I sat pretending to work, wondering where Grandma was, the word lawyer vexing my mind. She wasn’t at the store, but she knew I was coming and would open it for her. She wasn’t at the house, either. I’d just left there, only Grandpa at home as usual…saying nothing about the army officers and nothing I wanted to hear when I said, I want to talk to you about the wedding. Grandpa had turned in a clumsy spin to the right and hobbled away.
“Can you open the packages so we can see what books she got?” The two women rifled through the stack, squeezing the books through their envelopes and rattling the boxes.
“Grandma’s pretty particular about what goes on her shelves…” I watched four crusader hands pass Grandma’s mail back and forth. “What’s so special about her books?” It was meant to be a thought, but it came out of my mouth and showed on the women’s faces.
The back-and-forth stopped. “You don’t know?” Wide eyes stared at me over packaged books.
“Well…” How could they tell me what Grandma wouldn’t? “I guess I know enough to figure out what she wants in here and what she doesn’t.” I just didn’t know why.
I can’t walk with you down the aisle. My eyes had been as wide as these women’s when Grandpa said that, the why of his reasons as lost as Grandma’s to me. He would be worried about being available, trapped at whatever and whenever the army officers had offered him a ride to. How Emerson would be affected set off an explosion inside me, maybe inside of Grandpa as well, one that wouldn’t stop, that continued to roll and fire, even as I begged Grandpa to be there, then begged him to at least make me a wedding gift, instead. A cedar chest, I’d suggested over the rumbling that still shook an hour later when the mailwoman dropped Grandma’s books where I sat.
“Well, your grandma’s books tell the truth.” One woman slapped her hand on a pile on the table, and I jumped again. “People will say in fiction what they wouldn’t dare admit out loud.”
“Even to their spouses,” the other woman added.
I glanced around the store at Grandma’s crusade, at honesty that had to be dug for. Like from Grandpa this morning, insisting he be there for me and walk me down the aisle or make the cedar chest at least. Ill timing, Cate. It undoes even the best of intentions. Not to mention the worst, Grandpa had said without looking at me. I’m sorry. I won’t be there. And I won’t have time to make you anything, either.
“Truth is much easier to face when it’s couched in someone else’s story.” The nodding woman nodded more. “It helps me see what I was afraid to admit. It sneaks it up on me instead of being shouted at me.”
“Misery loves company, that’s for sure.” The other woman put a hand on the nodder’s arm. “If someone wrote it, someone knew it before you. Someone had to suffer for that story to be born.
”
“So, so true. Let’s open the books and see what she got.” The nodder clapped her hands together, and I jumped for the third time. “We won’t read them, but I just can’t wait to see.”
“I hate to when Grandma’s not here…” I won’t be there, rang in my head from earlier, Grandpa’s voice followed by mine. Another officer’s investigation shouldn’t have any effect on you or my wedding, I’d argued. When are you going to see those three army men? I’d move my wedding date so he could be there. So he could shine for Grandma as he walked down the aisle. Changing the date would be better than explaining to Emerson why Grandpa wasn’t there. Grandpa had stared at me, the impending date like a story across his face. Middle of October, he finally said. I’d sputtered. October was before our wedding date. The more I sputtered, the clearer the story became. I finally said out loud the thing he wasn’t. It’s bigger than October, isn’t it?
It’s a lifetime. Then the man who was always on trial turned, and I had left his house.
“You can blame us. Your grandmother won’t yell at us.” The two women giggled.
“The last book I opened without Grandma’s knowledge ended up… Well, let’s just say something happened to it and she never got the chance to read it.”
Their eyes widened again, and glee spread across their faces. “Tell us what happened.” In tandem they leaned close, another person’s personal disaster a story for them to read.
“All I can tell you is she wasn’t happy. It wasn’t the sort of book she would have used here, anyway, but that didn’t pacify her.”
“Too technical?” One scrunched her face.
“Too romantic.”
Both women frowned. “Your grandmother isn’t against romantic stories,” the nodder corrected me.
Now I frowned. My brows dropped like laden eaves over my eyes. “I beg to differ.”
“It depends on who wrote it and why,” the other jumped in. “If there is a reason why the author wrote it, that book would be in this store.”
“Amabile,” I whispered. I’d never heard the name before I’d read the story at Grandpa’s house. Hadn’t bothered to research it after he destroyed her book. And two others.
“That was the author’s name?” one of the women asked. “Or the title?” The bells tinkled at the front door. If that was Grandma, it would be a death sentence to be caught talking about the book Grandpa burned.
“Amabile was the author,” I whispered.
“What?” The women leaned close.
“Amabile.” Beige corduroy came around the corner. Her name was said again but this time louder, and with the roll of a German accent.
Chapter 19
Dietrich spoke Amabile’s name without the surprise and guttural shout he felt from the shock at hearing the name in this little store. “You are speaking of a German author from the era of the Second World War?”
The little runner stared at him from between two women, her brown curls dry today. Healthy, a nice wave around a face more attractive than he’d noticed before. But a Crawley face.
“I’ve read some of her work. Not what I usually read, but it’s healthy to read a variety, don’t you think?” He came close to the three, two of them smiling, the little runner not. He wasn’t either.
“Why are you back? I told you we don’t have any nonfiction here.”
She had gumption. She should learn to channel it, the way he had.
“Pondering the name of your grandmother’s store. Non Bookends. Makes me think there’s more here than oddly arranged fiction. Possibly whatever a person could want to find.”
The taller of the two women did what his journalistic side loved—she began to babble. She was slightly older, with an almost olive tinge to her complexion, details Dietrich noted without even having to look. He turned to her and managed a smile as she spilled the sort of uncontrolled effervescence journalists waited for. “Cate’s grandma would agree with you about that. So even if it’s nonfiction you’re looking for, you’ll find the truth in here. You just have to know where to look. Cate can help you. She’s been helping here since she was a child.”
He knew that. Cate had grown up near her grandparents, the Crawleys an unhappy man and wife. He’d gleaned that from microfilm of newspapers at the local library. This area might be part of New York City, but it had all the naïveté of a small town. It had been simple to read the whole story between the lines—a broken soldier returning, his fiancée not even at his side during the celebration welcoming him home. A wedding sometime after, two glum faces as far apart as they could be behind their wedding cake. But nothing about the Olympics, nothing about Crawley being a runner. Dietrich had wired Carl at the Library of Congress, asking what exactly were Crawley’s injuries, thankful that injuries didn’t fit Amabile’s lover. Only her…and Oma…and now this man. How had they happened? Why had he come home when he did? He’d claimed to be asking for a friend, a brief but necessary diversion from his own research.
Cate gathered strewn packages from the table’s top, her short arms quick, scooping everything her way. “He doesn’t need help. There are plenty of other bookstores in New York. Ones that group mysteries with mysteries and romance with romance and have whole areas for nonfiction.”
She was young, close to his age, but still Dietrich caught in her tone what he read in Amabile, saw in Cate’s grandmother, and heard in Monika—unresolved angst—not something that would benefit a woman intending to become a senator’s wife, an engagement he’d learned of from the microfilm also.
“Let me help you, instead, with the author you were speaking of when I came in—Amabile. In case you didn’t know, she wrote around the time of World War II. I’ve heard conjecture she wrote love stories long before the war under a different name, then shortly before, she switched to writing under the name of Amabile, writing painful tales that people suspected might be true. In them she gave her heart to a foreign man, someone who was in Germany briefly around that time. A soldier? An athlete in Berlin’s games? Both? Whatever his reason, he wooed her while there, and did it so well he won. Won a medal and won her heart. Then he left her behind, after an explosion, like a discarded prize. A medal he really didn’t want. It broke her, shattered her, inside and out, her scars worn in both places.” He watched for an explosion in Cate, holding back his own at quoting Monika and giving air to her presumptions he was here to refute, but the burst came from another.
The second woman, not as tall, heavier, hair too curly, gasped and clapped a hand over her heart. “Cate…” The woman looked at the little runner. “Your grandmother would want those stories here, especially if they were based on truth. Maybe that’s why she ordered one.”
So Mrs. Crawley had ordered one. Maybe more than one? The color had gone from Cate’s face. “What I read was nothing like what Grandma would want.” Cate pressed the stack of packages to her chest.
“You’ve read Amabile?” Dietrich asked. “Did you think the writing was more real than not?” He wanted to hear the answer from her if she would, what she had to say instead of him so he could scratch Crawley off his list and go home. But Cate said nothing. She was running instead. Dietrich could see it in her waning color, the way she bound the books between her and what she didn’t understand. “Did you think the man who wooed her was from this country? Could you tell anything about her lover in what you read?” He waited for her to say no, or dismiss fiction for exactly what it was. He could just go ask Crawley, skip his usual journalistic precautions, free his family from Monika’s claims, and be done. But Crawley still had Marvin Shanks to explain. If Dietrich charged past the fictional world to get at the facts, the impact would be felt here, in this store, with this family. He would be the bomb Monika had been to him.
Amabile’s lover was taking form again, the blond in her darker hair, the tall in her shorter form, the similarities in their differences on Cate’s face. “I didn’t read much of it.”
Whereas he’d read all he had, and he was reading it
again on Cate. The similarities Monika had inferred between Amabile and Oma were frightening, but what he saw on Cate’s face was terrifying. “He may have been in the service, but I suppose solving who he was wouldn’t matter as much in a fiction bookstore as why he did what he did. That may be something to ask your grandmother.” That may be too much, but it had to be said. He had to separate his family from George Crawley’s, distinguish his family’s who or what from the Crawleys’ why. To know why was personal, the chance that you weren’t the reason why, but some other person or object was more important than you. Dietrich’s family hadn’t lived that way. There had never been a why in their family, only the whisper of what…what was it beside Oma, that invisible presence that really was never there. But whatever sins lay in the Crawley family, the grandma had felt the sting of why and was choking on it. They had truths to face that likely weren’t fiction, whereas in contrast, his family’s still were.
“I won’t do that.” Cate shook her head, throwing off his suggestion, sending her brown waves slapping across her face.
“Why not ask Mavis?” The taller woman stared down at Cate. “This is exactly what she would be interested in. She probably knows, since she ordered one of that author’s books. I’m going to ask her. You have too much going on with a marathon, the election, and a wedding coming up. Leave this to me.”
“A marathon? So you really do run.” The man in the story ran also. He didn’t need to repeat that for either of them. “And you’re getting married? Fiction says to watch your heart.” He turned from the color streaking Cate’s face to the other woman. “I’d be interested in what Cate’s grandmother says. And if she is interested in my opinion, as a German, I’d be happy to…”
“She won’t be interested in your opinion or why. Weren’t you looking for an old friend? Shouldn’t you be spending time with him instead of here?” Cate jerked her head toward the door.
Out of Splinters and Ashes Page 9