by Ellery Adams
Lou’s words filled the spaces around them like the specters of the fallen soldiers. Nora wasn’t a fanciful person, but she believed in the power of stories. This house was a depository of stories. It had seen death. It had been wounded by fire. It kept secrets and survived a war. And its name reflected the beauty and tumult of its history.
Nora looked at the women who now owned it. “Have you seen the mist?”
“We haven’t,” Lou said, sounding disappointed.
“Sheldon has,” Patty added. “He smelled roses too. Just for a few seconds.”
The talk of local legends had Nora thinking about Danny. Looking for a distraction, she studied the three blue-gray shades painted on pieces of poster board. Nora preferred the brightness of Blue Lace over the more tranquil Silver Mist. The third was called Rainy Day, which she immediately rejected based on its name.
She was about to share her opinion with Lou and Patty when there was a loud crash from a room at the end of the hall.
Patty hurried off to investigate the source of the noise with Lou right behind her. Nora was compelled to tag along.
“It’s got to be the chimney,” Patty called over her shoulder.
It was hard to tell exactly what had happened. The empty room was draped in plastic sheeting. Several drop cloths covered the floor. Ladders flanked a stone fireplace and loose stones were scattered on the floor in front of the hearth. Above the mantel were dozens of holes the stones had once filled. Dust hung in the air, and two workmen were staring up at the ruined chimney in bewilderment.
The shorter of the two, a man with a formidable beer belly and a straggly beard, hooked his thumbs under his overall straps and looked at Patty. “It just gave out on us. Tumbled down all at once.”
Nora noticed that the plastic sheeting taped over the mantel had been torn. Through the tear, she could see a deep gouge in the dark wood. Lighter wood showed through the varnish like a wound.
Lou glared at the workmen. “That mantel is original to the house. It escaped a fire and two floods.”
“We can fix it,” Patty said. She gave Lou a pat on the arm before focusing on the men. “Why did the chimney give out?”
“Couple of reasons,” Beer Belly replied. “Mortar’s old as the hills and some knucklehead added more stones to this side of the chimney without addin’ more support. We took out a few loose stones and that was that.”
His partner dusted off his hands. “We’ll tackle this in the mornin’. My wife is making fried chicken for supper and she’ll have my head if I’m late.”
The workmen collected their tools and left. The women stayed in the room, inspecting the ruined chimney and the pile of stones on the floor.
“Was there an earthquake?” came a raspy voice from the doorway. Sheldon stood in the threshold. His eyes looked glassy and his skin was pale.
“More like an innovative method of chimney removal,” said Lou with false bravado. “You just pull out the right stones and the whole thing comes crashing down. Sorry about the noise. Anyway, Nora came to see you. If you’d like, I can bring some tea to your room.”
“I take mine with milk and arsenic,” Sheldon grumbled, and shuffled back down the hall.
Nora followed him. “If you’re not up to a visit, I can go.”
“You need to see the real me,” Sheldon said.
His ascent up the stairs was slow-going. Nora could see the effort it took him to reach the top and lurch toward his room. Once there, he gracelessly dropped on his bed and let out a groan.
“I brought socks,” Nora said, brandishing the peppermint-scented knit socks she’d picked up from June. “I didn’t know how to gift-wrap a morphine drip.”
“I can’t bend over to put them on, so hang them on a mantel. The Easter Bunny can fill them with candy.”
Sheldon wasn’t just grumpy. He was angry. And his frayed emotions were sharpening his words into ice picks.
Nora wasn’t touchy-feely and rarely initiated contact with others. Still, she wanted to help Sheldon. Knowing that touch could distract people from their pain, she sat on the end of his bed and pulled off his thin socks. She then gently replaced them with June’s.
Sheldon wriggled his toes. “They’re soft. Like rabbit fur.”
Nora uncapped the bottle of peppermint oil June had given her and poured a few drops into the small metal bowl she’d brought with her. She then added hot water from the bathroom sink, creating a peppermint-scented steam. Finally, she draped a towel on his lap and put the bowl in the center of the towel.
“Breathe in,” she commanded.
“You’re a bossy Florence Nightingale.”
Sheldon drew in a deep breath. And another. And another. The steam put some color back in his cheeks. His shoulders relaxed. He closed his eyes and kept breathing.
“This is what you warned me about,” Nora said. “Your flip side. I couldn’t give you a regular work schedule because you don’t know when a bad day will come. You’d work when you could and rest when you couldn’t.”
“In a nutshell.” Sheldon’s gregarious personality from a few days ago was gone. This Sheldon was dejected, frustrated, and hurting. To Nora’s surprise, she found that she liked both of Sheldon’s sides. She liked Mr. Hyde as much as Dr. Jekyll. They were equally genuine.
“Why don’t we have a trial week?” she suggested. “You can see if bookstore life suits you and I can see how well I tolerate an employee who begs off work for no good reason.”
This earned her a small smile.
“I know you’re joking, but people do think that,” Sheldon said. “They don’t see a shaved head or a wheelchair. I’m not wearing a brace. I don’t use a cane or crutches. Which means I’m sitting on my ass, not contributing to society, while my fellow citizens pay for medicine for what is probably a psychosomatic illness. If I had cancer, people would pin ribbons to their chests. But fibro and RA? Pffft. Those are in my head.”
Nora held up her hands. “Don’t get mad at me. I’ve never worn a cancer ribbon.”
Sheldon laughed, causing water from the bowl on his lap to slosh onto the towel. “Don’t worry, I won’t ask you to help me out of my pants.”
“Does anyone?” Nora’s voice was gentle. “What I mean is, would you be leaving someone special to move here? Or would that someone move with you?”
“I don’t have romantic partners,” Sheldon said. “I’m a starfish. Have been my whole life.”
“A starfish?”
“Someone who isn’t interested in sex. If None of the Above were added to the LBGTQ acronym, that would be me. I’d be the N.”
Nora had never met an asexual before. “I came across a term for that in a book I read a few years ago. Was it ‘Aces’?”
“Aces. Ace of Hearts, whatever.” Sheldon rolled his eyes. “I look a bit like the King of Hearts, don’t I? Either way, I live alone. Contrary to the norm, I’m quite content by myself.”
“Me too,” Nora said. She was heading to the door when she spotted a book on the window seat. It was Circe by Madeline Miller.
“Do you have a favorite genre?” she asked Sheldon.
Sheldon gestured at the stack of paperbacks on his nightstand. “I read everything. Books push my pain into the background. I read two or three books a week, and I keep a journal of memorable quotes and ideas. On days I don’t feel well enough to read, I page through that journal and let the memory of those stories comfort me.”
Nora smiled at him. “Sheldon Vega, you’re exactly what I need. I’ve been looking for a person with a heart for books, and here you are.”
“Here I am,” Sheldon said, spreading his arms in a theatrical gesture. The bowl on his lap overturned, soaking his crotch with warm water.
Nora closed the door on a burst of angry swearing. In Spanish.
Downstairs, she found Lou and Patty in a modern white and chrome kitchen. Large glasses of white wine sat on their farm table.
“It’s been a break-out-the-big-glasses kind of day,” Pa
tty said. “Care to join us?”
Nora’s gaze flicked to the wine. Lit by the clear kitchen lights, it looked like the nectar of the gods. She wasn’t even fond of white wine, but she could almost taste its fruity sweetness. She could imagine how it would relax her.
“Another time, thanks. I need to get home,” Nora said.
Of course, no one was waiting there. Other than her books. But they were enough. They had always been enough.
“Wait,” Lou called before Nora could go. “I forgot to ask if you’d look through the trunks of books we found in the attic. We just want to know if they’re trash or treasure. We’ll pay you whatever you think is fair.”
Nora hesitated. Books that had sat for a long time tended to be badly damaged. She’d seen hundreds of books ruined by mold, bugs, and water damage. These issues could be treated, but it was rarely worth the time or effort.
“Any idea how long they’ve been in the attic?”
“Since before the previous owners,” Lou said. “They were an elderly couple and never went to the attic. The books are stored in three steamer trunks.”
At the mention of trunks, a series of fictional characters flashed through Nora’s brain. She saw Harry Potter’s trunk being delivered to Hogwarts. Rincewind and the enchanted trunk from Terry Pratchett’s The Colour of Magic. And Lady Catherine de Bourgh’s particular instructions on how to pack a trunk in Pride and Prejudice. Remembering this scene brought a wistful smile to Nora’s face.
“I’ll take a look,” she said. “And there’s no charge. Just promise you’ll come browse the bookshop when you have some free time.”
Lou saluted Nora with her wineglass. “We can’t wait for that moment.”
* * *
Nora was vacuuming the shop floor the next morning when someone banged on the back door.
Nora opened it, expecting to greet the UPS driver. But it wasn’t UPS. It was Lou.
Lou gestured at the old Volvo wagon idling in the loading zone. The hatchback was open, and Sheldon was bent over, wrestling with one of the trunks.
“I brought the books and your new employee,” Lou said. “He was up bright and early this morning, raring to go.”
Sheldon lifted a trunk by its handles and lumbered toward the door. “Call me Babe. After the ox, not the pig.”
Nora pushed a hand truck over to him. “There’s no sense hurting your back when I have this.”
Sheldon lowered the trunk onto the dolly and turned to get another.
When her car was empty, Lou waved and drove off.
Leaving Nora to the trunks, Sheldon got busy in the ticket agent’s office. He brewed coffee and arranged pastries. Afterward, he tidied the store. When these tasks were finished, he asked if he could fill in inventory and rearrange shelf enhancers.
Nora told him to make himself at home. In the stockroom, she sat on the floor, surrounded by the three trunks. She’d already opened the first, which was the shabbiest. Its leather handles were frayed, its wooden slats were badly nicked, and its metal bore dozens of scratches. When Nora opened the lid, a whiff of old air tainted by honey-scented decay rushed out to greet her.
She saw books. Small hardbacks with black, brown, forest-green, dark-red, and indigo covers. They had been neatly stacked inside the chest. To reach them, however, she had to remove an assortment of personal items. She placed these on the floor and studied them.
There was a pair of satin slippers, a leather case cushioning a pair of wire spectacles, an empty brass picture frame with cracked glass, a watercolor set filled with remnants of dried paint, and a sketch pad with pencil drawings.
Nora turned back to the trunk and pulled out a book. She saw paper sticking out from between its pages and opened the book to find a dried rose. It was brown with age and thoroughly flattened by time and pressure.
The space above Nora’s pinkie knuckle began to tingle.
Danger, an inner voice whispered.
Ridiculous. It’s just a rose, another voice argued.
Nora reached for another book. It was The Mysterious Key by Louisa May Alcott. The cover was in fine condition, but the pages were full of rose blossoms. Though the flowers were sandwiched between sheets of thin paper, moisture from the petals had seeped into the book pages. This kind of damage could not be undone.
A book on European birds was in the same condition, as was a book on constellations, a guide on growing and pickling vegetables, and a dozen works of nineteenth-century fiction. They were all ruined by flowers.
“The petals are all brown now,” Nora scolded the unknown owner of the trunks. “They were never going to last. But the books—they could have lasted forever.”
Thankfully, the smallest trunk held poetry books and no roses. While Nora was examining a book of poems by Christina Rossetti, a tintype photograph fell out from between the pages. Nora picked it up and was immediately captivated by the image of a beautiful woman in a white dress. The ruffled sleeves of her off-shoulder gown enhanced her smooth, milky skin. Her dark hair had been swept off her face, highlighting delicate cheekbones and full lips. Her hands were folded across her lap in a protective gesture. Her left hand was curled around an oblong-shaped crystal or rock.
Nora was riveted by the woman’s expression. She’d been caught on the edge of a smile. There was a naked honesty about her gaze that lent her intelligence as well as beauty and poise. Nora returned the woman’s stare and realized there was a hint of defiance in her eyes and in the tilt of her chin.
On the back of the tintype was the name Rose Blythe Lattimer. Below this was a date, 1862, and the words By sun and candle-light. Forever Yours.
Sheldon entered the stockroom. He picked up one of the dried roses and sniffed it. “I smelled this exact scent at the inn.”
“When?” Nora asked.
“I was on the window seat, reading. I woke up just before dawn, and I couldn’t get back to sleep. The sky was starting to lighten, and the ground was covered in mist.” He reached for the tintype. “I didn’t see this beauty walking in it, though. I saw a black man. I waved at him, but he didn’t wave back.”
Nora’s blood had gone cold. “Was he wearing a white T-shirt?”
Sheldon looked at her in surprise. “He was. He moved like he was angry—all tension and tight fists. I was relieved when he was gone. Maybe he comes and goes with the mist.”
“Like one of the soldier ghosts in the legend about the inn?”
Sheldon shrugged. “In Huckleberry Finn, there’s a line about the sound a ghost makes when it wants to tell us something and can’t make itself understood. But that’s the thing. Loneliness doesn’t make a sound. Which is why that man spooked me. He was totally alone. Totally silent.”
Nora didn’t believe in ghosts.
But as she sat in the stockroom, surrounded by the sickly scent of rotted roses, her pinkie tingling, she thought again of the story about the monster made of rain. Mist was a cloud filled with water droplets. Mist was light enough to hover. It was gauzy. Ghostlike.
The sleigh bells on the front door clanged, signaling the arrival of a customer.
“I’m coming,” Nora murmured, suddenly eager to return to the world of books.
Chapter 6
Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.
—Edgar Degas
An off-duty Deputy Andrews popped into the bookshop that afternoon. He wanted a new sci-fi novel.
“Is there such a thing as a sci-fi classic?” he asked Nora. “Like the books high school teachers put on their summer reading lists? Not that I ever did my summer reading. I thought books were boring until you gave me Ender’s Game.”
“Have you heard of Ray Bradbury?” Nora asked.
Andrews said that he hadn’t.
“It doesn’t matter that you weren’t into reading in high school,” Nora assured him. “That’s the beauty of books. They’re always ready. Always waiting. You just need to reach out, and there they are.”
Andrews laughed. “Y
ou make them sound like lap cats.”
“If a book could purr every time a reader opened its cover, I believe it would.” Nora found a copy of Fahrenheit 451 and showed it to Andrews. “In this novel, books are outlawed. They’re burned by firemen. People are told to watch TV instead. It’s a book about censorship, violence, identity, and courage. I think you’ll like it. Unless you have a thing against firemen.”
“Cops don’t get jealous of firemen. We know we look good in our uniforms.”
Nora grinned and handed him the book. She pointed out a few more titles and then asked, “Did Hester tell you about the man in the white T-shirt?”
“Yeah. She said you saw him too.”
“And Sheldon.” Nora gave a brief summary of Sheldon’s experience. “I’m not accusing the guy of anything. He’s just . . . it’s creepy how he stands and stares.”
“Ms. Pennington,” Andrews began, and Nora knew by his sudden formality that she wouldn’t like what he was about to say. “We’re not going to track a man’s movements because he acts weird and has a thing for white T-shirts. He hasn’t broken any laws. Three people have seen him walking or standing in public areas. That’s it. If we interviewed every weird person visiting this town, we’d get nothing else done.”
Andrews was right. The man in the white T-shirt might exude menace. He might seem frightening. But his demeanor hardly warranted an official investigation.
“What about Danny? Did you guys find anything at Cherokee Rock?”
“No,” said Andrews in dismay. “We have no idea why he left his truck there. If there were clues, they’ve been washed away by the rain.”
Nora had an image of footprints in the mud, slowly filling with water until they disappeared. “Have his lab results come in yet?”
Andrews pulled a face. “I can’t talk about that. It’s one thing for the sheriff to tell you. Me? I’d get parking ticket duty for a month.”
“That wouldn’t be too terrible,” said Nora. “You could stop by the bakery all the time.”
“My pants are already too tight. Hester cracks up when I complain about her making the whole cop/donut cliché worse. She keeps threatening to deliver a dozen pink piggy donuts to the station. Can you imagine McCabe opening that box and seeing those little pig faces Hester makes?”