The Book of Candlelight

by Ellery Adams

  The boy’s mother placed him on the counter and Nora took his chubby fist in hers and gently guided his hand so that the price gun hovered over the bar code on the back of his book. She helped him squeeze the trigger button, and when the register beeped and the price flashed on-screen, the boy grinned.

  “Again,” he demanded.

  Nora cleared the sale and let him ring up all of his books. She then gave him the bag to carry.

  “Thank you,” his mother said. “We’re supposed to meet my husband for dinner, but we’re early. I stayed here too long and now Jefferson is hungry, which means he’s on the brink of a DEFCON 5 meltdown. Between these books and the Cheerios in my purse, we just might make it through our meal.”

  Scooping the little boy up in her arms, the woman planted a kiss on his round cheek and walked out.

  Nora locked the front door, flipped the OPEN sign to CLOSED, and returned to her laptop.

  One website featured the red bird’s spiritual characteristics:

  If a cardinal is trying to get your attention, ask yourself who might be sending you a message. Cardinals do not appear at random. If one comes close to you, it bears a message from the spirit world. Someone might be trying to communicate with you through the cardinal. Ask yourself what message that person might want to deliver.

  Nora remembered the pair of cardinals she’d seen on her hike. The air above her pinkie knuckle hummed.

  “Danny’s not trying to speak to me,” she muttered in annoyance. “We didn’t even know each other.”

  Then why did his death bother her so much? She’d found his body and the experience had been horrible, but she’d faced trauma before. So why was she fixated on Danny’s death?

  Because he loved his wife, a small voice whispered.

  Nora knew this was the truth. She rarely thought about Danny without also thinking of Marie. She kept replaying the couple’s interaction at the flea market. Why? Because she’d never looked at a man the way Marie had looked at Danny. And no man had looked at her like Danny had looked at his wife. Nora had dated men. She’d had a husband. But she’d never been in love with a man who was also her friend. She didn’t want to admit it, but she was jealous of Danny and Marie. What they’d shared reminded Nora of how much time she’d wasted on bad men.

  Now that Marie is alone, there’s no reason to be jealous, the small voice whispered.

  Shoving the barbed thought aside, Nora locked up Miracle Books and sat on her moped.

  “You look like SpongeBob with the pox,” she told the vehicle before donning the hot-pink helmet.

  The moped was a breeze to drive. The speed limit downtown was twenty-five, so Nora had no problem keeping up with car traffic. She pulled into a parking spot in front of the inn and was taking off her helmet when a woman eased a white sedan into the next spot.

  “Cute bike,” she said as she got out of the car. Her gaze lingered on the daisy decals.

  “It’s a loaner,” Nora said. Normally, she would have stuck with “thanks” and walked away. However, she wanted to prove to this slim, well-coiffed woman that she had better taste than the moped suggested.

  “Lou said that the local lock picker would be coming by after six.” The woman shot Nora a quizzical look. “Is that you?”

  Nora showed her the lockpick set. “I’m just an amateur. I learned to use this because some of the items I carry in my bookstore come with locks but no key.”

  “Is Miracle Books yours?” the woman asked, her warm brown eyes shining. “I dropped by this afternoon to see Sheldon. He sold me some fabulous art books, but I’m sorry that I missed you. I’m Georgia Gentry, by the way. That’s my husband, Bo.” She pointed at the inn’s front porch. “Say hello, Bo!”

  A middle-aged man lowered his cell phone and waved.

  “Nora Pennington.”

  The women walked up the front path together.

  “You’ve created a fairyland for book lovers,” Georgia said. “I could spend every afternoon for the rest of my life in your shop. And I love that you breathed new life into the old train station.” She gestured at the inn’s façade. “Buildings deserve second chances. Given enough love, even the hopelessly neglected ones can be beautiful again.”

  “It takes lots of love. Lots of money too,” Nora said.

  “And a shit-ton of work,” Georgia added.

  The women shared a laugh.

  Nora cast a sidelong glance at Georgia. She was an attractive woman with glossy, dark brown hair and a lean frame. Her clothes were simple and perfectly tailored. Though she and Nora were roughly the same age, Georgia had a confidence and easy affability that Nora had never possessed.

  At the approach of the two women, Bo got to his feet. Like his wife, his hair was brown, though it had gone gray at the temples. His tanned and freckled skin, polo shirt, and salmon-colored slacks gave off a country club vibe. He welcomed his wife with a kiss on the cheek before turning a friendly smile on Nora.

  “Bo, Nora owns that darling bookstore,” Georgia said. “She bought the old train station. Do you remember me talking about boarding trains from that station when I was a girl, and how I worried that we’d find it an abandoned wreck?”

  Giving her an indulgent look, Bo said, “If I had a nickel for every time you got all worked up over some old building . . .”

  “You’d be a millionaire. I know.” Georgia squeezed her husband’s hand before turning to Nora. “I’m in the restoration business. It’s like running an animal shelter for historic buildings. Instead of saving animals from ruin and placing them in good homes, I save the homes from ruin. And Miracle Springs holds a special place in my heart. The waters saved my granny’s life. I came here with her when I was a girl. We spent the summer at the lodge. She could barely walk in June. By the end of August, she could dance.”

  Nora mumbled something positive and glanced at the front door. She liked Georgia, but she wished Lou or Patty would appear. She wanted to see the book in the box. After that, she wanted to see Jed.

  Georgia must have read something in Nora’s expression. “Sorry to babble,” she said with a self-effacing smile. “What I was trying to tell you—and not doing a very good job of it—is how happy I am that you not only saved the train depot, but you also turned it into a magical place. I’m going to let Bo drag me to dinner now. Good luck with the lock picking.”

  With a parting wave, Nora entered the inn. The hallway walls were no longer a pock-marked white. They were freshly-painted, and the blue gray was perfectly serene.

  “What do you think of the finished product?” Patty asked, bustling in from the kitchen.

  “It’s really nice,” Nora said. “All you need now is some art.”

  Patty glanced at the bare walls. “Lou wants to hang a big mirror so that we can see what our visitors are made of. You know, spy on them from the dining room.” Patty laughed over Nora’s evident confusion. “There’s an age-old superstition shared by innkeepers that we should all hang a mirror in the foyer if we want to catch a glimpse of a guest’s shadow soul. That’s what shows in the mirror and lets the innkeep know if they’ve let a room to a psychopath. The original owners hung a mirror here. It was one of the few items to survive the fire and is somewhere in the attic.”

  As she talked, Patty led Nora to the library where Lou was waiting for them.

  The rubble had been cleared away. The chimney stones had been completely stripped. Fresh drop cloths draped the mantel and covered the floor. The room was prepped for a transformation.

  Lou greeted Nora and said, “They’ll start rebuilding tomorrow.” She ran her hand along the top of the mantel, smoothing out the plastic sheeting. Her touch was filled with affection. “Ever since we bought this place, I feel like it’s been trying to tell me something. I just don’t know what. This seems like a pretty blatant attempt to communicate.”

  Nora’s gaze was fixed on the hole in the wall. The shadowy niche was about a foot above the mantel and to the right. It silently called to her.<
br />
  Lou beckoned her closer. “I put the box back where we found it so that you could see what we saw. Well, almost. Patty wiped ten layers of dust off of the box.”

  As Nora approached the hole, her pulse quickened. Background noises faded, and she felt like she was moving in slow motion.

  Lou indicated the stepstool in front of the mantel and Nora ascended it in a trancelike state.

  She peered into the darkness and saw a shape inside the wall. A rectangular box. Also known as a coffin box.

  Without asking for permission, Nora’s hands reached out. Her fingers closed around the box and withdrew it from its dark hole.

  The box had been in the wall for decades. As Nora examined it, she guessed that it was more than a century old. Its crystal surface was unblemished, and there was no rusting to the bronze hinges or lock.

  The box was smaller than she’d imagined, which meant the book inside was roughly the size of a mass market paperback, though not as thick. It had a brown cover with no obvious title or author.

  “Can you get it open?” Lou whispered.

  Nora suggested they relocate to the kitchen where the light was better. She put the box on the table, and the women sat down and pulled their chairs close together. After selecting two tools from her lockpick set, Nora inserted a hook with a right angle into the lock. The hook applied pressure while she used her other hand to work the pick. It took her over a minute to spring the lock.

  Instead of opening the box she pushed it over to Lou. Lou shot a questioning glance at Patty, but Patty waved for her to go ahead.

  Nora held very still as Lou raised the lid.

  As soon as the box was open, the air filled with the scent of roses.

  Chapter 8

  Widow. The word consumes itself.

  —Sylvia Plath

  Lou took out the book and laid it on the table. She gently opened the cover, supporting the spine with her left hand in case the binding was fragile.

  Nora watched, feeling a rush of admiration for Lou for treating the book with such respect.

  The first page was blank. The second page contained a small painting of a single red rose. Directly under the painting, a name was written in neat script.

  “It’s Rose’s diary,” Lou said in an awed whisper.

  Nora’s eyes moved from the book to the coffin box. She’d read about diaries in dozens of books. Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl, Bridget Jones’s Diary, I Capture the Castle, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, The Color Purple, Dracula, The Lacuna, and Gone Girl were just a few.

  A diary represented the secret thoughts of the writer. It was meant to be private—to be hidden—because it held secrets. Some diaries were kept under lock and key. Some had pages filled with forbidden yearnings, desperate desires, or impossible dreams. To read someone’s diary was to peer into the crevices of their soul. It was both a trespass and a privilege. A violation and an invitation. It was as intimate as a kiss.

  Lou seemed reluctant to turn another page, as if she believed that Rose’s secrets should be treated with reverence instead of being revealed to three women at once.

  Nora touched Lou’s hand. “If the house has been trying to speak to you, this might be how you’ll discover what it has to has say.”

  With a nod, Lou turned the page.

  A dried flower floated out of the book and landed on the table.

  “Is that a rose?” Patty asked. She lowered her face to the flower and inhaled. “I can’t smell anything.”

  Lou got up, took a small plate from the drying rack, and gingerly slid the rose off the edge of the table and onto the plate. She then passed the plate to Nora.

  Nora knew that she’d be able smell the rose before she even tried. She felt like she’d been haunted by the scent ever since the dried petals had fallen from between the pages of the books kept in the steamer trunks. It was a cloying perfume, a mixture of sweet and rot. And though Nora had never liked roses, she would have given anything to see what this one had looked like in bloom. She could imagine entire bushes of these flowers, glowing like small suns. Bright, resplendent red petals. Cardinal red.

  “Are you okay?” Lou asked. “You look like someone just walked over your grave.”

  That’s exactly what Nora had felt, but she didn’t want to admit it to people she barely knew. Instead, she slid the plate with the dried rose back to Lou. “The books inside the steamer trunks must have been Rose Lattimer’s. They were filled with the same flowers. All roses.”

  “Isn’t that a bit vain?” Patty asked. “To keep so many flowers because you share their name?”

  Lou ran a finger over the diary’s cover with the same tenderness she’d shown to the library mantel.

  Nora didn’t believe in the supernatural, but maybe the house was trying to speak to Lou. Maybe it was trying to reach Nora too. Why else could she smell the roses? But what did the house—or Rose Lattimer—want them to know?

  “From what I’ve read about Rose, she wasn’t the least bit vain,” said Lou. “She was strong, generous, and determined. I think we would have liked her, Patty.”

  Nora suddenly remembered the woman in the tintype portrait. She was beautiful, of that there was no doubt, but there was far more to her than beauty. There was her intelligent gaze, the stubborn set of her jaw, and her proud bearing. Her youthful face glowed with confidence. And the way she was on the verge of smiling at someone standing to the side of the photographer lent her an air of secrecy.

  “I should have brought that tintype with me,” Nora told Lou and Patty. “I was in such a rush to get here that it didn’t cross my mind.”

  “There’s always tomorrow.” Lou placed both hands over the diary. It was a protective gesture. A possessive one too. “We’re really grateful. We would never have gotten this open without your lock-picking skills.”

  “Why don’t we repay you with supper tomorrow night?” Patty asked. “By then, Lou will have read the whole diary and she can fill us in on the juicy bits.”

  Lou agreed and fumbled for her reading glasses, which were once again nesting in her gray curls. She seemed distracted and distant. It was time for Nora to go.

  Patty walked her to the door. “Don’t mind Lou. She’s a sensitive soul and this pile of brick and timber means everything to her. Ever since we met, she’s talked about living here.”

  “How did you end up buying this place?” Nora asked. “Do you have a connection to Miracle Springs?”

  “Not me,” Patty said, opening the front door. “I’m a Chicago native. Lou’s family is from North Carolina. She was born in Chapel Hill but went to college at Cornell. She worked in Manhattan for years and never considered returning to her home state. After her parents died, she started researching her family history. We met at a genealogy convention. We both had this crazy notion that by finding links to our past we could ease our sense of loss. Research was a way of staying connected to our parents and grandparents.”

  A car horn sounded outside, and Patty seemed to remember that she was holding the door open. “See you tomorrow. Georgia, Bo, and Sheldon will be there too. I’m not sure about Micah. Our young hiker sticks to his room when he’s not working off his reduced room rate. Either way, it’ll be a nice, cozy party.”

  Nora wished Patty a good night and drove to Jed’s house. She was eager to see him, to spend an intimate evening with him, but she wished she had a few minutes to clear her head first. Thoughts crowded all the recesses in her brain, and without the chance to reflect on them, she worried that they might explode out of her like colored paper from a confetti cannon.

  At Jed’s, she parked her moped and jogged up to the porch. She knocked and then glanced at her watch. She was nearly an hour late and she hadn’t even called to let him know.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said when he opened the door.

  He took her hands in his and looked her up and down. “Is everything okay?”

  Nora drank in the sight of him. Jedidiah Craig was a bona fide hunk. He h
ad the toughness, the calloused hands, and the five o’clock shadow of a cowboy from a Western novel, but his tousled brown hair, ocean-blue eyes, and wry smile were reminiscent of Rhett Butler’s. His clothes were always casual—flannel shirts, black T-shirts, jeans, work boots. He looked good in his clothes and in his uniform. He would look good in a hazmat suit. Whenever Nora was close to him, she felt like she didn’t measure up. Though the burn scars on her face had been repaired, they still existed in her memory. In her mind, she would always be flawed. And Jed was pretty close to perfect.

  “It’s a long story,” she said, leaning in to kiss him hello. “Can I tell you over dinner, or have I totally screwed that up?”

  Jed pulled her inside and shut the door. “Nothing’s screwed up. The beauty of fried chicken is that it tastes good cold. Besides, tonight isn’t about the food. It’s about making you smile.”

  He stopped Nora before she could walk by the living room. “As you know, I don’t own much furniture. I only need a mattress and a place to sit and eat, but I feel like I’m not a real adult because I have no sofa, no TV, and the wrong kind of bed for nighttime cardio sessions.”

  Nora arched her brows. “Are we having fried chicken in bed?”

  Jed flashed her one of his brilliant smiles. “No, but I like the way you think. Stay here for a sec. Don’t move an inch.”

  “Where’s Henry Higgins?” Nora called after him.

  “He has a date tonight too,” Jed called back, and Nora assumed that Henry was spending time with his favorite neighbor, Mrs. Pickett.

  Jed hurried into the kitchen and returned with a bottle of non-alcoholic beer in each hand. He handed one to Nora and said, “Do you remember when we talked about our favorite kids’ books? The only one we had in common was Curious George. You said that you loved the scene where George transforms the Man in the Yellow Hat’s living room into a jungle. Well, I thought I’d bring that scene to life for you.”