The Book That Matters Most (30 page)

Ava stopped the car and got out, plastering on a smile and extending her hand toward Helen, who frowned even deeper.

Helen held up both hands, which were covered in dirt, and shrugged.

“What a gorgeous garden,” Ava said. “I always think of autumn as marigolds and mums.”

“Will flower until frost,” Helen said. “That's what Mother always said.”

Ava took in the purple and red fuchsias and the cannas in every shade of orange imaginable.

“What are the big ones?” she asked, pointing to the purple blooms looming at least three feet tall above everything else.

“Salvias,” Helen said matter-of-factly. “Mother planted them because she feared the others seemed too tropical for this time of year.”

“Ah,” Ava said.

Truth be told, gardening bored her. Jim always did their planting, the window boxes of pansies and vines of morning glories along the back fence. And the tulips, of course, for her.

“I should learn more about it,” Ava said.

“Some consider it a waste of time,” Helen said.

She didn't wait for an answer, just began to walk toward the front door. Ava followed.

As soon as they arrived on the doorstep, the door swung open and a butler appeared. He was old, seemingly even older than Penny herself had been. But he stood straight in his butler's uniform, and held a silver tray with a single glass of water on it. Helen took the glass and drank the water down without even pausing.

Through the grand foyer Ava hurried after Helen. Ahead of
her, a jaw-dropping view of the statehouse with its imposing marble dome appeared.

Helen paused to wait for Ava to catch up. She pointed at the window and the statehouse beyond.

“That's the fourth largest unsupported marble dome in the world,” she said. “Did you know that?”

Ava did, but apparently the question was rhetorical because Helen was saying, “St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. The Minnesota state capitol. The Taj Mahal. And us.”

“Impressive,” Ava said, noticing the trail of dirt Helen had brought in from the garden.

“Stephen? Tea?” Helen called. To Ava, she said, “Sit.”

Ava sat.

Despite the dahlias and the butler and the view, Ava saw now that the house was a bit shabby around the edges. Fine cracks in the ceiling. A draft coming in through the wall of windows. The upholstery faded. As if she knew what Ava was thinking, Helen ran her fingers over the worn fabric on the chair where she sat.

“I suppose this is about the book,” she said.

“It's come to my attention that your grandmother published it,” Ava said, relieved there would be no more small talk.

“Poppy Montgomery. Editor to New England's finest authors.”

“That book was very important to me the summer I was eleven,” Ava said. “So when the book club made us choose the book that mattered most to us, I immediately picked
From Clare to Here
.”

She waited, but Helen remained impassive.

“Your mother chose
Pride and Prejudice
,” she added, but Helen only nodded slightly.

Stephen the butler arrived, noisily wheeling a cart like a flight
attendant's. After he served them tea—his hands shaking so hard that as much spilled to the floor as made it into the cups—and wheeled the cart out, Ava said, “The problem is, I can't find any copies of
From Clare to Here
. I know the publisher went out of business—”

“There
are
no copies,” Helen said.

“But there must be.”

“It went out of print rather quickly. The author refused to do any publicity for it, and Grandmother always believed that helped keep a book alive. No reviews to speak of, just the
Globe
and the
Journal
. Typically when a book goes out of print the author buys up whatever's left. I assume that's what happened.”

“The note from your mother,” Ava said. “Do you understand it?”

“She said she knew
your
mother.”

“My mother owned a bookstore,” Ava said.

“I remember when you first joined the book group, Mother told me that she'd once delivered a gift to you from your mother. A long time ago, when you were a child.”

“My mother died when I was young,” Ava said. “So I wouldn't remember that.”

Helen shrugged.

“I should be going,” Ava said.

Helen stood—a little too eagerly, Ava thought.

“I suspected you might want to see the records I have about the book,” Helen said. “So I made copies for you.”

She handed Ava a red folder with the logo for White Swan Books across it.

Ava thanked her, then made her way through the large rooms to the foyer and the front door.

Will flower until frost
, she thought as she passed the garden.
She paused to admire the dahlias, some of which were almost as big as her head. Then she got back in her car, the folder on her lap. She had to resist the urge to open it right there in the long driveway and read what it had to say. Instead, she made her way around the wide circle, past a chipped marble fountain of classical figures without any water bubbling from it, between the tall boxwood hedges, and back onto Prospect Street.

Ava drove a couple of blocks, then pulled over.

She opened the red folder. Inside, a thin stack of papers, neatly paper-clipped together. The top one read: “
From Clare to Here
. Synopsis.” Behind it were copies of the contract. She scanned to the bottom, and what she saw there made her breath catch. Instead of the author's name being listed as Rosalind Arden, it read “Charlotte North.”

Ava read the name again, and then again.

Charlotte North?
Charlotte North?

She closed the folder and looked straight ahead at the yellow and red leaves on the trees, the sunlight dappling them.

She opened the folder again, as if perhaps she would discover she'd misread the author's name. But it read “Charlotte North.” Ava's mother had written
From Clare to Here
.

Maggie

From her perch on the stool at the cash register, Maggie saw the tour guide from the Musée d'Orsay walk by. Unexpectedly, Madame had directed Maggie behind the counter this morning when she came in. With no explanation, Madame said, “I assume you can punch these keys and make change?” and without waiting for an answer she walked away. Now a second surprise: Noah.

Maggie jumped down and ran to the door, flinging it open.

“Hey you!” she called.

He stopped and turned around. When he realized who it was, he brightened.

“I'm glad you're okay,” he said.

Maggie chewed her bottom lip. She only had a hazy memory of seeing him at the café, remembering only that he'd bought her food and acted concerned. But what had she done or said that morning? How had she looked?

“I ran after you,” he was saying, and now he was moving toward her, “but no luck.”

“I wanted to thank you,” she said. “I was so sick that day.”

“No. You were completely wasted.”

She started to argue with him, but stopped.

“Right,” she said. “I was.”

“I'm Noah,” he said. “In case you forgot.”

“Maggie,” she said, and surprised herself by giving him a hug.

Noah hugged her back, wrapping her in his arms and holding on tight. She thought of solid things, like stone piers and hard clay. Things that held you in place.

“You're a good hugger,” she said when he released her.

He grinned. “I aim to please.”

They stood awkwardly for a moment, then Noah tilted his chin toward the store. “You work here?”

Maggie nodded.

“All day?” he asked.

“It's kind of loose,” she said.

“Maybe we could meet up when you finish? Get a bite of food or something? My last tour ends at four.”

Maggie hesitated.

“Hey,” Noah said, holding up a hand. “That's cool. I'm just glad you're all right.”

He adjusted his backpack in a way that indicated he was leaving.

“Wait,” she said.

She took a step closer to him. His eyes were nice, dark blue, like the ocean in a certain light. And he had that shock of hair that fell over his eyes. Maggie tried to find something false in his face, but he looked open, genuine.

Noah surprised her by wrapping her into another hug and holding her there.

“I'll be back around five,” he said into her hair.

Maggie nodded against his chest.

“Falafel?” he said.

“Falafel,” she said.

“L'As?” Noah said. “Have you been?”

Maggie didn't answer.

“On rue des Rosiers,” Noah said. “They're super crisp and they put hummus, and this pickled red cabbage and salted cucumbers and fried eggplant and harissa. And the pita is enormous, like, you can't even hold the thing.”

After he left, Maggie couldn't stop grinning. She went to the back room and wrestled the mouse enough to write to her brother.

Wills!!! I have an honest to God job! I met a nice boy. I have a friend. I'm practically normal!

Instead of signing it she sent a row of emoticons: a face with eyes popping, a dancing girl, the French flag, and then a dozen books followed by a dozen hearts.

Immediately after she sent it, Will replied.

Maggot. Stop playing games. Call Mom.

Without hesitating, Maggie did. She picked up the phone and dialed her mother's number. When she heard her mother's voice—“Hi, this is Ava. I'm not here to take your call . . .”—Maggie unexpectedly started to cry. After the beep, she took a breath.

“I love you,” she said, and hung up.

Hank

Hank Bingham did his best thinking in his little spiral notebooks. When he wrote in them—the facts of a case, the descriptions of people and places, what people told him, his own unanswered questions—it was like he was figuring something out. He
was
figuring something out: the solution.

It used to drive Nadine crazy. “Put down the Bic, Hank, and let's have a conversation.” She'd chop off every syllable in the word
conversation
, as if he might not understand it otherwise. He'd tried to explain it to her, how writing stuff down helped him think. But she didn't buy it. “It's called approach avoidance, Hank,” she
told him once. But when he looked it up in the
Merriam-Webster
, he decided she was wrong. Approach avoidance was when a goal was both desirable and undesirable. Nadine's we-need-to-talk conversations were never desirable to Hank. What he had was simple avoidance.

Miss Kitty was sitting right on his notebook, so Hank had to slide it out from under her, which made the cat hiss at him and jump off the table. Oh, if Nadine knew a cat was sitting on her kitchen table she'd go ballistic on him.

Hank sat down and took his pen from his pocket.

The idea of solving a problem—a case—still thrilled him, almost the way he used to feel right before he kissed a girl or put his hand inside her bra to touch her warm breast. He liked the
right before
part of things, when it was impossible to be disappointed. Sitting here now at the kitchen table where he and Nadine used to sit across from each other with their morning coffee, sometimes avoiding eye contact, sometimes sharing the newspaper, Hank felt it, the excitement of the
right before
. After all these years, he was about to solve the Lily North case.

Also on the table, besides his notebook and his cat, was
From Clare to Here
.

He opened that first.

He read the epigraph out loud:

Now go we in content
To liberty, and not to banishment.

It was from a Shakespeare play,
As You Like It
. Hank knew that, and knew it was called an epigraph, because when the book had first arrived in the mail all those years ago, when he'd been crazy
with grief over Charlotte leaving him, he'd thought there might be a clue inside somewhere.

“What's this?” he'd asked Nadine, who was sick with suspicion over his melancholy.

“An epigraph,” she told him, narrowing her eyes and studying not the words but him. All of him, like she was a human x-ray machine trying to read him and discover what was wrong. “A poem or a quotation the writer puts at the beginning of a book.”

“And what's the point? I mean, you've got the book itself, right? Why borrow someone else's poem or whatever?”

“It suggests the theme of the book,” she said.

“Don't you get that from reading the book?”

Nadine closed the book and handed it back to him. “Go read
As You Like It
and you figure out why the writer put this epigraph here. Okay?”

And he'd gone to the library for the book Nadine mentioned, but when he found out it wasn't a book really, but a play, by Shakespeare, written in language he couldn't understand, he'd given up.

Until today.

Hank opened his spiral notebook and flipped to the first empty page he saw. He licked the tip of his pen, and frowned. Something was written in a woman's handwriting across the top of the page.

He tapped his pocket to see if his readers were there, and took them out and put them on, squinting anyway at the unfamiliar handwriting.

Rosalind Arden
.

He held the paper closer, as if the name might change.

Rosalind Arden
.

“What the hell?” Hank said out loud into the empty kitchen.

The cat, still mad that he'd disturbed her nap, glared at him.

Then he remembered. Last summer in Home Depot. He'd run into Ava North buying an air conditioner and she'd asked him for help tracking down a writer. She wrote the name in his notebook, and as soon as he told her to do that he decided he wasn't going help her. He didn't like her.

Now here it was. The name she'd written down. The writer she was looking for. Had she figured out who Rosalind Arden was?