The Echo of Old Books(10)
Eventually, I do turn, though, and find your eyes still on me, and I realize that even at this distance, I’m not safe. You’re simply dazzling, an icy-cool Eve in your slithery teal silk—the belle of the ball.
Belle.
It’s how I thought of you that night, how I’ll always think of you. Not by the name your family gave you but as my Belle. Because I sense it again as I pretend not to feel your eyes on me, the certainty that there’s another woman hiding behind that chilly facade—one who has nothing to do with the glittering charade playing out around her.
Or perhaps it’s only what I need to believe now—these many years later as I sit at my typewriter, spilling it all out—a delusion I cling to because it’s easier than admitting I could ever have let myself be so thoroughly deceived.
THREE
ASHLYN
Beneath each faded jacket and scarred board is a life, a noble deed, a bruised heart, a lost love, a journey taken.
—Ashlyn Greer, The Care & Feeding of Old Books
September 26, 1984
Portsmouth, New Hampshire
Ashlyn sipped her coffee with closed eyes, fighting a dull headache and a vaguely queasy sensation in the pit of her stomach. It happened sometimes after handling a book with intense echoes. Like a hangover or early symptoms of the flu. She knew better than to spend long stretches of time with a book like Regretting Belle. Dark books, she called them, books with echoes too intense to be shelved with regular stock.
The fact that customers didn’t know about the existence of echoes didn’t mean they couldn’t feel them. She’d seen firsthand the effects a dark book could have on the unsuspecting. Dizziness. Headache. An unexpected rush of tears. Once, a customer had pulled a copy of Vanity Fair from the shelf and been so overcome she had to ask for a glass of water. Poor woman. That was the day Ashlyn decided to purge the shelves.
She’d hung a CLOSED FOR INVENTORY sign on the door and over the course of the next three days had gone shelf by shelf, touching every book in the store, culling those with echoes she deemed too dark to be handled by the unsuspecting. There had been twenty-eight in all, some quite valuable. They were all safely out of reach now, quarantined in a glass-front cabinet in the shop’s storeroom. Regretting Belle would almost certainly end up there when she finished it.
She eyed the book, lying beside her tote now on the kitchen counter. After three readings, the opening chapter had imprinted itself on her brain. An incendiary first meeting between lovers—at an engagement party, no less. Hardly an auspicious beginning. But then, the title made it clear that there would be no happy ending for the lovers.
Which probably explained why she hadn’t been able to bring herself to move on to chapter two. The truth was she still hadn’t decided what it was she’d been reading. Was it a memoir? The first chapter of a novel? A beautifully bound Dear Jane letter? She had no idea. What she did know was that allowing herself to become immersed in a doomed romance—even one in a book—wasn’t a particularly good idea. Not when she’d fought so hard to pull herself back from the brink after her own marriage had imploded in such spectacular fashion.
A series of affairs, a divorce not quite finalized, and a death she hadn’t seen coming. And yet it hadn’t seemed right to call herself a widow after Daniel died—nor could she accurately call herself divorced, though their marriage had effectively ended months before. And so she’d found herself in a kind of limbo, with a brand-new therapist and no idea what came next. Once again, she had retreated to her safe place. But safety had come at a price.
She was painfully aware of the contraction her life had undergone over the last four years. Her lack of a social life or any serious professional circle. Her strict avoidance of anything that might lead to romantic involvement. It made for a narrow existence, a blur of sameness with little to distinguish one day from the next. On the other hand, there were no disasters, which made the sameness worth it. Most of the time.
Perhaps that explained why she found Regretting Belle so compelling. Because it offered an escape from the sameness, a journey that didn’t require leaving the relative safety of shore.
But it was more than that and she had known it the moment she opened the book in Kevin’s back room. There was a connection she couldn’t quite identify, something prickly and familiar lurking beneath all the bitterness and betrayal—a sense of things left unfinished. It was how her own life felt, as if she’d been placed in a state of suspension, waiting, breath held, for some unseen shoe to drop. Like an interrupted story or an unresolved chord.
The realization was an uncomfortable one. And not easily set aside now that she was aware of it. All because a guy from Rye had dropped off a couple of cartons of books at Kevin’s shop.
Not that it was the first time she’d been caught off guard by a book’s echoes. It happened quite often, actually. Secrets so scandalous, they singed the tips of her fingers. Sadness that felt like a stone lodged in her throat. Joy so fierce, it made her scalp prickle. There wasn’t much she hadn’t come across. But she’d never experienced anything close to what she felt while holding Regretting Belle.
Her eyes slid to the book. Even closed, she could feel the pull of it, the allure of its anonymity, its careful, inscrutable prose, beckoning to be read after who knew how long.
And the echoes.
Over the years, she’d come to think of them the way a perfumer described the notes of a scent. Some were simple, others more complex—subtle layers of emotion combined to create the whole. Top, heart, and base.