“I’m so sorry,” I say. “How can I help?”
“It’s okay. It’s one week of stress. Well, and the full week it will take us to catch up on the time away.”
“Hey!”
For some reason—quite possibly all the subterfuge I’m currently engaged in—I jump when Sabrina pops her head in between us.
Cleo does too. “Don’t sneak up on us.”
“Um, I literally just walked up,” Sabrina says. “Did I catch you two in the middle of a drug deal or something?” She reaches between us to grab Cleo’s book, scrutinizing the cover. “Mushrooms? Again?”
Cleo’s lips thin. “They’re fascinating.”
“What about you, Sab?” I cut in. “Did you find anything?”
“Oh my god, yeah,” she says. “This book is a fictional take on the Donner Party.”
“How . . . nice,” I say.
She cackles, grabs the book out of my hand. I didn’t realize I was holding one—I must’ve yanked it out when she surprised us. “Harry,” she says, reading the back of it. “This book is every bit as fucked as mine.”
“I guarantee it’s not,” I say.
“An interior designer finds a hand behind a wall,” she says.
“Yes, but it’s cozy.” I take the book back.
“How is that cozy,” she asks.
“It’s a cozy mystery,” I say. “It’s hard to explain.”
“Oh-kay.” Her voice wrenches up into a wordless yip of surprise as Kimmy appears at her shoulder. Beside me, Cleo grabs for the edge of the bookshelf, as if for support.
“Why is everyone so jumpy?” Kim asks.
“Sabrina’s reading about the Donners again,” Cleo says.
“It’s fiction,” Sabrina says.
Cleo asks, “Where are Parth and Wyn? Are they finished?”
Kimmy shrugs. “I passed Parth by the fancy books.”
“What are the fancy books?” I ask.
“She means he’s looking for something the New York Times has described as ‘revelatory,’？” Sabrina says.
“Actually . . .” Parth walks up with a paper bag already in hand. “I picked this because the Wall Street Journal gave it such a cranky review I needed to read it myself. It’s by this married couple who usually publish separately. One of them writes literary doorstop novels and the other writes romance.”
“What!” Kimmy snatches the book. “I know them!”
“Seriously?” Parth asks.
“I went to college with them in Michigan,” she says. “They weren’t together yet, though. Her books are really horny. Is this one horny?”
“The Wall Street Journal review didn’t touch on the horniness,” Parth says.
“Is Wyn done?” Sabrina asks.
“Checking out now,” Parth confirms
“What’d he get, a Steinbeck novel?” she asks.
Parth shrugs. “Dunno.”
There’s no way Wyn’s getting a Steinbeck novel. I’m surprised he’s buying a book, period, since we never have time to read on these trips and he’s cautious with his spending. But if he was going to get a book, it wouldn’t be about the American West. He would’ve felt like too much of a caricature.
Parth and Sabrina herd us toward the register. Cleo gets her mushroom book and I buy Death by Design, and then we step out onto the cobbled street. The sun is high in the sky, no trace of mist left, only dazzling blue. Across the street, Kimmy spots a flower cart in front of the florist and, with a squeal of delight, pulls Cleo after her.
“Parth and I are gonna grab more coffee.” Sabrina tilts her head toward the Warm Cup, the café next door with the awning-sheltered walk-up window. We’ve already been twice today. Once before the market, once after.
“Want anything?” she asks.
“I’m good, thanks,” I tell her.
“Wyn?”
He shakes his head. As they wander off, we stand in silence, avoiding gazes. “I meant to tell you,” he says finally. “I talked to Parth last night.”
“And?”
He clears his throat a little. “You’re right. We’ll have to tell them after this week.”
I’m not sure why that floods me with relief. The rest of my week is now guaranteed to be torturous. But at least Parth and Sabrina will get their perfect day.
Wyn gets a text. He’s not usually so attentive to his phone. While he’s checking it, I lean toward him a little, trying to peer into his paper Murder, She Read bag.
He stuffs his phone back into his pocket. “You can just ask.”
“Ask what?” I say.
His brow lifts. I stare back at him, impassive. Slowly, he slides his purchase from the bag and holds it out to me. It’s huge.
The Eames Way: The Life and Love Behind the Iconic Chair.
“This is a coffee-table book,” I say.
“Is it?” He leans over to look at it. “Shit. I thought it was an airplane.”
“Since when do you buy coffee-table books?” I ask.
“Is this some kind of trick question, Harriet?” he says. “You know these don’t require a special license, right?”
“Yes, but they require a coffee table,” I say. “And Gloria’s won’t have room for this.” Wyn’s mother is a pack rat. Not in a gross way, just in a sentimental one. Or rather his father was, and Gloria hasn’t changed much about the Connor family home since her husband passed.
The last time I was there, there was hardly an inch of space on the refrigerator. She had a printout of a group picture we’d all taken at the cottage on our first trip taped up there, right next to a Save the Date for one of Wyn’s cousins, who’d already gotten married, divorced, and remarried since then. His older sister Michael’s engineering degree sat on the mantel, right next to a framed one-page short story his younger sister, Lou, wrote when she was nine, beside a framed photo of Wyn’s high school soccer team.
Aside from the lack of space in his childhood home, this book had to have cost at least sixty dollars, and Wyn’s never been one to spend money. Not on himself, and not on anything whose value is primarily aesthetic. In our first apartment together, he used a tower of shoeboxes as a side table until he found a broken one on the street that he could fix.
He slides the coffee-table book out of my hand and drops it back into his bag. I’m still staring, puzzled, trying to make sense of all the tiny differences between the Wyn of five months ago and the Wyn in front of me, but he’s gone back to checking his phone.
Kimmy comes bounding up with a bundle of sunflowers. “Where are Parth and Sabrina?” she asks, shielding her eyes against the sun.
“Sabrina needed more coffee,” Wyn says. “And Parth needed more Sabrina.”
“Awh.” She clutches her heart. “They’re so cute. Terrifying, but cute.”
I catch Wyn peeking into the bag again, sort of smiling to himself.
In my chest, a metric ton drops onto the proverbial seesaw.
Oh my god.
The beard, the slight softening of his body, the sixty-dollar coffee-table book. All of the texting.