Eventually, the anguish ebbed, losing some of its sharpness. Either she’d grown used to the sensation or the emotions had simply bled themselves out. She wasn’t sure which. All these years later, she still wasn’t sure. Could a book change its echoes, or were the emotions she registered of a more indelible nature, forever fixed in time?
The next day, she asked Frank where the new books had come from. He told her they’d been brought in by the sister of a woman whose son had been killed in a car crash. Finally, she understood. The suffocating sadness, the crushing sensation beneath her ribs, was grief. A mother’s grief. But the how still eluded her. Was it really possible to register the emotions of another person simply by touching an object that had belonged to them?
Over the next few weeks, she attempted to re-create the sensation, plucking titles from the shelves at random, waiting expectantly for another peculiar jolt of emotion. Day after day, nothing came. Then one afternoon, she picked up a battered copy of Charlotte Bront?’s Villette and a fierce surge of joy rippled through her fingers, like the rush of cool water, light and bubbly but startling in its intensity.
Then came a third book. A volume of poems by Ella Wheeler Wilcox called The Kingdom of Love. But the book’s stale masculine energy felt strangely at odds with its romantic title, proof that a book’s echoes had little to do with genre or subject matter. Rather, a book’s energy seemed to be a reflection of its owner.
Eventually, she got up the nerve to tell Frank about the echoes. She was afraid he’d tell her she’d been reading too many fairy tales. Instead, he listened intently as she poured it all out, and then he surprised her with his response.
“Books are like people, Ashlyn. They absorb what’s in the air around them. Smoke. Grease. Mold spores. Why not feelings? They’re as real as all those other things. There’s nothing more personal than a book, especially one that’s become an important part of someone’s life.”
Her eyes had gone wide. “Books have feelings?”
“Books are feelings,” he replied simply. “They exist to make us feel. To connect us to what’s inside, sometimes to things we don’t even know are there. It only makes sense that some of what we feel when we’re reading would . . . rub off.”
“Can you do it? Feel what’s rubbed off, I mean?”
“No. But that doesn’t mean others can’t. I doubt very much that you’re the first. Or that you’ll be the last.”
“So I shouldn’t be scared when it happens?”
“I don’t think so, no.” He scrubbed at his chin a moment. “What you’re describing is a kind of gift. And gifts are meant to be used. Otherwise, why have ’em? If I were you, I’d figure out how to get better at it, practice at it, so you know how it works. That way, you won’t be scared when it happens.”
And so she had practiced. She’d also done a bit of sleuthing. With Frank’s help, she had discovered that there was an actual name for what she’d experienced. Psychometry. The term had been coined in 1842 by physician Joseph Rodes Buchanan, and in 1863 a geologist named Denton had published a book entitled The Soul of Things. In short, she was a kind of empath, but for books.
Frank had been right. Books were like people. Each carried its own unique energy, like a signature or fingerprint, and sometimes that energy rubbed off. Ashlyn scrubbed her palms along the thighs of her jeans now, trying to erase the sadness that had leached into her fingers from the box of discarded cookbooks. It was the downside of her so-called gift. Not all echoes were happy. Like humans, books experienced their share of heartache—and like humans, they remembered.
Over the years, she had learned to limit her exposure to books imbued with negative echoes and to shun certain books entirely. But on days like today, avoidance wasn’t possible. All she could do was work quickly.
The final box contained more novels, all in great shape, but nothing she could use at the shop. Then, as she neared the bottom of the carton, she came across a paperback edition of Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day.
It was nothing special. In fact, it was rather shabby, its pages yellowed almost to brown, its spine deeply creased. But its echo was impossible to ignore. Intrigued, she laid the book in her lap, pressing her palm against the cover. It was a game she played sometimes, trying to guess whether a book contained an inscription and, if so, what it might say.
She loved imagining how a particular volume had found its way into a reader’s hands—and why. Why that book especially, and for what occasion? A birthday or graduation? A promotion?
She’d read a lot of inscriptions over the years, some sweet, some funny, some so poignant they’d brought tears to her eyes. There was something deliciously intimate about opening a book and finding those few scribbled lines on the flyleaf, like being given a glimpse into its emotional life, which had nothing to do with its author and everything to do with its reader.
Without a reader, a book was a blank slate, an object with no breath or pulse of its own. But once a book became part of someone’s world, it came to life, with a past and a present—and, if properly cared for, a future. That life force remained with a book always, an energetic signature that matched its owner’s.
Some books carried mingled signatures and were harder to read, usually in the case of multiple owners. That was the vibe she was getting from the copy of The Remains of the Day. Lots of layers. Very intense. The kind of book that almost always had an inscription. And as she flipped back the cover, she saw that this one did.
Dearest,
Honor isn’t about blood or a name.
It’s about being brave and standing up for what’s
right. You, my love, have always chosen honorably.
Of that, you may always be proud,
just as I am proud of the man I married.
—Catherine
It felt like a reassurance of some kind, words of comfort offered to a troubled heart, but the energy the book gave off, a dank, weighty sensation that felt like doubt, along with threads of guilt and regret, hinted that Dearest—whoever he was—had been less than convinced.
Ashlyn closed the book, placing it firmly on the no pile, then reached for the final book in the carton. Her belly did a little flip as she lifted it out, the kind that meant she may finally have discovered something worthwhile. It was a small volume but quite beautiful. Three-quarter Moroccan leather, ribbed spine, marbled blue boards—and, unless she missed her guess, hand-bound.
She held her breath as she examined it. Little to no shelf wear. Binding tight and square. Text block yellowed but otherwise solid. She peered at the embossed gold lettering on the spine. Regretting Belle. Not a title she was familiar with. She frowned as she continued to study the book. There was no sign of an author’s name. No publisher’s name either. Odd, but not unheard of. But something was off.
The book was strangely quiet. Silent, in fact. The way a new book felt before an owner’s echo rubbed off. An unwanted gift, perhaps, that had gone unread? The thought made her sad. Books given as gifts should always be read. She turned back the cover, hunting for the copyright page. There wasn’t one. There was, however, an inscription.
How, Belle? After everything . . . how could you do it?