“I moved out that night. I felt like such a fool. I’d heard the rumors. The entire faculty knew what he was. But I was too enthralled to hear any of it. He was so brilliant, so talented. I couldn’t see how manipulative he was—until I could. And even then, I stayed. Until Marybeth. Even I couldn’t unsee that.”
“He was faculty at UNH?”
She nodded. “He taught my creative writing class.”
“Daniel Strayer . . . was your husband?”
Ashlyn wished she weren’t sitting directly across from him. “Did you know him?”
Please say no. Please say no. Please say no.
“No, but I’ve heard the name. He’d been let go the month before I started. Reportedly, after being investigated for some extracurricular activity with a student. Was that your doing?”
“No, it wasn’t me. But he thought it was. He thought everything was my fault. The night he died, we met for a drink to settle some of the property stuff. It didn’t go well. And then when we left . . .” She closed her eyes against the memories, then opened them again when she felt Ethan’s touch.
“And then you got this,” he said softly, taking her hand and turning it palm-up.
Ashlyn swallowed, suddenly off-balance. “Yes.”
“Does it still hurt?”
His voice was unsettlingly soft, the room too warm. “No. Not now.”
“I’m glad.”
What was happening? Her heart felt like it was tap-dancing on her rib cage and she couldn’t seem to make her lungs expand. There hadn’t been anyone since Daniel. And not really anyone before him. Certainly no one who made her feel the way she was feeling now.
“You okay?”
She blinked at him, aware that she’d been silent a long time. “Yeah, just . . .”
Ethan abruptly let go of her hand. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”
“You didn’t. It’s just . . . been a while. I guess I’m out of practice. Not that I was ever in practice. I just meant . . .”
Oh god, stop talking, Ashlyn. He touched your hand. He didn’t invite you to his bedroom.
Ethan’s mouth curved softly. “I get it. I haven’t been . . . practicing much either. The divorce wrecked me. And then my dad got sick. There hasn’t been much time for a social life. And to be honest, I’ve never been very good at this part. The wooing thing, I mean. Picking up on signals, social cues. I’m sorry if I overstepped.”
It was Ashlyn’s turn to smile. He was nothing like she’d imagined him when he walked into the shop that night. He was charming and funny and kind. “You’re doing fine,” she told him shyly. “Wooing-wise, I mean.”
“We can go slow.”
Feathery little wings seemed to take flight in her belly as she met his gaze. “Slow is good.”
TWELVE
ASHLYN
Books are rib and spine, blood and ink, the stuff of dreams dreamed and lives lived. One page, one day, one journey at a time.
—Ashlyn Greer, The Care & Feeding of Old Books October 17, 1984
Portsmouth, New Hampshire
Ashlyn ran an eye over the legal pad perched on her knees, pleased with her notes for the shop’s annual holiday newsletter. She was working in bed, writing in longhand with Frank Atwater’s favorite Conklin fountain pen. She’d type it up later so the typesetter could read it, but there was something deliciously old-fashioned about creating with pen and ink, like a direct line forged from head to hand.
Normally, the entire issue would be written by now and already at the printer’s, but between the push to complete Gertrude’s Nancy Drew books and the distraction of Hemi’s and Belle’s books, it had slipped her mind entirely. As it was, she was going to have to scramble to beat the printer’s deadline, then get them addressed and mailed.
She had just put down her pen and was considering a cup of tea when the phone rang. She glanced at the clock. Who on earth would be calling at ten o’clock?
“Hello?”
“Is it too late?”
“Ethan?”
The sound of his voice both surprised and pleased her. He’d called on Monday to let her know he’d left a message with Zachary’s assistant. Neither of them had mentioned the awkward moment from the night before, though the memory had drifted into her head several times over the course of the day, accompanied each time by an unsettling flush of warmth.
“Yeah, it’s me. I didn’t wake you, did I?”
“No. I was just working on the holiday newsletter for the store. Are you calling to tell me you just got off the phone with Zachary?”
“Nope. Still haven’t heard back.”
“Well, it’s only been a few days.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
He sounded distracted, distant. “You sound funny. What’s up?”
“I’ve been reading.”
“Ah. How far have you gotten?”
“The stuff about Helene and the asylum. I mean . . . holy hell.”
“I know. Are you okay?”
“Yeah. Just, you know . . . processing.” There was a pause as he pulled in a breath, then let it out heavily. “My Jewish great-grandmother married a Nazi sympathizer, who locked her up to hide her from his Nazi-loving friends. How did I not know any of that? We’re Jewish, or at least partly Jewish, and no one ever said a word. Did my father know? And if so, why keep it a secret? And then Marian, finding out the way she did. My god . . .”
He sounded genuinely rattled. And a little angry. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
“Yeah. It’s just weird, you know? I never thought of the Mannings as the ideal American family, but this is worse than anything I could have imagined.”
Ashlyn thought of her own parents. The mother who couldn’t be bothered to save herself. The father who’d climbed up to the attic and put a shotgun under his chin because he wanted to shake his fist at God. “There’s no such thing as the ideal American family, Ethan. It’s a myth.”
“I guess. Have you finished Forever, and Other Lies yet?”
“Almost, and it isn’t looking good on my end either.”
“That’s why I stopped. I needed a break.” He sighed, weary or disgusted, perhaps both. “I guess we know what happens next, though—and whose fault it ended up being.”
Ashlyn considered this a moment. She’d thought so, too, at first. But now she wasn’t so sure. She couldn’t get past the echoes she’d picked up the first time she touched the books, the eerily similar fusion of bitterness and grief. People lied. Echoes didn’t. Belle and Hemi both genuinely believed themselves to be the wronged party, which seemed to suggest that there was more to the story than they currently knew. Perhaps more than they’d ever know. But she couldn’t say any of that to Ethan.
“Or maybe we just think we know and it was actually something else.”
“You think there’s something else coming?”
“I’m just saying it feels like that wasn’t all of it. He loved Belle, Ethan. Enough to walk away from a story he clearly believed every word of. I could be wrong. Maybe it was enough to make Belle walk away—she was certainly furious—but my gut tells me there’s something else.”