Finding Jessie: A Mystery Romance (5 page)

“You’re so nice, Sam,” she said softly.

“I’m just me. I don’t have any business cards with me. They’re in my desk at home. Let me give you my address.” Sam wrote his home address and phone numbers on a paper napkin and walked her to her motorhome, which was parked near his car on the same street. All of the other cars parked at the meters near the estate sale were gone. The parking attendant was antsy to lock the gate and let them know so.

“We’ll just be a few more minutes,” Sam said. “Don’t lock up the lot chain until we go.” He paid for both their parking fees and gave the attendant a small tip that made him smile and walk away to light a cigarette and wait for them to leave.

She unlocked the driver’s side door and let him peek inside. The vehicle was jam-packed with boxes and plastic milk crates which appeared to be filled with children’s books.

“I hit a big book sale in Canada less than a week ago, so I am not quite organized enough to have company inside right now.”

“I was just going to tell you the same thing about my house.” Sam hesitated. “I’ll see you at my house, though. Right, Jessie?”

“Right!” She waved the napkin with the map he’d drawn on it, as well as his name and phone number. “I’ve got your address. I’ll find it on my own, if I lose you in traffic.”

“All right. See you there.” Sam got into his ancient Volvo station wagon, a car that needed a paint job, but still ran like fine clockwork, turned over the motor and drove slowly to his house. He did lose sight of her motorhome in all of the traffic—probably several red lights separated them by the time he reached his home.

Quickly, he ran up the steps and unlocked his door. The Twins, two tiger cats, meowed plaintively upon his arrival.

“Not now, Twins,” he told them. “I’ll feed you in a few minutes.”

Sam walked around the piles and piles of books and climbed up the right side of the stairway to the second floor because the left side of the stairs was also piled with stacks of books. The cats followed him as he hurriedly used the bathroom. While he washed his hands and face, shaved, and brushed his teeth, they wound around his legs, meowing. Just as he returned his rinsed toothbrush to the glass on the sink, he heard the doorbell downstairs. He gave one last look at himself in the mirror and horrified, pulled up his almost-forgotten zipper.

“Coming,” he called as he rushed downstairs, trying not to trip on the piles of books that were stacked on every step.

He opened the door and welcomed her inside. He asked if he could take her wrap. She now wore a heavy coat sweater, instead of the denim work shirt. She still wore the same white, ribbed tank undershirt. He smiled as he took her coat sweater from her and laid it on the arm of the worn blue sofa in the living room. He averted his eyes from the enticing shape of her breasts.

“I can light a fire,” he said carefully looking at her eyes and not letting them trail downward. “Are you chilly?”

“No, I’m fine,” she said. “It’s much warmer in here than in my motorhome.”

“You parked your rig all right?”

Jessie explained that she had a hard time finding parking in his neighborhood for her motorhome.

He slapped a hand to his forehead.

“I wasn’t thinking. Where did you park?”

“E Street, in the train station pay lot.”

His mouth opened a bit. “That’s a half-mile away.”

“I ate a big lunch and I needed the exercise. I just jogged right over here.”

“I couldn’t have jogged after all we ate.”

“I have a good metabolism and I jog a lot when I get stir crazy from living in a motorhome.”

“I just walk every day of the year, even when it’s snowing out. No jogging, ever,” he admitted.

“Walking is the perfect exercise,” she said. “That and swimming.”

“I like swimming, too, in a pool, not in the bay.”

“It’s cold year round?”

“Always.”

She ran her hands over the worn sofa. “Mmm, comfy. It’s broken in just right. The blue chintz fabric is old but still beautiful.” She looked at Sam, hope in her eyes.

“I agree about the comfort. Couch and I have had this long, torrid affair. She’s old, but we’ll never break up. Not even if her legs fall off.”

She smiled and put on her glasses to see the titles of the books in stacks next to the sofa. The specs were a fetching style—vintage cat’s eye shapes, in black, with little rhinestones at the corners. She reached out her hand to pick up a book.

“May I see this one?” she asked before touching.

“Sure, that’s my to-be-read this week pile.” Sam turned around and pointed. “And those seven piles are my online auction piles of books for each day of this week. There are also piles in the dining room and every bedroom. No books are in the bathrooms or kitchen, though. Too damp.”

“I concur.”

She handled a paperback carefully, as he expertly mended the Jessie Willcox Smith illustrated book at his dining room table.

She piped up, “Oh, my goodness, you have the original 1959 first edition of
Maggie Cassidy
by Jack Kerouac. The first edition was a paperback, you know, not a hardcover. I can’t believe you have a Kerouac first.”

“I can’t believe you
know
that.”

“I just happen to adore Kerouac. He was a gypsy, too. There’s sort of a spiritual kinship between Jack and me. I connect with a lot of his writing, but I never saw a copy of
Maggie
before. That’s serendipitous that you have it.”

“Would you like to borrow it?”

“I couldn’t,” she said, but held it to her breasts dramatically.

Sam laughed. “Borrow it. I trust you to bring it back. Then I’ll get to see you again.”

The angel on his shoulder whispered,
Laying it on a little thick, aren’t you, Sam?

“Thank you. I
will
borrow it.”

He nodded. Sam handed her the neatly mended book.

“That’s a nice repair job.”

“Thanks. You should get plenty of readings out of it if you’re gentle.”

“I’m very gentle,” she promised and suddenly, it seemed like they were talking about something else. Or maybe he was overanalyzing, as usual. She put the storybook on top of the Kerouac that was now in her lap. “I can’t wait to sit down with these later.”

“What a strange combination of reads.”

“I’m an eclectic reader,” she said.

“Me, too.” Sam grinned and waved his arms at the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. “So, what do you think of this dusty mess of a clapboard bayside house packed tight with ten thousand and sixty-eight books, mostly classic American literature?”

She gave a low whistle. “That’s an impressive collection, more than some small libraries have. Is your collection famous?”

“Yes,” he said quietly. “But only in small circles.” He was glad she understood the importance of his collection.

“It feels homey in here,” she said. “Comfortable. Quiet. Something like I would create for myself if I had the money. But I would have more bookshelves.”

He laughed. “If I had more shelves, I would just fill up the floors again, too. Someday, the whole house would collapse into the crawlspace—implode on itself—and I would be crushed by thousands upon thousands of books.”

She grinned. “I suppose that’s the best way for people like us to die. Just be crushed by the books we love. I guess the piles will stay then? Spread out over the floors, so as not to strain the joists?”

“It’s the way I like it. I decorate with books.”

“Me, too. Their movable décor is interesting to me.” She listened for a moment. “Oh, I can hear the surf on the breakwater! You must love that sound at night, like a lullaby.”

“I do. It’s why I came here from the Midwest. I wanted the ocean in my life.
This
ocean, right in the hung-moon crescent of Port Sapphire. I came here for college, clam chowder and for a girl who immediately jilted me for a lobster fisherman, but I stayed anyway. Where are you from, Jessie?”

“Everywhere. Army brat. I went all over the world with my dad, before he got pancreatic cancer and died. I know it’s been a long time since I lost him, but I still think of him every day.”

“I’m so sorry. You’ve had a lot of loss in your life.”

More than you can imagine
, said the angel on his shoulder.

“Thank you again for your kind words.”

He nodded. “Of course. And your mother, Jessie? Is she still alive?”

“No. After Dad died, and I left for college, she died of a heart attack. I’ve always thought of it as a broken heart. It was a shock, my mother, who had been healthy her whole life. She never smoked or drank and she ate her vegetables. She should have lived to be a hundred.” Jessie gave a little sigh and looked at the floor.

“I’m so very sorry for you. You’re all alone in the world?”

“Thank you. And yes. Somewhere in my motorhome, I have a little spiral notebook with a list of all of the places that I have lived or passed through and everyone I’ve met. I think it’s important to be able to look back and think about the people we’ve met, and roads we take—the roads we’re glad we took, and the roads we regret not taking.”

“Profound. A little Robert Frost-ish.”

“That is my favorite poem, ‘The Road Not Taken.’ As you said, you do know how to listen to women.” She affectionately patted a pile of books. “My bookstore was like your house. Jam-packed with books everywhere. You had to step over the piles. Guess we’re birds of a feather, Sam.”

“Are you telling me that this clutter, bordering on a visit from reality TV, doesn’t bother you?” Sam asked in disbelief.

“No. I
like
it. It makes me feel safe, like I’m in a book fort. Protected.” She patted the sofa next to her and gave him a smoldering look.

Go!
said the angel on his shoulder.

He took a deep breath and let it out. Unable to stop himself, he got up from his recliner chair and sat down next to her shyly, without touching her. He turned his head so he could look at her face in the soft glow of the light cast by the green-glass shades of the reading lamps on the end tables.

“What did you say happened to your husband again?”

Her eyes got a panicked, faraway look when she realized Sam was asking the same question again about her husband. She looked at the floor. “I thought I told you. Firefighter, New York City. September eleventh. I don’t like to think about it too much.”

“I was just confused. I didn’t intend to make you feel bad.”

“You didn’t, Sam. It’s strange. We have only known each other a few hours, but things come so easily between us.”

“Thank you. That means a lot to me.”

“And me.” She touched his hand and tingles spread through him, even after she moved it away. She was pushing the boundaries in tiny increments. He could feel her reaching out to him.

“I feel like I could listen to your voice all night,” she continued. “You’re easy to talk to.”

He swallowed hard and felt humbled and stunned. Other women, even therapists, had often told him that he was a difficult communicator. Jessie was telling him the opposite—that he was easy to be with. He felt something lighten in his chest. She was sweet. So easy to be with.