But he was staring at me from unwavering eyes; a solemn, almost sad expression on his face. “I wish it had been different, Trudy.”
He moved a piece of hair that the wind had flicked over my eye. “I wish we had met under the glitter of the streetlights by the Seine. On a warm night in Paris with the sound of music in the air.
“I would have seen you standing at the gilded railing. Your hair glowing in the lights. Your smile and the way you hold yourself when no one is watching would remind me of an enchantress, looking for all the world like you had a secret that no one else could share.”
I touched his cheek and blinked back heat that made my eyes feel heavy. No one had ever described me that way. “I would have shared my secret with you, Kit . . . If I had met you on a Paris night.”
* * *
I slept a dreamless sleep that was surprisingly refreshing. When I woke, my head rested against the soft pillow of Kit's shoulder and my hip was nuzzled between two hardcover copies of the encyclopedia. My guess was they were volumes 1 and 2, because volume 3 was under his head. The early-morning sky was tinted deep fuchsia and orange. I didn't want to move, not just because of the cool air outside the blanket, or because I was so comfortable in his arms. I was afraid if I left, reality would hit and I would never feel this way again.
“Good morning, Trudy.” Kit's half-lidded eyes and lazy smile made him look adorably sexy.
“Good morning, Christopher.” I liked the sound of his full name.
He pulled me to him, planting a soft but firm morning kiss on my lips. “I adore waking up with you.”
I sent a rueful gaze to the encyclopedias. “Yes, but I am afraid my behind will be permanently marked with the history ofâwhat's this?”
“Spanish sailing ships. But I fear, fair damsel, that your bum will be permanently marked with more than just the history of Spanish sailing ships,” he said, touching a spot on my hip that looked a bit like a hickey.
“Peachy,” I said, curling my lip.
Kit must have read my mind. He propped himself up on his elbow and said, “Maybe we should just stay here and ignore the rest of the world.”
If only we could. I thought about the things that I had to do today. “Your books and festival are waiting for you, Professor.”
A gust ruffled his hair. The wind was stronger this morning. Several leaves had blown into the container and skimmed across the top layer of books. We rose stiffly and wobbled on the unstable carpet of books beneath us. Scrambling over the mounds of paper and cardboard looking for our clothes, we stopped every few moments to touch each other.
When we were semi-dressed, Kit helped me over the ledge before tossing the chair and blanket out. He grabbed the lantern and hopped out in one leap. So agile. British secret agent Double-O Darlington.
Moby was awake. He whined from inside the store.
“He's been a good boy. Both of you come by the house when you are dressed and I'll give you extra cash so you can buy him a proper bone,” Kit said.
The sun's colors were shifting. It drifted above the horizon now and the sky turned pink. I held my blanket to my chest. I didn't want to leave Kit yet.
He stepped close and cradled my face in his hands. “Now a soft kissâAye, by that kiss, I vow an endless bliss.” Then he touched his lips to mine.
When he finished, I sighed. “What was that from?”
“Keats. I love American literature. But I am British after all.” He winked at me and walked away.
I watched him disappear across the field toward the lake beyond and felt something inside me loosen. An overpowering feeling of freedom raced through my veins. I leaned back against the Dumpster and lifted my face to the morning sun.
When Kit read to me last night, an old rage that had weighed me down for years came unhinged. Now I felt a delirious lightness that reminded me of the way I felt a day not so long ago when I first started to forgive my father.
Dad had softened in his old age. Or maybe it was the new wife and children. There were two of them. One to replace the boy who had been blown up in the convoy ambushed in the desert. And another to replace me. The girl who refused to follow orders.
Maybe someday soon I would call Dad and tell him I ate vegetables now. I don't think he knew. I would promise again to repay him for the loan, even though he didn't want me to. And I would tell him I didn't hate him anymore for leaving me with an emotionally disconnected woman who knew nothing about raising children.
After Kit left me, branded by his kiss in the morning sun, I scaled the Dumpster and climbed back inside. I hunted around until I found what I was looking for:
Cyrano de Bergerac
. I clutched it to my chest and I clambered back over the edge before returning to Books from the Hart.
Chapter 17
“T
his feels weird.” My hand tingled where Kit placed the hundred-dollar bills as casually as if they were pieces of gum. He must have kept large denominations around the way some people kept pennies in a jar.
We stood inside the lake house he was renting. He lifted my chin with his index finger and angled my face up. “Don't think twice about it. You need the loan and I'm not putting any conditions on it.”
“Maybe I should find some other wayâ”
“When you sell the place you can pay me back, all right?” He lowered his head and kissed me. I was too busy worrying to enjoy it. “Are you sure I can't give you more for Lulu?”
“Yes.” On that part I was definite. If the store didn't sell, I was going nowhere, so it didn't matter. I had all the time in the world to find work and pay for Lulu at that point.
“You are a stubborn wench!” Kit said with a grin, pulling me close. “Do you have time for a quick breakfast? I don't have to meet my colleague until later in the morning. Even better, I could forget the conference and stay.” His hands strayed down my back.
“I have plenty to keep me busy. And the house of horrors opens tomorrow. I'll be making things bloody and gross for the rest of the day.”
“Brilliant. Do you at least want me to drive you to the county offices?” Moby leaned against our knees and wagged his tail.
“I'm going to ask Elizabeth Lively for a ride.”
“Come back later, then. I haven't had the opportunity to host you in a king-sized bed. Imagine the possibilities.” My heart did a cartwheel.
When he kissed me again, I dropped the cash and almost told him to cancel. We could spend the day discovering new ways to use books. But he picked up the bills and stuffed them in my pocket.
“Come. At least have coffee.”
While he prepared the coffee in the kitchen, I played snoop. The living-room fireplace was huge. The view out the floor-to-ceiling windows was incredible. When I wandered into the large dining room that overlooked Echo Lake, my attention was caught by all the books strewn across the table and the papers pinned to several project boards against the wall. Among them was a picture of Robin Hartchick as a young man. A newspaper article with a picture of a burned building. A magazine interview with a portrait of an elderly Robin Hartchick.
Kit stood with two mugs in his hands, watching me. “I'm getting ready to throw all that out.”
“I see that.” A trash can stuffed with dozens of handwritten sheets of paper sat by a chair. “So this is why you never invited me over. You didn't want me to see your paper trail.”
“That was before you found out. Then . . . I didn't think you wanted to get within a mile of me. It's done, now.”
“Can you at least explain more of what you were looking for?” I reached out and touched the magazine and papers that described Robin Hartchick's life, and tried to grasp Kit's fascination.
He made it easy for me. Putting down the mugs, he reached out and plucked the article from the bulletin board. “This is an interview conducted with Robin Hartchick right before he died.”
“He looks awful, like he could have been in the house of horrors,” I said.
“Yes, that's one of the reasons no one took him seriously. He mentions in that interview that his very best work, in his humble opinionâwhich was never humble at allâwas a novel he wrote prior to
Spring Solstice
. But look at him. He could barely talk or walk.”
“People thought he made it up?”
“Yes. He claims the manuscript was lost in a fire. They thought he was delusional.”
I looked at the newspaper article that showed a picture of a burned-down building. “Is that the fire?”
“Yes. I dug up some information. There was a hotel on the west coast of Michigan that burned down. Your aunt was supposed to meet him there.” He set the bowls on the table.
I got goose bumps looking at the charred, blackened building. It was a connection to a young Aunt Gertrude that I knew nothing about.
“Sip and I'll tell you.” Kit sat down. He handed me the mug. Checking my face to make sure I was still interested, he continued: “Let me back up first. What do you know about your aunt and Robin Hartchick?”
“Some of it. Aunt Gertrude was swept off her feet by Robin Hartchick.”
“She was young. He was ten years older.”
“Hard to picture anyone falling for Aunt Gertrude, much less sweeping a lady as imposing as she was off her feet.”
Kit didn't laugh at my comment. “Here she is.” He pointed to a picture of her young face. She looked innocent and sweet. And almost beautiful. “That's the woman Hartchick fell in love with.”
I stared at the portrait for a long time. I didn't know she had red hair. “Can I keep this?”
He reached out and tenderly wiped the corner of my mouth. “Of course. Did you know they met when he was on a hunting excursion in Michigan? He was from Chicago and she lived in Traverse City with her parents and her little brother, your father's dad.”
“How did they meet?”
“No one I spoke with remembers. But they all say it was love at first sight.” The color on his cheeks heightened as he spoke. “When she ran off with him, Gertrude's father basically disowned her. Did you know that?”
“My grandfather was quite overbearing, according to my dad.” I didn't comment on the similarity in his son.
“For the next year they lived in the happy haze of 1960. Life was still good then. According to his autobiography, they lived over a store on Echo Lake. He wrote a novel and she worked as a waitress and supported them both. Then things went downhill.”
“What happened?”
“He traveled to New York several times that year. He stayed for weeks at a time. According to people who knew your aunt, she waited patiently, believing that he was busy submitting his short stories to agents and publishers.”
“And?”
“He was playing around on her. Robin Hartchick was famous for his womanizing later in his life. His five marriages illustrate that. He was a major-league philanderer, even back then.”
“How did she find out?” I almost felt sorry for Aunt Gertrude. She was estranged from her family and living on her own in a town where she knew no one. And Robin Hartchick was two-timing her.
“You didn't know any of this?”
I shook my head. I wish I had. I'd like to think even a fifteen-year-old me would have been a little nicer to a heartbroken old woman. “In August of 1960, he called her and told her to bring the manuscript and meet him at a hotel in Charlevoix. The wealthy members of Chicago society summered there. Hartchick had an agent who was coming up from Chicago and was interested in reading a novel he had written. His first.”
Kit leaned forward. “My sources say that when your aunt tried to check into the hotel, the clerk confused her with another woman. A woman who called herself Mrs. Robin Hartchick and routinely met Hartchick at the same hotel in Charlevoix.”
I sat back and pictured Aunt Gertrude. Young. Innocent. And betrayed.
“The hotel burned down the night before he arrived.”
“My aunt was in the fire?” I gasped. I curled my knee under me. This was horrible.
“She got out, but most of her things were burned. According to reports, the fire started in a fireplace in the lobby that wasn't properly cleaned. Your aunt met Robin at the train station in tears. She claimed the manuscript was lost in the fire.”
I sat back in my chair. I thought the last twenty-four hours had been bad for me. What did I know? I was mad at Kit for his white lies. But Aunt Gertrude had found out the man she loved was cheating on her. Been in a hotel fire. And then had to explain why she lost the great American novel.
“There were no copies of this manuscript?”
“She brought the carbons with her. He couldn't believe she did that. She was very upset, evidently. Partly because he cared more about the manuscript than her. He packed up and left her shortly after that.”
Kit was watching me closely. I kept staring from him to Aunt Gertrude's picture. What a sad and lonely life she had.
Kit put his hand on top of my own. “It was a long time ago.”
I squeezed his hand. “So why do you believe the novel exists?”
“I believe that the fire was a convenient excuse. I think she saved the carbons but deliberately kept them from Robin Hartchick. It's very possible, when she returned to Echo Lake, she hid the copies, waiting for Hartchick to admit his cheating and give up his ways. I don't think she planned on keeping them from him or the world forever. But as the months went by and the news of his partying in New York reached her, maybe she just decided to keep them to herself.”
My coffee was growing cold. I sipped it quickly as I thought about Aunt Gertrude.
The year I'd lived with her, I was so lost in my own grief over my mother's death that I didn't think much about Aunt Gertrude's life. From what I could remember, her only real companions were books. She surrounded herself with books and papers as if they were her friends. Her parentsâmy great-grandparentsâdied in the early 1970s. My father's dad, her brother, had kept in touch with her. But he died too. The only person left in her life was my own father . . . and my brother and me.
Dad warned us to be nice to Aunt Gertrude when he dropped us off in Truhart. But I hated her. And I hated her store. And I hated the town she lived in.
I scanned all the documents on the table and felt a little less angry with the poor old bird. Her wings had been clipped pretty badly.
After I left Kit's place, I returned to the bookshop. I walked around the store and ran my fingers over a pile of papers that were stacked against the wall.
Maybe throwing everything out could wait until I figured out what to do about my new feelings for Kit. And my new knowledge of Aunt Gertrude.
I didn't know how I could help in the quest for the lost manuscript. But I had forgiven Kit for deceiving me. I knew what it was like to want something that badly. He had dreams like I did. They just happened to be at cross-purposes. Maybe we could work something out that would satisfy both of us. If all went well we could both find a way to achieve our goals.
A few months from now, I could be in the jungles of Cambodia and he could be presenting his discovery to the literary world.
The thought left me oddly flat.
* * *
By late afternoon, I was too busy to think about lost manuscripts and Kit. When Elizabeth and I returned from the county offices, the house of horrors was in chaos. Just as Elizabeth parked her Honda in front of the old grocery store, we were accosted by ladies in panic. The bats were falling from the ceiling. The black lights were aimed at the wrong display and the coffin collapsed with Bridgette in it. Other than being mad at Marva for getting her involved in the house of horrors, she was fine.
The day became a frenzy of finishing details and calming the rabid panic that hovered in the air. At one point, Elizabeth and I made a run to the superstore in Gaylord to purchase more white makeup for the zombies. It turned out to be a nice break from the pandemonium. We played the radio loudly and she joked about the unpredictable mess her life had become.
By the time the sun was ready to set all the volunteers, including me, were exhausted. But there were still priorities. Harrison High School was playing a team from Grayling in a game that would decide who made it to the regional championship. I was too tired to go and looking forward to seeing Kit later. But no one else had any intention of missing it.
“We are as ready as we will ever be,” announced Marva in a booming voice.
She was right. The old grocery store had been transformed to a respectably terrifying house of horrors.
“Everyone gather round!” Marva shouted.
She stood at the front of the store and waited for a circle to form around her. “The house opens at ten a.m. on the dot. Lori's Restaurant is providing a free lunch for volunteers. Zombies, witches, clowns, vampires andâoh, yeahâcrazies.”
“That's you, Marva,” interrupted Joe. The men in the room joined him and a few even added their wives' names.
Marva put her hands on her hips. “You married me. So that makes you just as insane.” It earned her a big kiss from Joe and whistles from the rest of us.
“So, as I was saying, we are ready to go. Don't be late. And don't forget to remind all your friends and their kids to come! I have flyers from here to Lake Huron, so hopefully we'll have a line of customers all the way to the county road.”
As people shuffled out the door, Corinne pulled me aside. “Trudy, we never could have done all this without you. You've been working hard and we know it has taken quite a bit of time away from your own affairs.”
“That's okay.”
“No. We feel bad.”
Marva came up behind Corinne. “We heard about your little . . . er . . .
problem
with Reeba Sweeney. We haven't exactly been understanding about your feelings and what you need. Just because we don't want the store to go to Logan Fribley doesn't mean you don't have the right to sell. We'd love to use it for the community center, but maybe another nice business will want it.”
Corinne laid a hand on my shoulder. “And you did so much for Jenny and the girls and their cheerleading. So, they got together and decided to surprise you.”
“Surprise me?”
Marva pushed her glasses up her nose. “Well, they had help from us. You didn't exactly need to get the makeup in Gaylord.”