The Book That Matters Most (32 page)

“I saw the contract,” Ava said. “That's how I know who really wrote the book.”

He rifled through the papers and took one out, holding it toward Ava.

“What ever happened to your aunt?” Hank asked. “Beatrice?”

“She left. After Lily.”

“Left,” Hank said, staring into his wine. “Where'd she go?”

“I don't know.”

Hank looked up.

“I do,” he said. “She went to Paris.”

“Uh huh. With my mother?”

“Exactly.”

He set the paper he'd been holding in front of Ava.

“Your aunt bought up all the books after they went out of print. Why?”

Ava frowned. She picked up the paper and scanned it. Her aunt had bought every copy of
From Clare to Here
.

“I don't know.”

Hank took a long swallow of wine, then put another piece of paper from the folder in front of Ava.

“They were shipped to Paris,” he said, tapping the paper. “The address is right here.”

Ava kept reading the order form, as if she could make sense of it. But it didn't make sense. Aunt Beatrice had gone to Paris? And had all of the remainders of
From Clare to Here
sent to her? Why?

“I've got a theory,” Hank said. “They owned a bookstore here. They opened one there.”

“They?” Ava said, her voice shaky. “My mother is dead. She jumped off a bridge.”

Hank scratched his head. “Maybe,” he said. “Except all they found was the car.”

“The police told my father they might not find . . . her,” Ava said. The words
the body
had always upset her.

Hank nodded. “Right. And if she didn't jump, that would eliminate finding the body altogether, wouldn't it? But it would make it easy for her to get on a plane to Paris, and meet up with her sister, and do what they did. Sell books.”

“This is ridiculous,” Ava said.

“Okay.”

“I mean, you think Aunt Beatrice bought two thousand books to sell in a bookstore in Paris?”

Hank laughed. “I never thought of that!”

He poured more wine, still chuckling.

“Now go we in content. To liberty, and not to banishment,” he said. “From
As You Like It
.”

Hank opened the copy of
From Clare to Here
that he'd set on the table and pointed.

“This is called an epigraph,” he said.

“I know what it's called,” Ava said.

“Now go we in content. To liberty, and not to banishment,” he recited as Ava read it silently.

Ava had seen the epigraph before, of course. But when she thought a stranger named Rosalind Arden wrote it, she hadn't given it much thought. Now that she knew her mother had put that quote there, Ava had to make sense of it.

“I think she must have seen death as freedom,” she said after a few minutes.

“Sure,” Hank said. “But it says
we
.”

“Well, it's from
As You Like It
. That's what it says in the play.”

“And your mother's bookstore. The one she owned with your aunt. That was called what?”

“Orlando's,” Ava said.

“Like in the play!” Hank said with mock surprise.

“Okay, Hank. I give up,” Ava said. “What is your bright idea?”

Hank leaned forward, close enough that Ava could smell the Old Spice on him.

“Your mother left us a clue, Ava. She and Beatrice went away so they could be free of guilt. They banished themselves for that liberty.”

“No,” Ava said. “That's ridiculous. A mother couldn't leave her daughter like that.” To herself she added,
couldn't leave me like that
.

Hank's face softened. “But Ava, that's exactly what happens in
From Clare to Here
. She gives up her life with her living daughter and punishes herself by staying with her dead child.”

“No,” Ava said again, even though what Hank was saying made a certain sense.

Now Hank was taking another book from his bag. A travel guide to Paris. As he turned the pages, Ava saw that someone had highlighted parts in hot pink.

“Don't miss Ganymede's Books, a quirky cluttered bookshop in the hip Marais section. The American owner, who goes simply by Madame, is a mercurial dragon who opens and closes the shop at her whim,” Hank read. “Ask her a question and she's just as likely to bite you as help you. But that's part of the fun. And her eclectic selection of books is worth the trip.”

He closed the book, keeping his finger on the page.

“Ganymede,” he said. “Also a reference to
As You Like It
.”

“When Rosalind runs away to the forest,” Ava said, “she decides to disguise herself as a young man named Ganymede.”

“Interesting, isn't it? And the owner is American,” Hank added.

But Ava shook her head.

“Even if this Madame person is Aunt Beatrice, Hank, my mother jumped off that bridge.”

Hank scratched his head again, a technique he used, Ava realized, not to express bewilderment, as it suggested, but to indicate he'd figured something out.

“What if your aunt bought up all those books not to sell them, but so no one figured this out?”

“That's crazy,” Ava said.

Hank didn't answer her. He just kept his blue eyes leveled at her.

“Only one way to find out,” he said finally.

Maybe she wouldn't have agreed if Maggie wasn't there. “I love you,” her daughter had said. As she turned on her computer and typed in flights to Paris, two tickets, something Hank said came back to Ava. She left
us
a clue, he'd said. Why would her mother leave Hank Bingham a clue? And why would Hank Bingham look for her mother, even after everyone believed she was dead?

H
elen Frost stood looking uncomfortable at Ava's door.

“May I come inside?” Helen asked, and when Ava said, “Of course” and opened the door wider for her to enter, she seemed relieved.

There was an awkward moment of the two women having to maneuver around the door in the small foyer, and then Ava—her coat already on and
Slaughterhouse-Five
in her hand—motioned Helen into the living room and onto the sofa. Ava sat across from her, just as this morning she'd sat across from Hank Bingham and listened to his theory.

“Oh, were you on your way somewhere?” Helen asked, noticing that Ava had on her coat.

“The book group,” Ava said, suddenly missing Penny, with all of her writers' quotes and old-fashioned ways. “Your mother is so missed,” she added.

“It's been hard, going through her things and Daddy's things. But actually, that's why I'm here.”

Helen dipped into her black quilted Chanel bag and pulled out a folder much like the one she'd given Ava the other day.

“Your mother owned Orlando's,” Helen said.

“A long time ago,” Ava said.

Helen placed a black and white photograph in Ava's lap and said, “See?”

Ava looked down.

Staring up at her, beautiful, elegant, smiling, was her mother, with her Brigitte Bardot blond hair and wide blue-green eyes. In the photograph, she was kneeling and had one arm around Ava and one arm around Lily. Ava scowled back at the camera, arms folded, her barrette hanging by her cheek instead of in its place at her temple. But Lily beamed. Like their mother's, her smile lit up the picture. At the bottom was the date the picture was taken, just three days before Lily died.

“As I said,” Helen said, “your mother always hosted book parties for my grandmother's writers. Obscure poets. New England history. I think Grandmother published a dozen books on Roger Williams alone. First novels. Orlando's always agreed to have a party. And your mother and aunt knew how to throw good parties.”

The background was blurry, but Ava could make out the once familiar bookshelves, the dais where they stood behind the cash register, the ornate ancient cash register itself—they'd
refused to get a more modern one; both her mother and aunt had loved the way this one looked and sounded. The partygoers appeared as a smear of gray as they moved across the frame.

“You can have it, of course,” Helen said, standing.

“Thank you,” Ava said. She stood too, but slowly. “I don't have any pictures like this.”

Her father had packed them all away after they got the phone call saying her mother had jumped off that bridge, as if he could put their history away too.

Now Cate was knocking at the door, and there was a flurry of greetings and pleasantries and then Ava and Cate were alone on the sidewalk, turning toward Benefit Street and the library.

“You okay?” Cate asked Ava. “You look like you just saw a ghost.”

“
W
ant to hear something crazy?” Ava asked Cate as they walked along Benefit Street.

On their right, the stately Georgian-style John Brown House loomed. The street, with its faux gas lamps and Colonial homes, always looked lovely. But Ava thought it was even lovelier in autumn, when the leaves on its old trees turned yellow and red and orange. Some residents had already placed fat pumpkins on their stoops.

“Sure,” Cate said.

Slaughterhouse-Five
must have stymied her creativity—she was dressed like her usual self tonight, in wide-legged black cotton pants and a black turtleneck and her red Australian walking shoes.

“I'm going to Paris tomorrow night,” Ava said.

Cate stopped walking. “Maggie?”

“Hopefully,” Ava said. “But also . . .”

Cate waited.

“Rosalind Arden,” Ava said.

“You found her?” Cate said, surprised.

“I think she's dead, actually. But there's a crazy chance she lives in Paris.”

Cate put her hand on Ava's arm. “You don't have to go all the way to Paris, you know.”

Ava started walking again, her face flushed.

“No. It's important,” she said, and gratefully Cate let it go at that.

M
aybe Cate was just running out of steam this late in the year, Ava thought when she saw Emma, her hair unnaturally black, presiding over a table of ordinary cheese—the return of the Havarti!—and crackers, some grapes, and bottles of red table wine.

John was dressed in a blue blazer and khakis, and with his thinning hair bleached by the sun and his nose peeling from a sunburn, he looked boyish and less morose.

“Your big night,” Ava said to him.

He lifted his glass of wine. “Courage,” he said, smiling.

Had he always had that one dimple? Or maybe he just hadn't smiled very much.

“I'm so glad I recognize the food,” John said. “
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
night kind of put me over the edge.”

“Tell me,” Ruth said, coming to stand beside Ava, “what's Rosalind Arden like? I mean, you've met her, right?”

“Yes,” Ava said. “I've met her.” Then she added, “She's lovely.”

“I remember when the kids were in school,” Ruth said, cocking her head as if to study Ava more carefully. “You weren't one of us.”

“What do you mean?” Ava said. She'd brought in her share of pizzas, and attended all the off-key concerts and awkward school plays, and during the unit on Egypt had even come in and helped build a replica of the Great Pyramid.

“Well, you worked, for one thing,” Ruth said. “No standing around gossiping for you. I remember you were always carrying a satchel full of papers to correct. I kind of envied you.”

“What?” Ava said, surprised. Ruth had always seemed so content, so organized and confident.

“Here you are, with a career and a life, while I'm struggling to find my way after all these years. I mean, after my eight-year-old finally gets to high school, I won't have to help anyone with a Halloween costume or Colonial diorama anymore,” Ruth said. “Then what.”

“Oh, Ruth,” Ava said, touching Ruth's arm gently. “You were the engine of those classrooms. Really, I'm so grateful.”

“I think it's wonderful how you've embraced the book group and gone even one step further by inviting the author,” Ruth continued.

“Thank you, Ruth.”

“Could we take our seats?” Cate said from the front of the room.

Ava made her way to the empty seat beside John.

To Ava's surprise, Luke was now taking Cate's place in front of them.

“So,” he said when everyone quieted, “I just wanted to share some news.”

He seemed to be looking right at her, Ava thought.

Luke held up his left hand.

“I got married this past weekend!” he said, grinning.

“What?” Ava blurted, that one word louder than all the oohs and aahs from the others. Loud enough that everyone turned from Luke to her.

“When your girl says fish or cut bait,” Luke said, “you get married.”

Some people laughed softly.

But Kiki jumped to her feet, her nostrils flaring. “You
married
Roxy?” she said.

“Isn't this wonderful?” Cate said in her save-the-day voice. “Our first wedding. Congratulations, Luke.”

“Why is he looking at you?” John whispered to Ava.

“I have no idea,” she said.

Cate started talking about Kurt Vonnegut, so Ava could ignore John's comment and pretend to be interested in the writer's life.

“As most of us know,” Cate was saying, “
Slaughterhouse-Five
was based on Vonnegut's own experiences in World War II.”

Monique started taking notes.

“Like Billy Pilgrim in the novel, he survived the Allied forces' firebombing of Dresden, Germany, and actually emerged from hiding in a meat locker beneath a slaughterhouse the day after the attack. Captured, he was made to find and bury and burn bodies.”

John let out a low whistle. “No kidding,” he said. “I didn't know he'd experienced what Billy Pilgrim does.”

“In the first chapter,” Honor said, opening her Moleskine, “he writes: ‘It is so short and jumbled and jangled because there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre.'”