The Book That Matters Most (34 page)

I'm safe and I'm okay. I've screwed everything up again, but I promise I'm going to fix it. I have a job in Paris as a tour guide for an American company. And I have an apartment with a nice roommate.

I don't expect you to believe me this time, but I really am going to fix things, fix myself. I read this book and I realized that we get to choose—darkness or light, life or death. I choose light. I choose life. I do. If you can come to Paris, that would be wonderful. I know a fondue place where they serve wine in baby bottles! I would take you there, if you let me.

I love you, Mom. Maggie

Hank

Hank Bingham decided immediately that he did not like Paris. For one thing, everything looked different than it did at home: the people and the signs and the buildings. It even
smelled
different. He supposed that people who liked to travel did it for this very reason. But Hank liked being home. He found comfort in knowing shortcuts, and where to get the best beer on tap. He found comfort in sameness. Here, nothing was the same, and Hank felt off-balance, as if he might at any moment actually tip over. Of course, having not slept—and he a man who needed his eight solid hours—didn't help. And Ava's lack of patience with
him, telling him to
hurry up
or
watch out
or
let's go
, only added to his sense of confusion.

In the taxi from the airport, as Ava spoke French to the driver, exhaustion washed over Hank in waves.

“We could still go to the hotel first,” Ava said, and Hank realized he'd done that head jerk that people do when they fall asleep sitting up.

He shook his head. “Coffee would be good, though.”

“I'm sure there's a café near the bookstore,” Ava said.

There was lots of traffic and horns beeping, the driver hitting the brakes and then speeding up.

“You all right?” Ava asked him. “You've gone pale.”

How could he tell her he just wanted to be back home?

“Fine,” he mumbled, and concentrated on trying not to throw up.

Sure, the driver's stop-and-go driving and his own lack of sleep had made him queasy. But now that he was actually here, and Ava was nudging him and saying, “Look! The Eiffel Tower!,” Hank let himself think for the first time about the fact that if he was right—and he knew he was, knew it deep in his bones—he was about to see the woman he'd loved more than anyone. More even than Nadine, with whom he'd built a life. Nadine, whose hand he'd held as she died. If he was right, then very soon he was going to walk into a bookstore in Paris and see Charlotte North for the first time in over forty years. And what the hell was he going to say?

“
S
ee?” Ava said as they got out of the taxi. “A café right there. And the bookstore there.”

He followed her finger pointing first to the café, and then to the bookstore. Its purple sign read
G
an
Y
me
D
e'
S
BOOKS
, and its narrow door was painted lavender. Hank began to sweat.

A light rain fell, and everything looked like it had been painted in watercolors. Hank let Ava lead him inside and tell the waiter they wanted a table.

He wanted to lay his head on that table and go to sleep, but instead he took one glance at the menu and, unable to recognize anything on it, told Ava to order for him.

Soon, two omelets appeared in front of them (not fluffy ones like he was used to back home, but flat thin ones), and large cups of milky coffee, and a basket of warm bread and butter. Hank dug in, and, as Ava predicted, it revived him.

He noticed that she just picked at her food, her eyes frequently drifting across the street to the bookstore. Was this the time to tell her about him and her mother? Did he need to tell her at all?

Hank cleared his throat.

“Ava,” he said. “I need to tell you something. Something about your mother and—”

“Don't,” she said. “What I have to think right now is that she's dead. Like she has been for most of my life. I can't even let myself believe . . .”

Hank nodded. Better to keep quiet, he thought.

F
or the first time since he'd figured out that Charlotte was here in Paris, Hank hesitated. He and Ava stood at the lavender door of Ganymede's. Through the windows on either side, he could see the warmly lit store, the crowds of people.

“Well?” Ava said.

“Right,” Hank said, and yanked the door open.

A bell tinkled.

“Hank?” Ava said, because he'd opened the door but not taken a step forward.

“Hank,” Ava said again.

He felt Ava's hand on his back, urging him forward.

And then he was inside. Beside him, Ava took a sharp breath.

“It looks the same,” she said softly.

Hank scanned the place. Index cards with quirky categories were taped to the shelves. Everyone spoke in a low voice, as if they were in a library. A hairy young man sat, looking bored, under a sign that said “Information.” And to the left was the dais where the salesclerk sat on a stool, a perch from which to watch for shoplifters, just like Orlando's.

“Look,” Hank said, actually turning Ava's head with his big hands. “That's the same cash register as the one in Orlando's.”

“Oh my God,” Ava said.

“I told you—”

“Oh my God,” she said again, louder.

“Ava?”

But she wasn't listening to him. She was pushing through the crowd, frantically moving toward the register.

Hank lost sight of her for an instant. But then he saw her, standing in front of it, head tilted up.

“Maggie!” Ava said.

And then again, “Maggie,” but this time the name was caught in her sobs. “My God, you're all right,” he heard her say.

The missing daughter, Hank realized. Right here at her grandmother's store.

Maggie was shrieking with delight and relief. “You came! You got my email and you came!”

Hank too pushed through the crowd.

“Email?” Ava said, crushing her daughter to her. “I didn't get an email. I've been traveling since yesterday.”

Maggie was crying now too.

“Let's go talk,” Ava said, leading her out of the shop.

Then a voice cut through the quiet chatter of the crowd.

“What is all the commotion?”

Hank followed the sound of that voice, and there, standing at the door to a back room, stood Charlotte's sister Beatrice.

Beatrice didn't have the soft beauty of her sister, but rather a sexier, tougher look. Even now, all these years later, Hank saw that in the older woman moving toward him. She'd let her hair go gray but kept it long, and it fell in the same waves down her back that it always had. And there was no disguising those gray eyes. They were steelier now, which made them even more unnerving. Most women Hank had seen age had gotten thicker. Even Nadine used to complain about what she called her new muffin top. But Beatrice was actually thinner than she'd been as a young woman, revealing sharp cheekbones and a slender waist.

“May I help you?” she said when she stood in front of him.

“Beatrice,” he said. “Officer Bingham. I'm sure you remember me.”

Something changed in her eyes. He saw it. Was she deciding what to tell him?

She sighed. Resigned. “Hank,” she said, “Let's go in the back.”

Without waiting for an answer, she started to walk through the store to the back room. Hank saw a few people surreptitiously snap photos of her on their phones.

“You're a celebrity,” he said when they were alone in the back and she'd closed the door.

“Of sorts,” she said. “Coffee?”

She pointed to a beat-up metal pot sitting on a hot plate. Once more, she didn't wait for his answer and just began measuring coffee and water into it.

Neither of them spoke as the coffee began to perk. Beatrice heated a small saucepan of milk and carefully filled two white porcelain cups with café au lait.

“Good on a rainy day,” Beatrice said, sitting down.

Hank didn't really want any more coffee. He stood awkwardly beside her, holding the hot cup in his hand.

“For God's sake, Hank, sit down,” Beatrice told him.

When he did, she narrowed her eyes at him, sizing him up.

“Why are you here? Or do you just happen to be in Paris?” Beatrice finally asked.

“Oh, I came looking for you,” Hank said.

“Why? I haven't broken any laws that I know of. A person can move away and start a business and make a life, can't she?”

“Absolutely,” Hank said.

“So?”

“Actually,” he said, “I came looking for you, and for her. For Charlotte.”

That same thing seemed to pass over her eyes.

“She's dead, Hank.”

“Right,” he said. “Jumped off a bridge.”

Beatrice didn't say anything, but Hank kept watching her.

“What happened that morning?” he asked her.

“Is that why you've come here? To rehash all of that?”

Hank didn't answer her. He just leaned back in his chair and waited. He had learned long ago that when you interrogated someone, they talked more if you stayed quiet. People couldn't stand silence; they needed to fill it.

“I went to the store and worked on a window display of that seagull book,” Beatrice began. “And right in the middle of it I remembered I had promised to babysit, so I kind of ran out, leaving the patchouli-smelling girl in charge. When I got to Charlotte's, Ava was reading and Lily was up in a tree. High. Too high. And I should have told her to come down but I didn't.” She said again, quietly, “I didn't.” Beatrice took a breath. “Instead I went inside and started cleaning the dishes.”

“And?”

“And Lily fell.”

“So it wasn't anybody's fault,” Hank said.

To his surprise, Beatrice laughed.

“You fool,” she said. “It was everybody's fault. Charlotte's for being with you, and Ava's for letting Lily climb the tree in the first place, and mine for not telling her to come down.”

“No,” Hank said. “It was an accident.”

“Sure,” Beatrice said. “Then why has guilt ruined all of our lives?”

“If Charlotte's dead—” Hank began.

“Hank,” Beatrice interrupted, “trust me. Charlotte's been dead a long time.”

She stood then, as if to tell him their conversation was over. Hank stood too, and followed her to the door that led back into the bookstore.

“Why did you buy all the books?” he said.

When she turned around to face him, he added, “
From Clare to Here
. I know she wrote it, and I know you bought all the copies that didn't sell. The remainders, I think they call them?”

“To sell here,” Beatrice said.

“Peculiar,” Hank said.

They continued toward the door. Beatrice opened it, and held it so Hank could pass.

“Ganymede,” he said. “From
As You Like It
, right?”

“You surprise me, Hank. I didn't take you for a lover of Shakespeare.”

“Ganymede is the name Rosalind takes when she goes into hiding, isn't it?”

Beatrice studied his face for a moment.

“Enjoy Paris,” she told him.

They stepped out of the back room, and almost bumped into Maggie and Ava on their way in.

Ava paused, studying Beatrice's face.

“Aunt Beatrice?” Ava said, her voice full of a combination of wonder and anger.

Beatrice sighed. “I guess we better all go sit down,” she said.

Ava

Even as Beatrice talked to them about moving to Paris and opening this bookstore, Ava kept repeating to herself:
I am in Paris with Aunt Beatrice, I am in Paris with Aunt Beatrice
, as if saying it enough times would begin to make sense of it.

“All this time, my own great-niece was here, right under my nose,” she said. “No wonder I took a shine to you.”

Maggie sat up straight, her brows furrowed the way they did when she thought hard.

“This place felt so familiar, so safe,” she said. “And sitting here I just remembered that I saw a picture of it once, a long time
ago, in an old photo album. Except it wasn't this store, it was the other one, in Providence.”

“Orlando's,” Beatrice said wistfully.

“My mother,” Ava finally managed to say. “Did you know she wrote
From Clare to Here
?”

Beatrice sighed. “For six months after Lily died, that's all she did. All she could do. Write that book. I think it saved her, that story. And then when White Swan bought it, I thought she'd be happy finally. Or at least, on her way out of grief toward happiness. But instead, it freed her.”

Ava didn't even try to hold back her tears. They fell, hot and fast.

“At your mother's request, the editor of the book, Poppy Montgomery, her daughter brought you the first copy. Do you remember that?”

Ava remembered the black Cadillac, the woman emerging from it, the package in her hand.
I knew your mother
, Penny had written to her.

“That was almost a year to the day after Lily died. The book was published, and your mother . . .” Beatrice let what she'd left unsaid hang there.

“The dedication,” Maggie said. “It was to you, Mom. A was you. And T was Gramps, right? Teddy? And H was . . . who was H?”

Hank sighed.

“Me,” he said. “H was me.”

Ava looked at him, confused. “Why would she put you in the dedication, Hank? You were just the detective on the case. She hardly knew you.”

Hank shifted his weight in the chair, and looked at Beatrice.

“It's not for me to tell,” she said to him.

“I knew her,” he said after a pause. “I knew her before your sister died.”

“But how?” Ava asked, confused.

“I was in love with her,” Hank said softly. “I was with her that morning. Planning our future together. That's why I couldn't let this case go. Charlotte couldn't forgive herself for not being at home. For being with me. It was my fault too that Lily died.”