The Bookshop on Autumn Lane (6 page)

Jenny clapped her hands together. “Yay!”

We stared at the old boy, trying to figure it out. He lifted his head and posed with his ears up. A natural-born charmer.

“He doesn't look like a ‘Spot' or ‘Rover' does he?”

She shook her head. “Where is he from?”

“He came from a place called Oakland. We could name him Oakey. But I don't think he wants to remember that place. Do you have any ideas?”

She ran her tongue around her lower lip as she tried to think of a name. “I don't know.”

“Hmm. He came to live with me the same day I received a package in the mail. A letter and a book.” I don't know why I still had that book. Something about it being the last thing Aunt Gertrude ever saw kept me from tossing it.

“What was the book called?”

She was on to something, this very special girl. “
Moby-Dick
. I never read it. But I know the story. It's about a whale and a ship. I don't like the men in the book much. But I like the whale.”

“What was the whale called?”

“He had the same name as the book. Moby Dick.”

She giggled at that.

“How about just Moby? That's not a bad name, is it?” I asked.

That seemed to please her. She put her hands above his back, not quite touching. “Moby.”

And like that, he was christened. I went back to my breakfast and by the time I finished my oatmeal, Jenny was sitting on the curb next to me, her hands stroking the dog's back.

“You can pet Moby whenever you see us together. I'm going to be living over there for a while.” I pointed down the street.

“Yay!” She wrapped her hands around the dog's neck. Not many dogs would put up with having their neck squeezed. But this guy didn't have a mean bone in his body.

“Careful, Jenny!” The waitress came up behind me.

At first the stark difference between the woman's bleached-out hair and her dark eyebrows struck me as odd. When she smiled a little line above her lip appeared and her eyes warmed up. “I'm Corinne Scott. And it looks like you met my granddaughter, Jenny.”

“I'm Trudy Brown.”

“Why does that name sound familiar?” she asked, taking the empty bowl from my hands.

“I was named after my dad's aunt, Gertrude Brown.”

“You're the niece?” She looked me up and down. Her eyes darted to Jenny and she chewed her lip. Was she concerned about me being around her granddaughter? My reputation preceded me. The entire town probably knew about my crazy habits and inferior mind. Even from the grave, Aunt Gertrude had ways of making me miserable.

It was time I got back to clearing out the store. “It was a great breakfast.”

But Corinne wasn't listening. A small crowd had formed across the street. A dozen ladies stood in a circle. There was no mistaking the feminine twitters that reached my ears. I had been around actors and bands long enough to recognize the sound. It could only be made by women under the command of a powerful master. The sunlight reflected off his gilded head in the center of the gaggle. When he was in the store going loony over books, I had never considered him a chick magnet. Evidently, there was more to Kit Darlington than I originally thought.

He said something and bursts of high-pitched laughter followed. In the military they called it
rapid dominance
. This was shock and awe of a different sort. Should the military ever need to take over a female nation, he would make a great general. He saw us standing across from him and waved. I saluted.

Corinne stared at the group with a faraway smile on her pencil-lined lips. The bowl tipped in her hands and I reached out to steady her grip. “Are you okay?”

She looked down at me for a split second and shoved the plates in my hand. “Jenny, go back to your crayons. And Trudy, thanks for taking the dishes in.” Then she walked across the street to join the women.

I stood with my mouth open, trying to understand. The cook appeared at my side. He took the bowls from me and shrugged. “It happens all the time since he came to town.”

“Really?”

He nodded. “I'm Mac, by the way.”

“Mac?” I tried to hide my amusement.

“I know, go ahead and laugh. A bald guy named Mac who is the cook at the diner. It's a big cliché.” He leaned down until he was closer to my ear. “Actually, my name is Ambrose. Ambrose McAllister. But everyone started calling me Mac when I moved here.”

“I'm Trudy Brown, Ambrose.”

“No. Call me Mac like everyone else. Otherwise, they might confuse me with a fancy pants like that guy.”

“Okay, Mac.” I clutched my army sack purse. “I still have to pay—”

He stepped back. “This one's on me. That smile on Jenny's face is worth a bowl of oatmeal.”

“Thanks. That's not necessary, though. She brightened my own day.”

“I'm also offering a shameful bribe, Trudy Brown. I would love to hear more about what it means to be vegan.”

“Only if you can explain that phenomenon,” I said, referring to Kit and the ladies.

“His lordship.”

“What?”

Jenny raised her finger and pointed toward the throng. “His lordship.”

I let the words sink in. Was Kit some kind of crazy English lord with the power to hypnotize anyone with a hint of estrogen? Jenny appeared unfazed. I'd like to say I was too. But my skin still tingled at the memory of his gaze on my towel-clad body.

I put a hand on Jenny's shoulder. “How about we get you back inside. I believe your crayons await, fair princess.”

She seemed to consider that. Then she put her hand in my grip and let me see a gummy smile.

* * *

Something woke me. The nightmare again. The one where every day was the first day of school. Where every classroom was brimming with smart kids who never made mistakes. The one in which the teacher called on me to read aloud over and over and over.

A clattering noise sounded from outside. I tore off my night mask and sat up, drenched in sweat. A cold, wet nose found my hand and the dog, Moby, crawled toward me from the foot of the bed. Whether he was comforting me or I was comforting him wasn't clear.

The noise was probably a book falling from its perch. Or the loose shutter I noticed yesterday. I waited for the sound again, but there was nothing.

I left the bed and went to the window to see if anyone was outside. The street was dark and empty. Flipping the switch at the stairway, I called, “Hello?”

Only books.

When I returned to the bed I willed myself to banish the old dream back to my subconscious. The problem was, the old dream wasn't far from the reality that had been my school experience. My teachers never spent much time worrying about a girl with poor reading skills. It was easier for them to blame my problem on the revolving door of army-base schools I had attended rather than the expense of getting tested for a diagnosis of dyslexia.

If a class involved reading out loud, I would fake a sudden bout of nausea and head to the clinic. When I was older, I learned to skip the class. Getting detention for missing school didn't matter when I was already flunking out.

Meeting Jenny today must have stirred up those old memories.

If I lay very still and focused on my breathing I could relax. I felt Moby's chin on my leg. He seemed to be waiting for me to settle down. Even so, it took me a long time to get back to sleep.

T
he next morning, I crouched by the front door and poured Coca-Cola over a rusted hinge. I found the can in the toilet tank, where I'd hidden it from Aunt Gertrude all those years ago. I couldn't stop smiling about it. Neither she nor any plumber had ever discovered it nestled between the float and the overflow tube, like a stowaway in the brig of an old ship.

The liquid coated the hardware, and I marveled at the power of cola to rid surfaces of rust. Satisfaction ran through me as I scrubbed the hinge with one of Aunt Gertrude's toothbrushes and watched it slowly eat away the corrosive buildup. With a little elbow grease, the gleam of metal appeared and years of grime and oxidation were washed away. My guess was the hardware on the door hadn't been seen to since before soldiers stormed the beach at Normandy. Raising myself to the tiptoes of my vintage army boots that could have been in the same battle, I drizzled more on the top hinge. The movement dislodged the old San Diego Padres cap that kept my hair in place. I ignored it and scrubbed. Several strands of red curls caught the breeze and whipped me in the face. I scrunched up my lips and tried to blow them away from the side of my mouth.

Leo used to call me
spaghetti-head
when we were little. It turned out to be one of the kinder nicknames for me. My classmates had other words.
Agent orange
,
blood-sucker-head
, and
red devil
were some of the worst. By the time I was twelve, the teasing bothered me so much that one morning before school, I cut off all my hair. When I stared at myself in the mirror, even
I
knew it looked horrible. When my mother saw me, she burst into tears. I ran to her and buried my face in her stomach, apologizing over and over. I don't know which one of us was more upset. Mom let me stay home from school that day. We visited the beauty shop and the poor beautician did what she could to clean up my hack job. Mom and I played dress-up the rest of the day. It was one of my last good memories of her. The following year, my brother and I were dumped on Aunt Gertrude. By then my hair had grown to my shoulders. Ever the diplomatic one, Aunt Gertrude had taken one look at me and declared that it reminded her of the copper pads people used to clean their pans. Being called names wasn't even a blip on my radar of worries by that time.

I finished scouring the hinge and reached down to retrieve the cap.

A pair of perfectly polished European leather shoes came into view.

“Does the door always like drinking Coca-Cola in the morning?” Kit Darlington leaned against the side of the building holding a Styrofoam cup and a bag.

I set the can on the ground. “It gets rid of rust and creaking. See.” I pushed the door and it opened without a sound. I had rolled out of bed an hour earlier, still trying to adjust to waking up just short of noon. I wished I had pulled on something other than my worn Earth Day T-shirt and my hole-riddled jeans this morning. He looked like he had just stepped out of an Aston Martin.

“Interesting. Here's a better substitution for Coca-Cola in the morning.” He handed me a cup of coffee.

“You're a lifesaver. I haven't had my morning fix yet. Thank you.”

“Mac says hello.” I nodded. I had popped in the diner after dinner last night and shared some of my vegan wisdom with him.

“Oh, this smells wonderful. Do you want to come inside, so I can sit on my tuffet to enjoy this?”

“Your what?”

“Books.” I held up my hand. “After you.”

Moby rose from where he'd been laying in a stripe of sunshine inside the door. Kit patted him on the head and fished out a couple of sausages from the bag. “Here you go, boy. This is for you from Mac.”

“You've got a friend for life, now.” There was no room to go deeper into the store, so we stood in the small space by the front windows.

Kit straightened a stack of books until they formed a chair and brushed off the top tome. “Here's your settee.”

“Am I going to owe you a tip for bringing me coffee and finding me a seat?”

He scanned the room. “I kept thinking about you and this horrendous mess. I thought I would see if you needed a hand this morning.”

“This place could use a dozen hands to get it cleaned up. But you don't have to help me, you know.” I lowered myself and lifted the lid, inhaling the beautiful smell of java.

“It's no problem t'all. Just sit, relax, and tell me where to get started.”

“This isn't normal for me.”

“Drinking coffee?”

“No. I've never known a man who wanted me to sit while he cleaned.”

“What kind of duffers have you been dealing with?”

I smiled into my coffee at the term. “Not too many of the good kind of duffers, I guess.” For the past year, I had been reminding myself of all the reasons why I never wanted to hook up with a man again. Now they weren't just creeps, losers, assholes, and tools. They were duffers too. I would add that term to my vocabulary. I worked hard at using appropriate and interesting words. It helped to make up for all the times I mixed them up by accident.

I watched him from the corner of my eye as he stacked books against the wall. He tilted each spine sideways so he could see the cover. Then he placed them into piles.

I waved my cup at the floor in the middle of the room. “Just make an aisle in the center of the floor so I can move. Throw everything in a pile against the wall.”

“You can't treat books that way!”

“Why not?”

He stopped. “You aren't getting a dumpster yet, are you?”

I took another sip. “No. Not yet. But I thought I would start throwing some of these books away now. This stuff is ancient. I'm pretty sure there are travel books from the 1950s in that pile. Can you imagine what would happen if someone tried to take one of those to New York or L.A.?”

“They'd be looking for streetcars and the Knickerbocker Building.” He relaxed and went back to work.

“Ooh-la-la. History. I'm impressed.”

He shrugged. “It's ingrained since birth. Everywhere you turn in England there's a history lesson waiting for you. It gets rather tiresome after a while.”

“Is that why you studied birds?”

“I didn't—no.”

“I was wondering: How does one make a living in or-tho-lo-g-y?”

His smile froze at the mention of his specialty. “Or-
nith
-ology.”

“That's what I said. You didn't hear me correctly.” I looked down at my coffee and swirled it violently. I hated the way I always mixed up words.

“I'm not a—well, I'm actually a professor. Of American . . . uh, studies. I'm on sabbatical until January. Maybe longer.”

I scrunched up my face and shuddered. “A professor? I should have known.”

He raised his head. “Are you making fun of me?”

I waved my cup and took a big sip. “No, of course not. So where do you teach?”

“Cambridge.” He mumbled it so matter-of-factly that I almost choked.

“No shit,” I sputtered. “Should I call you Professor or Doctor or something?”

“Please don't. Only my students call me
doctor
.”

I imagined him in front of the chalkboard, with a classroom of female students sighing and writing
I Love You
in the margin of their notes. Even I would be tempted to go to school if he was the professor. “Dr. Darlington. Nice!”

The corner of his mouth twitched. “Makes me sound like a total prat, doesn't it?”

“Don't take it too badly. It's better than
your lordship
.”

“Oh, so you've heard that one?”

“Hard to ignore it when everyone I meet in this town mentions you. What is that all about? I mean, I know you're British. But how did they make the leap to calling you
my lord
?”

He tilted his head, trying to read one of the titles, and mumbled. “I keep telling them to stop.” He picked up another book. “Perhaps you should organize this. It might help if you decide to give books away. I'll stack fiction in the shelves against this wall, and we can put nonfiction on the other side. If we come across children and young adult, let's put it in the back shelves.”

“Why not just throw it in the alley? Trash comes in a few days.”

He steepled his fingers to his lips as if weighing his words carefully. “Trudy, may I respectfully suggest that you give it a little time? Sell the books cheaply. Or give them away if you prefer. There are a number of charitable organizations that would love to receive books.”

“I wasn't planning to—”

He narrowed his eyes and focused on my T-shirt. “It is the responsible thing to do for the environment.”

Now he had me. I had been guilted. Since the moment I decided to throw the books in a dumpster, I had been faced with a nagging sense that I was doing something wrong. I was the queen of vintage shopping, garage sales, and thrifting. Growing up, we had moved so much that giving away our clothes, toys, and household items to other military families was a way of life. Everything was recycled.

He straightened and came toward me. “You will spend about five hundred dollars on a dumpster, right? At least cover the cost by trying to sell some of this. And think about it. You could help all those kids and their families who have no books to read.”

I crossed my arms. “I don't have that much time.”

He squatted in front of me until we were eye to eye. “Asia, is it?”

“Angkor Wat. I've wanted to go since I was thirteen.” But with my mom.

“Isn't it still the rainy season in Southeast Asia?”

“It's almost over.”

“Then you have time. It's only September. The next rainy season doesn't start again until late spring.”

He was probably right. I wasn't crazy about the lowball offer from Reeba Sweeney's client. And no one else was banging down the door to see the place. But I wasn't ready to give in just yet. Unfortunately, the prospect of staying in Truhart any longer gave me the creeps.

“Why do you care so much?”

“It was just a suggestion.” He stood up and bit his lip. The sunlight hit his glasses, obscuring his eyes. “Do you mind if I stop in sometimes and look around? Your aunt may have some—ah—inter-esting books that might help me in my research on the area.”

“What are you researching? Midwestern ghost towns?”

“Old logging towns of the Midwest. Turn-of-the-century culture.” He grabbed a pile of books and sorted them.

“And birds?”

“That too.” He grabbed a stack of books at his feet.

“Hey, I didn't promise anything.”

“Certainly.” There was a new spring in his step as he moved around the room.

“You look happy.”

“There's nothing better than spending the day among books—at least for me.”

This was going to stink! The last thing I wanted to do was play librarian. But it made sense. If I got it organized, we could open up the doors and have one gigantic fire sale. I'd make enough pocket change to pay for a dumpster. Maybe even lure a tempted buyer in the process. Then it was off to Southeast Asia. The one place I could lose myself and find myself at the same time.

I set my coffee on the window ledge. “If I do decide to sell the books I would give it one week. No more.”

“Mmm.” He wasn't listening to me. I watched him leafing through a pile of papers and thought of a million excuses not to get near anything that resembled a book.

“Maybe I should get the broom and start sweeping.”

“No sense in doing that until we have more floor space for you to actually sweep.”

“Who knows what we'll find underneath this stuff.” Maybe he was the squeamish sort. “Watch out for mice. We might have to remove some residents who weren't included in the will.”

He glanced up. “I can get some mousetraps for you this afternoon.”

I recoiled. “Traps? No way. That's cruel! I'm sure I can find a way to shoo them out the door without snapping their heads off.”

He looked over at the dog, who was asleep near a stack of magazines. “Your nameless dog isn't doing his job if there are mice around.”

“He's no longer nameless. A little girl fixed that yesterday. Meet Moby. And he wouldn't hurt a fly, poor old boy.”

Kit reached over and rubbed his ears. Moby rolled over onto his side and lifted a paw, happy to be scratched. “He's a sweet chap. How did you two find each other?”

I didn't feel like going into the whole story. “We were both going in the same direction. Away.”

“Moby. Hmm. Funny name. But it suits him, I think.”

He turned back to work and I pretended to be busy cleaning off my pants. After several more minutes of stalling, he pointed to a heap nearby. “If you clear that area, you'll be able to get to the front door easier.”

“You're really into this. It's so pointless,” I moaned. I started the slow process of organizing books anyway.

Minutes felt like hours as I slowly sorted and stacked. The mid-day sun was high by the time I placed a book in the children's pile.

Kit reached out and stopped me. “That goes in the adult pile.”

I pointed at the cartoon on the cover. “It's a kids' book. There's a cartoon on the cover.”

“Nope.
Breakfast of Champions
. Kurt Vonnegut. You've heard of him, right?”

I scoffed, “Who hasn't?”

He sat back on his heels. “Sorry, I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable.”