The Book of Speculation: A Novel

I laugh. It’s hard not to watch her lips touch the glass. “Did you come up with anything on Churchwarry?”


“I barely got to start. The shop is a real thing. Churchwarry and Son specializes in antiquarian books. It seems like he’s both the Churchwarry and the son. It’s a solo operation. I couldn’t find much on the man himself, though. Maybe he’s lonely and reaching out.”

I shrug. “Strange way of doing it. He didn’t seem that lonely.” He’d sounded cheerful, in fact. Absolutely alive.

“I wanted to dig a little more into his bookstore, but I had to help out in the kids’ room.”

“What happened to Marci?”

“She was crying in the bathroom after meeting with Janice.”

We agree that we deserve drinks while we still have jobs to pay for them.

“You’ll be fine, you know,” she says. “You’re the only one who can stomach reference.”

“Maybe. But half my job can be done by a computer. Ever apply for a grant that could eliminate half of what you do?”

“No, but that’s just because I don’t do grants.” She taps a nail against the rim of her glass. “The question is, have you applied for a grant that could eliminate half of what I do?”

“Never crossed my mind.”

“See? And that’s what will get you fired.”

We finish our wine and order more. Soon, we’re soft and smiling and talking about a Fourth of July and Frank nearly burning my father’s hand off with a roman candle. Alice swears it was the other way around, that she remembers her mother wrapping Frank’s hand with gauze. It’s difficult to reconcile the girl who launched herself off swing sets with the woman in front of me. I think she’s always had a boyfriend. Men from Rocky Point or Shoreham, vague people I never met. She might have one now. Our food arrives.

“My dad’s worried about your house,” she says, pushing a piece of asparagus around her plate. “I called him last week and he couldn’t stop talking about it.”

“I’m worried too,” I say.

“I don’t understand why you haven’t sold it.”

“There’s a lot of history in it.” My phone rings and Alice rolls her eyes. I promise to get rid of whoever it is, but when I pick up I know that I won’t.

“It’s me.”

I mouth to Alice that it’s my sister and she waves me off. The benefit to knowing someone your whole life is that you don’t have to explain why certain calls must be answered. I excuse myself and go outside. “Hey. Where are you?”

“Some hole in the wall. Can you talk?” There’s a clinking sound in the background—glass striking glass. I ask again where she is.

“I don’t know. A mall parking lot. Does it matter?”

“Not really. You don’t sound good. What’s going on? I’m in the middle of dinner.”

“I had a really bad reading,” she says.

“What? The cards?”

“Yeah. I feel cagey and I want to talk to you. Can I talk to you?”

I look back in the window at Alice, sipping wine and eating. I catch her eye. She waves. “Yeah. For a little bit.”

“Do you remember when I cut my legs? I don’t know why I thought of it, but I was driving and my legs hurt and I needed to talk to you.”

“Why?” For a moment I think my phone’s gone dead. Three times I say her name before she answers.

“Remember? I slid down those rocks and you carried me. I must have been heavy.”

“Not at all.” I was thirteen and she was eight. She weighed nothing. “Do you need me to get you?” I could take her to a doctor, or a hotel, get her food, anything. “I’m with Alice, she can come too if you want.” Provided she’s still there when I get back.

“We were climbing on those boulders with barnacles all over them. Don’t know why we did that. Were we looking for snails?”

“Yeah. Enola, should I come and pick you up?”

“No, no. I’ll be fine. I had that bathing suit on, the black one with the pink dots. You were on the tall rock, Toaster. Stupid we called it that. I wanted to get to you.”

Inside, Alice chats with a waiter, who laughs and flirts with her. My date—it is a date, isn’t it?—continues without me.

“Yeah, I remember,” I say. At low tide the rocks crawl with life—barnacles, seaweed, sand fleas, and snails. We were on all fours, balancing on ledges, hooking fingers into crevasses.

“My foot slipped on a patch of seaweed.”

I remember the sound of her skin smacking the rocks, and reaching to grab her, but she was small and wet and my footing was bad. She slid all the way down.

“Enola? Can I call you back?”

She doesn’t listen. “The barnacles shredded me and the fucking saltwater stung so bad I thought it was eating me. It was so sharp. Then I got dizzy and everything closed in.”

“I saw you slip and the next thing I knew you were underwater.”

“I sank all the way to the bottom. My feet even got stuck in the sand. I screamed and screamed, and then you were behind me. You got there so quick.”