The Book of Speculation: A Novel

“Are you okay?” I asked, because it’s what you’re supposed to ask, and following the prescribed motions is all we can do.

She laughed, loud and fierce. “I’ll be fine,” she said. “It’s not like I didn’t have other options. It’s not like I don’t have choices.” She leaned against the door. “I could take him for everything, you know. I could kick him out. But right now, right now, I’d like to see what his back looks like after a week of sleeping in his workshop. Then, we’ll see. Nobody loves you quite like someone who’s sorry.” She smiled and her eyes took on a hard edge. “We’ll see.”

For a moment I pictured Alice’s straight back, grinding coffee, and Frank, curled inside the skeleton of the dory in the barn, sinking into the frame.

Then my sister appeared behind her and we left Leah alone.

“She spent last night and this morning finishing the wine,” Enola says as we walk down the drive. “I don’t mean a bottle either. She finished all their wine. I’m surprised she isn’t dead.”

“It looks like Frank did some of that too. The barn was filled with bottles. Was Alice in there?”

“No.”

“Good.”

“This sucks,” she says softly. “I loved them. I mean, didn’t you want to be their kid even just a little bit, even just once?”

“Sure,” I say. “Once in a while. Couldn’t help it.” But then, maybe being us wouldn’t have been quite so terrible were it not for Frank. “Leah will be fine,” I say.

“She’s tough,” Enola answers. Then after a while: “Did you get what you came for?”

I nod. “Doyle picked the lock on Frank’s barn. Did you know your boyfriend is a thief?”

“We’ve all got to be something,” she says.

Dusk has fallen and Doyle appears to have been right—thunderheads are pushing in from the west. We’d best get moving. I tell Enola that I’ll meet her down on the beach; I need to swing back to the house to get something.

Climbing down the ladder rungs to the beach is difficult with the book and a bottle of lighter fluid under my arm. It would be easier to drop everything down, but the book would be mobbed by crabs, and the last thing I need is to have the thing get so damp it won’t burn.

And maybe I want to hang on to it a little longer, this last piece of us.

Once you’ve held a book and really loved it, you forever remember the feel of it, its specific weight, the way it sits in your hand. My thumb knows the grain of this book’s leather, the dry dust of red rot that’s crept up its spine, each waving leaf of every page that holds a little secret or one of Peabody’s flourishes. A librarian remembers the particular scent of glue and dust, and if we’re so lucky—and I was—the smell of parchment, a quiet tanginess, softer than wood pulp or cotton rag. We would bury ourselves in books until flesh and paper became one and ink and blood at last ran together. So maybe my hand does clench too tightly to the spine. I may never again hold another book this old, or one with such a whisper of me in it.

But on the beach stands my sister. She is not in my books, and what kind of man would choose words that are already written over what might still be? When I carried her, her legs torn open, part of her flowed into me, and who would I be if I could not part with this beautiful thing for the person to whom I promised, “I will take care of you.” I said always. Even if it meant hurting me.

I dig my good foot into the sand for balance.

Doyle has made a driftwood tepee, under which the curtains and paintings are stashed in a pile. Enola stuffs dry grass in the folds, sticking pieces anywhere they will stay.

I thank him and he shrugs. “Don’t know if it’ll light. I put the parts with the chains on the bottom. Figure that’ll keep any of the damp in the sand from creeping up too high.”

I shake the bottle of lighter fluid. “Hopefully it won’t be a problem.” His eyes gleam.

Crabs scuttle around us. Enola kicks at them, swearing. Yes, I remember walking into the water, how they crawled up me and it felt like an itch being scratched. And I remember her sitting back on the shore, knees pulled into her chin, petrified.

I will make things better.

I douse the wood and the curtains, squeezing until the bottle splutters out its last drop. The fumes are strong enough that even the crabs move back, forming a circle around us. I tear a page out, then tuck the book into the very top of the pile, nestling it between a curtain and a log. The page is ruined, an illegible muddle of brown and blue ink, unable to speak the names that were written on it. I roll it tightly and set Enola’s lighter to it.