It felt like a reassurance of some kind, words of comfort offered to a troubled heart, but the energy the book gave off, a dank, weighty sensation that felt like doubt, along with threads of guilt and regret, hinted that Dearest—whoever he was—had been less than convinced.
Ashlyn closed the book, placing it firmly on the no pile, then reached for the final book in the carton. Her belly did a little flip as she lifted it out, the kind that meant she may finally have discovered something worthwhile. It was a small volume but quite beautiful. Three-quarter Moroccan leather, ribbed spine, marbled blue boards—and, unless she missed her guess, hand-bound.
She held her breath as she examined it. Little to no shelf wear. Binding tight and square. Text block yellowed but otherwise solid. She peered at the embossed gold lettering on the spine. Regretting Belle. Not a title she was familiar with. She frowned as she continued to study the book. There was no sign of an author’s name. No publisher’s name either. Odd, but not unheard of. But something was off.
The book was strangely quiet. Silent, in fact. The way a new book felt before an owner’s echo rubbed off. An unwanted gift, perhaps, that had gone unread? The thought made her sad. Books given as gifts should always be read. She turned back the cover, hunting for the copyright page. There wasn’t one. There was, however, an inscription.
How, Belle? After everything . . . how could you do it?
Ashlyn stared at the single line. The script was jagged, the shard-like words intended to cut, to wound. But there was sadness, too, in the spaces between, woven through the ellipses, the desolation of a question unanswered. The inscription was neither signed nor dated, implying that the recipient would have required neither. An intimate acquaintance, then. A lover perhaps, or spouse. Belle. The name leapt off the page. Might the book’s recipient have also been its namesake? The giver its author?
Intrigued, she began flipping pages, on the lookout for an author’s name, a publisher’s imprint. But there was nothing. No trace of how this strange and beautiful book had come into the world.
The absence of a copyright page suggested the book might be in the public domain, meaning it would have to have been written before 1923. If so, it was in amazing condition. But there was another possibility, one that seemed more likely. The book may have been rebound at some point and the binder had been unable to include the original copyright page.
Some of the pages may have been damaged or lost. It certainly happened. She’d been tasked with rebinding books that came into the shop in grocery bags, loose pages held together with twine or rubber bands, warped boards left to mold in damp basements, attic finds whose pages were so dry they crumbled when touched. But never had she come across a book missing all traces of its origins.
People rehabbed old books for all sorts of reasons, but those reasons almost always fell into one of two categories: sentiment or collector value. In either case, preserving the author’s name would be critical. Why would someone go to the trouble and expense of having the book rebound and then omit such important details? Unless the omission had been intentional. But why?
Lured by the promise of a literary mystery, Ashlyn laid the book open. She had just turned to the first chapter when a jolt of what felt like current surged through her fingers. Startled, she jerked her hand back. What had just happened? A moment ago, the book had been silent—pulseless—until she opened it and roused whatever lay within, like the flashover that occurs when a door is suddenly thrown open and a small fire erupts into a fully involved blaze. This was a new experience, and one she definitely intended to explore.
Breath held, she placed the flats of both hands against the open pages, bracing for what she now knew was coming. Every book presented differently. Most registered as a subtle physical sensation. A humming in her jaw, a sudden flutter in her belly. Other times, the echoes were more intense. A ringing in her ears or a stinging sensation in her cheeks, as if she’d just been slapped. Occasionally, they registered as tastes or smells. Vanilla. Ripe cherries. Vinegar. Smoke. But this felt different, deeper somehow and more visceral. The taste of ash sharp on her tongue. The ache of tears scorching her throat. A searing pain at the center of her chest.
A heart in ruins.
And yet she’d felt nothing until she opened the book, as if the echoes had been holding their breath, biding their time. But for how long? And whose echoes? The inscription—How, Belle?—was clearly intended for a woman, yet the book gave off a decidedly masculine energy.
She examined the spine again, scoured the flyleaf, the verso, the endpapers, hoping to find some clue as to the book’s origins. Again, she came up empty. It was as if the book had simply manifested out of thin air, a phantom volume existing out of literary time and space. Except she was holding it in her hands. And its echoes were very real.
She lifted her palms from the pages, shaking out the fingers of her right hand in an attempt to dispel the dull ache in her palm. The scar was playing up again. She peered at the crescent-shaped lesion running from her little finger to the base of her thumb. A shard of glass inadvertently grabbed in a moment of panic.
The wound had healed without incident, leaving a curved line of puckered white flesh cutting across her life line. Ashlyn pressed a thumb deep into her palm and flexed her fingers repeatedly, an exercise they had given her after the accident to prevent contracture. Maybe it was time to slow it down a little in the bindery and give her hand a rest. And speaking of the bindery, it was time to get back to the shop.
After returning the no books to their respective boxes, she carried the mystery volume to the front, where she found Kevin lovingly polishing a pink Bakelite radio.
“Looks like you got lucky this time.” He picked up the book, opened it briefly, then closed it again with a shrug. “Never heard of it. Who’s it by?”
Ashlyn looked at him, astonished that he could be oblivious to the emotions boiling up from the book. “I have no idea. There’s no author name, no copyright page, not even anything about who the publisher was. I’m thinking it may have been rebound at some point. Or it could be a vanity press kind of thing—a few copies of Uncle John’s novel printed for family and friends.”
“And someone will actually want a book like that?”
Ashlyn shot him a conspiratorial wink. “Probably not. But I’m a sucker for a mystery.”
TWO
ASHLYN
Where is human nature so weak as in a bookstore?
—Henry Ward Beecher