“Yes, it’s me.”
“Whatever are you doing at my nephew’s house at this hour?” She laughed then, making it clear that the question had been a rhetorical one. “I’m glad you two finally figured it out.”
Ashlyn’s cheeks went hot. “Ethan’s right here. I’ll put him on.”
“No, no. That isn’t necessary. Listen, I’ve had a thought. Why don’t the two of you come to Boston next Thursday? Ilese will be there with the girls and I’d love for her to meet the two of you. You could stay over and come to the blasted awards dinner on Friday, maybe even make a weekend of it. Take in a show or see some of the museums.”
“That’s very kind of you, but I’d better give you to Ethan.” She covered the mouthpiece as she passed the handset to him. “It’s Marian. She wants us to go to Boston on Thursday for dinner, then stay over for the award thing on Friday, but I have the store. You should go, though. Ilese is going to be there. It would be nice for you two to meet.”
Ethan wiped his hands and took the phone from her, listening and nodding as Marian repeated her offer. “I wish we could,” he said finally. “Unfortunately, I’ve agreed to pick up some extra classes for a friend and Ashlyn has the store. But we might be able to swing a late dinner on Thursday.” He raised his eyes to Ashlyn. “Maybe eight?”
Ashlyn nodded, pleased at the thought of seeing Marian again. They could leave as soon as she closed the shop, then drive back after.
Ethan returned to his breakfast after wrapping up the call. “Eight o’clock, Thursday,” he told her over the rim of his coffee mug. “She said she’d call once she booked the reservation.” He grinned as he picked up his knife and fork and sliced into a sausage link. “Time to meet the rest of the family.”
After breakfast, they headed to Portsmouth and their local Waldenbooks. Ashlyn took a deep breath as they entered the store, inhaling the mingled scents of paper and new ink. It always struck her as a medicinal smell, oily and faintly antiseptic, like iodine. Not unpleasant, but quite different from the woody, smoky, faintly sweet smell she associated with her own shop.
Being in the presence of so many new books felt strange. Shelves and shelves of volumes without pasts—without echoes. They were blank slates now, but one day they would have histories of their own, lives quite separate from the stories captured between their covers.
Something about the promise of stories yet to be written made Ashlyn happy as they made their way to the Fiction & Literature section.
Ethan whistled softly when she pointed to a shelf lined with Hugh Garret titles. “You weren’t kidding when you said he was prolific. There are . . .” He paused, trailing a finger over the spines as he counted. “Sixteen books here.”
“And that isn’t all of them.”
She pulled a hardcover from the shelf, presumably his most recent, since there were three copies, all facing out. A Window to Look Out Of. On the jacket, a dark-haired woman peered through a rain-spattered window, her pale face slightly out of focus, obscured by water droplets.
“Look.” Ashlyn held the book up, pointing to the woman. “It could be her.”
Ethan looked skeptical. “It could be anyone.”
He was right, of course. But there was something haunting about the cover image, something to do with the deliberate blurring of the woman’s face. She turned back the cover, scanning the blurb printed on the inside flap. The synopsis bore no resemblance to Belle and Hemi’s story. She picked up a second and read it, then a third. Nothing felt remotely familiar. But on every cover, the same woman—or at least the same type of woman. A woman who looked like Belle.
She had just finished with the eighth book and was attempting to reshelve it when it slipped from her hand and thumped to the floor. She bent to retrieve it, then froze as she saw the author’s photo staring up at her. Piercing blue eyes and a headful of thick, dark hair, a startlingly sensual mouth. He was distinguished, handsome—and familiar in a way she couldn’t explain. As if she’d seen his face somewhere in passing. And then suddenly it hit her. She had seen his face.
Yesterday.
“Ethan.” She scooped the book from the floor, holding it up. “It’s him.”
Ethan frowned. “Of course it’s him. It says so right there.”
“No. Look. It’s . . . him.”
Ethan narrowed his eyes on the photo. Finally, he saw it. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“It’s Zachary,” she breathed. “Hugh Garret is Zachary’s father.”
“Jesus.” Ethan dragged a hand through his hair, eyes still glued to the photo. “Could we be wrong?”
Belle looked at the photo again, recalling something Belle had written near the end of Forever, and Other Lies: I will never be completely free of you. Your voice, your smile, even that little cleft in your chin will never be far from my thoughts. My cross and my consolation. At the time, she had assumed it had to do with memories, the kind that never left you. Now she realized it was something else entirely.
“No,” she said finally. “That’s Zachary’s face. Look at the eyes, the mouth, the shape of his jaw. It’s him to a T. Just forty years older. And it explains Marian’s evasiveness, the way she kept deflecting and changing the subject. She must have been pregnant when she left New York, and she made up the story about him being Johanna’s to conceal it. It also explains why Zachary and Ilese look nothing alike. They don’t share a biological parent.”
“I’m guessing Hemi doesn’t know he has a son.”
“I’d hardly think so. There’s no mention of either child in Forever, and Other Lies. She wrote about her work, her family in France, but nothing about her children. A woman doesn’t forget her children, and certainly not a woman like Marian, who’s clearly the proudest mother on the planet. The omission was intentional.”
“We can’t be sure of any of that.”
“I think we can. At the end of the book, she wrote something about Hemi not having the right to know about some parts of her life. This was what she meant. Zachary.”
“My god. We’re supposed to have dinner with her on Thursday—and with Ilese. This is going to be awkward.”
“We can’t let it be awkward, Ethan. She can’t know we know. She’s kept this secret for forty-three years. We should let her keep it if that’s what she wants.”
NINETEEN
ASHLYN
I love an author the more for having been himself a lover of books.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
November 1, 1984
Boston, Massachusetts