The Former Miss Cheddarworths Grandson – Ellena Espejo #2
Once settled on the bus, he dove into the mysterious object. The rubber band snapped, taking a nip at his ring finger. With a wince, then a sigh, he cracked it open at a dog-eared page and read:
We didn’t do that cinematic slamming-the-door-open-while-already-making-out thing.
The vibe resembled more of a real estate agent showing a house to a client.
‘Here’s the bedroom. Few disclosures: not move-in ready at all, foundation needs TLC, crawl space is tight.
’ That is to say, in some forgotten language I told him I had no intention of intercourse that night.
Hands respectfully in his pockets, Raleigh agreed to the boundaries and confessed a similar lack of experience with dreamy enthusiasm not unlike relief.
‘We don’t need to make love,’ he said.
Make love?
He might have provoked a similar reaction from me by saying ‘moist’.
Though the statement was only as weird as it was adorable, mature language sans snickering contracted my muscles like metal scraping a raw wound.
That phrase should have been for the exclusive use of preaching abstinence.
The sound of it alone revoked attainability of the act by setting it on a too-high, too-serious pedestal.
Unyielding wood-brown hair reminiscent of floppy puppy ears curtained Raleigh’s forehead.
His sweet disposition and kind dark eyes likely saw their share of D despite the binge at midday, his gut roared with famine.
Smiling to brush away frustrations, he lifted the overpacked tote onto the counter and extricated the strap embedded in his shoulder.
“Special delivery! Barb the librarian sends her love.”
Aunt Cathy paused while dicing potatoes. “Aw, thank you! How was your lunch?”
“Fantastic! Finn is so cool! I had a mostly great day.”
“Mostly?”
“Dinner smells incredible.”
She nodded. “You’re sweet. Meet any celebrities? Other than Finn, of course.”
Xander divided the books into two stacks. “I had a spirited encounter with Dean Cornwell.”
“Who?”
“Muralist. Don’t worry about it. I also found something pretty weird: a book in the free box titled ‘ The Former Miss Cheddarworth’s Grandson’ .”
Aunt Cathy glanced over, sorting the information with narrowed eyes. “Huh. Isn’t that?—”
“My dad’s side of the family?”
“Yeah. I almost caused a rift in the time space continuum when I snickered about it to his face.”
“Nah. He just likes to tease people. Secretly, he also finds it hilarious.”
“I don’t know, his oratory was quite fiery.
” She puffed up her chest, pointed toward the heavens, and imitated an English accent.
“I say, dear sister, the name Cheddarworth stands as evidence of my family’s allegiance to king, queen, and country since the Saxon invasion of our shores in the fifth century! ”
They laughed. She shook her head, smiling. “My sister’s husband is adorable in his unique way. I’m quite content in my life, but I must say I will forever envy Lilly’s fairytale romance.”
“Fairytale romance?” Xander asked.
“Are you kidding me? You know that story! You have to know it!”
He cocked his head. “Uh… remind me?”
She scraped the potatoes into the crackling pan and stirred it with a wooden spoon while magnifying drama in her speech.
“Okay, it’s London in the early nineties.
You know that much at least, right? Lillian, hopeless romantic from New England, lingered through the dwindling days of her first trip abroad.
After the poor dear suffered through twelve European countries in six months—” She put the back of her hand to her forehead and gasped to demonstrate anguish.
“—armed with naught but a backpack, a multilingual phrasebook, and a pack of condoms slipped into her toiletry bag by yours truly, just in case?—”
Xander covered his face. “That’s enough information!”
Giggling, she continued, “—the young innocent savored the thought of doing nothing more than dreamy correspondence in a tea shop and skulking about in search of blue plaques. Little did she know destiny awaited in the antiquarian vault of a Cecil Court bookshop where she delicately leafed through a first edition of Wollstonecraft worth almost a thousand pounds. Those annoyingly perfect fingers of hers, so feminine and slender as shoestring potatoes, diverted the attention of a certain young man. His name was Robin Somerset, an old-world, upper-crust, middle son of a baron who entered the vault intent on the purchase of a book to celebrate the acceptance of his doctoral thesis. As they say, he chatted up the old bird.”
Still holding the wooden spoon, she clasped her hands and batted her eyelashes.
“She agreed to dinner with him on one condition: he must take her to what he believed was the most romantic place in all of England. And with that, he brought her to the Tower of London, where they hunted the immortal graffiti carved in the walls by Lord Guildford Dudley for his beloved wife Lady Jane Grey before their execution. And with that, Lilly fell madly in love with Robin. Sadly, however, by the time she returned home, she’d decided a long-distance relationship would hurt too much.
She responded only to his first letter, and though his response accepted her logic as sound, it also told of his heartbreak. ”
She gave the pan on the stove a shake. “Four years pass, and a package is left on her porch. She unwrapped it and found that very same Wollstonecraft tome from the day they met in London. Enclosed was a postcard from a British pub in a nearby town in upstate New York. The message read: ‘Noon, tomorrow shall tell me, whether the woman I adore will have me…’. Lilly arrived on time at the pub, where Robin informed her of his new teaching job at the local prep school.”
Xander beamed. “Always loved that story.”
Aunt Cathy made a face. “You said?—”
“I knew you’d tell it better than either of them. It was on my mind, because of this book. I’m not just a Cheddarworth, I’m the former Miss Cheddarworth’s grandson , and I got a weird feeling I know the author personally. ”
“Really?”
“That’s why the great day sank in the end. Cheap binding. Lost most of it on the bus and to the four winds. What little I read contains a lot of déjà vu, though.”
After dinner he appeased his aunt by watching her crime shows with her.
Then he went upstairs to bed. Damp paper sheets stood, fanned out on the desk to prevent sticking, with what was not so damaged organized in small stacks.
As he settled down to sleep, he hoped that long-ago-night-now-resurfaced might rally in his dreams.
The next few days were disrupted by magnetic attraction to the decimated book. Repeatedly he read and reread the passages until he could quote them. Her side of their story left him craving answers; some elements seemed fabricated, but uncertainty amplified the loss.
Returning to the bus stop in daylight to search found almost nothing, and what there was had either been driven over or shat upon by fauna.
The one still-legible page was intact aside from a torn corner where the page number would be.
He might have been skeptical that it was part of the book, except for one particular line:
‘If you think Ambrose sounds highborn,’ he laughed, ‘my grandmother’s maiden name is Cheddarworth!’
Theorizing parts of the book could have been left behind in the free box, he returned to the library to find the box had been recycled.
An online search for Verity Azul del Cuervo resulted in dozens of pictures of ravens rendered blue by AI, followed by a single image of the book cover attached to a broken link.
Xander met Olga for lunch. She asked about dietary restrictions; with a shrug, he indicated none.