Chapter Eighteen #2
He buried his face in the pages of the book. His voice muffled, he replied, “Sorry, love. I’ll behave and read my book.”
I pulled the book away from his face.
“You’re being ridiculous,” I said.
“No, I swear, I’m invested. This Nancy Drew character is quite the young spitfire.”
I sat up next to him, back to the headboard, leaning in to read over his shoulder. “What do you think of Nancy’s skills? Detective on detective?”
He turned another page and ran his fingers over the nearly hundred-year-old words.
“For a girl of sixteen, she’s doing quite well,” Duke said.
“She’s incredibly determined. Simple stubborn refusal to quit is half the battle.
Good instincts too. And she’s on the case for the right reasons.
She cares very deeply about helping the poor and disadvantaged.
She even defends a falsely accused shopgirl about to lose her job.
And she’s quite a good driver. Ready and willing to eavesdrop, sneak into places, steal evidence… Feisty lass.”
“Too feisty. Did you know that in the 1960s, they rewrote the original Nancy Drew books and re-released them? The original books had blue tweed covers and the new versions were yellow. They also were shorter and made Nancy older and better behaved. I like bad blue tweed Nancy better personally.”
Duke pondered that a moment.
“How would that work?” he asked. “Two different versions of the same character? Do you think the two Nancys ever swap places?”
“I’ve never thought of that. You think there’re two Nancy Drews? The original and the rebooted Nancy Drew?”
That was an intriguing thought, that if you rebooted a book series, you created a clone or a new version of the original character.
Would they know each other? The 1930s blue tweed Nancy Drew, my mother’s Nancy Drew, and the yellow 1960s Nancy Drew?
I could only imagine the shenanigans not one but two Nancy Drews would get into…
“Wonder if my books will ever get a reboot,” Duke said, then shook his head. “No, I’m already perfect.”
“They tried to turn you into a TV series, but it only lasted one season.”
“I still don’t quite comprehend what television is, but I’m deeply offended.” He turned another page in the Nancy Drew book. “It’s interesting. She mentions her dead mother a few times, but never thinks much about her, never grieves.”
“She is from the Midwest.”
“I’m from England. Even Midwesterners look at the English and say, ‘Let it out a little.’?”
“Trust me,” I said, “it’s for Nancy’s own good. If you let it out, what if you can’t put it back?”
“The grief?” Duke asked.
I nodded. “Or maybe she’s happy to be a daddy’s girl.”
“I do like this Mr. Drew,” he said, tapping the first page. “Treats his daughter like an equal and gives her enormous freedom and latitude. Very unusual for his time.” He paused, then corrected himself: “ My time.”
“You’d be a father like Carson Drew,” I said. “You’d adore your daughters and let them get away with murder.”
“As long as it’s not literal murder. That I would frown upon.” He closed the book and held it against his chest. “I admit I like the sound of that.”
“Murder?”
“Having a daughter.” He glanced at me, then away. “But I suppose that’s not meant to be. Not in the cards for me. Not part of my story.”
“Maybe not. But maybe?”
“You’ve read all my books. I never get married. I never have children.”
“Your series only covers about a year of your life. Look at you, though. There’s so much more to you than what’s between the pages of your books.”
“True. There’s so much left unsaid. Nancy Drew, after all, never goes to the toilet,” he said, holding up The Secret of the Old Clock. “And she’s a tea drinker. She would go. Often.”
I took the book from him and opened it to a random page. I touched the white space around the black letters.
“The margins,” I said. “The places between scenes and chapters. Between the lines. What do you fictional characters get up to between the lines? Or after the final page? After THE END? Maybe getting married and having children?”
“The problem there, you see…the only girl I want to marry is you. And I don’t want you in the margins. I want you on every page in black and white and bold print with your face on the cover.”
My heart pounded so hard I was surprised Duke couldn’t hear it. “Why do you love me so much? You’re one of the most famous fictional detectives ever written, and I’m…not.”
Duke looked at me for a very long time.
“You want to know why I love you?”
“I wouldn’t mind.”
“I had a case once at an orphanage. Someone had kidnapped one of the orphans, which was very strange. Who would kidnap a child when that very same child was already available for adoption?”
I recognized the case he was talking about from book five in the Duke of Chicago series, The Devil’s Children.
He continued, “After we recovered the boy safely, the children at the orphanage didn’t want me to leave. So I stayed all evening reading them stories until they fell asleep.”
That was from the book. One paragraph, buried in a scene, easy to skim over but not for someone like me, who sought out and treasured every little personal detail Duke’s author gave us readers.
His favorite tea—orange pekoe. His favorite song—“Ain’t Misbehavin’.
” His ability to flirt with literally anyone if it would get him the answers he needed.
And this passage I remembered for its sweetness and the longing it inspired in me to be in that moment with him.
And since the children wouldn’t let him leave, Duke sat in a chair by the fire and read stories to them for hours. And even then, he found he could not make his feet find their way to the door until every last one of them had fallen asleep…
“One of the books I read to the children has stayed with me ever since,” Duke said. “ The Velveteen Rabbit. Do you know it?”
“I do, but it’s been a long time since I read it.”
“There’s a little toy rabbit in the story, made of velveteen,” Duke said, “who is teased by the other toys in the nursery—the mechanical toys—for being too old-fashioned. The oldest toy in the nursery, the wise and shabby Skin Horse, comforts the rabbit by telling him that if he’s loved enough by the boy, he could become real.
The rabbit asks the horse what this ‘real’ jazz means—my own words. And the horse replies…”
Duke took a breath and furrowed his brow. As a fictional detective, he had a phenomenal, almost supernatural memory.
“Real isn’t how you are made…It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”
“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.
“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real, you don’t mind being hurt.”
Duke met my eyes.
“That’s beautiful,” I whispered, because whispering is always the right response when in the presence of beauty.
“So that’s why,” Duke said.
“Why what?” I’d been so entranced by the story I’d forgotten the question I’d asked him.
“That’s why I love you, Rainy March. Because when I’m with you, I’m real.”
When the man you love says something like that to you, there’s only one correct response.
“Kiss me,” I said.
“What about the ground rules?”
“We’re in bed,” I reminded him. “Not on the ground.”
“I haven’t finished my book yet,” he said.
I should’ve known he’d play hard to get.
I took the book from his hand, closed it, and then lightly tossed it onto the floor.
“How dare you. That was your mother’s favorite story,” he said in a scolding tone even as he took me into his arms and pressed me onto my back.
“You’re my favorite story.”