11. Chloe
“We need to find every outdated copy of The Haunting of Hill House located within a hundred-mile radius,” I announced to Pepper as I came into work the next morning, my arms laden with the empty casserole dish, the copy of Hemingway, and a printed-out list of all the used bookstores in the area.
Unless I wanted to trek all the way to Spokane, the pickings were slim, but we weren’t completely without resources in our neck of the woods. Several of our thrift stores boasted well-stocked book sections, and garage sales were always an option. Besides, when it came to holding on to items until they literally fell apart, a town like ours pulled out all the stops. Bookcases became garage shelves before being torn apart and turned into fire starters. Sheets doubled as curtains until they needed to come down to make a faded floral toga for Spirit Week at the high school.
Even Theo had his ways and means. Just this morning, he’d informed us that we were expected to hunt down every back alley for discarded cigarette butts. Apparently, he’d learned in detention (five days, courtesy of the Toenail Incident) that the filters could be soaked in water to create a kind of antirust concoction. Theo planned to make gallons of the stuff and increase our family fortunes by selling it to local farmers.
I wished him well, as I always did, but politely declined to participate in his excavation efforts. Parenting already came with more terrible, disgusting tasks than anyone had warned me about. I wasn’t about to add more, family fortunes or not.
“Shirley Jackson?” Pepper asked as she came to relieve me of my burdens. She only grabbed the Hemingway book, so she wasn’t much help, but I could hardly blame her. I’d been up well past midnight reading and rereading the notes scrawled in the margins. It was more captivating than a Lucy Foley thriller, which was saying a lot considering how quickly I devoured every new thing she wrote. “Why? Is she our next stop on the Jasper Holmes literary tour?”
“End of chapter seventeen,” I said. Then, because I could see Gunderson making a beeline straight for me, I staved him off by handing him the empty casserole dish. “I bet you’re surprised to see this again so soon. My family devoured every bite. Apparently, I’ve been starving them. Please thank your wife again and let her know that we really enjoyed it. Was that cauliflower in there? Instead of pasta?”
I couldn’t have said anything better suited to put him in a good mood than if I’d asked him to share his celery water with me.
“The whole family’s doing keto.” He patted his stomach with the air of a proud mother-to-be. “I’ve lost eight pounds already. I’ll ask Babs to make you a few more to get you through the weekend.”
“Oh no. That’s not necessary. We’re doing really well. Great, actually.” I spat the words out like a machine gun. “Please don’t ask your wife to put herself out on our account. We wouldn’t be able to enjoy the food.”
“She only wants to help,” Gunderson said, a little hurt. “We all do.”
“It’s no use, Gunderson,” Pepper said, barely glancing up from the book. I could see the handwriting from here, but Gunderson didn’t seem to notice. “The only thing more difficult than getting Chloe to accept a helping hand is getting Chloe to admit that she needs one in the first place.”
“Says the woman who refuses to let me visit her ailing grandmother.”
“Oh, you can visit,” Pepper said without missing a beat. “You just aren’t allowed to bring anything with you when you come. By the way, Gunderson, she’s really enjoying the juice press you guys got for her. She’s not sure it’s doing anything about her thyroid, but she’s obsessed with sticking all the kitchen scraps in there and seeing what pops out. Yesterday, she made us a potato peel and onion juice that weirdly tastes like hash browns.”
“That’s not what we meant—” Gunderson began, but he gave up the fight with a sigh. “I’m glad she’s getting some use out of it.”
“How is this fair?” I cried.
Pepper turned a purposely obtuse gaze at me. “Did you want some of the hash brown juice? I’ll have her whip up an extra batch and bring it in tomorrow. I think you have drink it fresh, though, or the potato starts turning a weird shade of brownish-gray. You should ask Theo. I bet he knows why.”
“Pepper,” I said.
“Chloe,” she replied.
“Gunderson,” Gunderson said. He grinned and added, “I was feeling left out.”
Now it was my turn to give up the fight. I wasn’t nearly as gracious about it as he was, though. “Fine. Yes, Pepper, I’ll take some weird juice if she needs to unload it, but I can’t promise to drink any. And yes, Gunderson, a few more casseroles would be wonderful. I don’t want Babs to bend over backwards, but if she—”
“Say no more,” he said as he turned to leave, the casserole dish clutched to his chest. “She’ll be so excited. She has this new egg roll in a bowl recipe she’s been dying to try.”
We watched him go—me with relief, Pepper with a knowing grin.
“That’s not the route I’d have taken, but it worked. Was the food really good, or did you just say all that to get rid of him?”
“It was delicious,” I said, still feeling annoyed. “But that’s not the point. Pepper, I know how to accept help.”
“Sure, you do.”
“I literally exist on a combination of GoFundMe campaigns and state assistance.”
“Your last GoFundMe was to get enough money to fix Theo’s broken molar, and you closed it because he decided to pull the tooth out with a pair of pliers and save everyone the trouble. That’s not existing. That’s barely squeaking by.”
As Theo still had that tooth in a jar and liked to show it off anytime he was accused of not doing his part to help the family, Pepper wasn’t wrong. Too bad for her, I had a counterargument ready to go.
“If I’m so bad at accepting help, then why did I agree to let Jasper babysit Noodle for the foreseeable future?” I asked. At her sudden gasp, I laughed. “That’s right. You heard me correctly. I handed my beloved brother over to the meanest man in the world, and I did it without regret. That’s how desperate I am. That’s how willing to accept a helping hand.”
Instead of the capitulation I’d hoped for, Pepper tossed me the book. “You’re such a bad liar. You don’t think Jasper is mean at all. You kind of love him. You and this Catherine chick both have it bad.”
“You found the passage? You see what I mean about Shirley Jackson?” I was so excited I could barely keep the vibration out of my voice. “I’m almost certain The Haunting of Hill House is the next piece of the puzzle, but I already checked the library database. We haven’t carried any copies of it for years.”
“I found the passage,” Pepper agreed. “But if you and Jasper are besties now, I don’t see why you can’t just talk to him about it. If you want to know the ending to his romance, all you have to do is ask.”
“Are you kidding? That’s the worst idea I’ve ever heard.” I could hardly believe that Pepper—romantic, intelligent, literary Pepper—didn’t see things as clearly as I did. “He’s every brokenhearted book curmudgeon come to life. Archibald Craven from The Secret Garden? Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights? Arthur McLachlan from The Lonely Hearts Book Club? Come on, Pepper. I taught you better than that. He obviously suffered a terrible romantic tragedy in his youth, and he’s spent his whole miserable life trying—and failing—to get over it. It’s why he’s so unhappy now. Maybe she broke his heart. Maybe she really did die—not from murder, obviously, but the normal way.”
“You sound awfully gleeful about the prospect of your beloved C kicking the bucket.”
At the thought of such an untimely end for a woman I was rapidly becoming obsessed with, a pang of guilt assailed me. As strongly as it tugged, however, it was no match for the curiosity that was taking over all my other worries. It had been so long since I’d felt excitement—or anything other than stomach-churning, helpless anxiety—that I found myself falling under its spell.
“Fine,” I capitulated. “Maybe she’s alive and pining for her lost love somewhere, and all I want to do is reunite them in their golden years.”
Pepper’s only response to this was a flat, sarcastic stare, so I flipped open the book and read the words that were already imprinted on my heart.
If you really want to be my friend, this is the part where I should probably confess that I don’t like Hemingway very much.
I won’t tell anyone if you don’t. But if you don’t like Hemingway, why did you pick up the book in the first place?
I plead the Fifth.
Only mobsters and politicians do that.
Fine. Someone recommended it to me.
Who? A librarian?
You’re very nosy.
And you’re very cagey. I bet it was L. She likes sappy, dramatic books. She even likes this one.
It wasn’t L. And it isn’t sappy and dramatic. It’s supposed to be romantic.
Romantic?Romantic? If Hemingway hadn’t killed C off at the end, their love story would have been doomed. F is a selfish deserter who would have gotten tired of C as soon as the war ended. Poor C would have had to go on to raise her child all by herself. In the 1920s, a fallen woman with no way to support herself. That’s not a romance. It’s a tragedy.
At this point, their communication had gone on for so long that I was forced to turn the page to keep reading. I had no idea how often this book switched hands or how much time passed between each message, but the well-thumbed pages made me think it had been a lengthy endeavor.
Okay. I get it. You don’t like love stories.
And you do? What’s your favorite book?
Can I plead the Fifth again?
Only if you promise to wave at me the next time I see you in public.
There. I did it. Happy now?
Getting there. I liked that shirt you were wearing. It brings out the color in your eyes.
Compliments weren’t part of the deal.
Then don’t wear a blue shirt the next time I see you. If you won’t tell me your favorite book, how are we supposed to pick what we’re going to read next? Mrs. P is starting to get suspicious of how much time I’m spending near this shelf.
I don’t know… What’s your favorite book?
Right now? Guess.
Pride and Prejudice?
Ew. Be serious.
Fine. Mysteries of Udolpho.
Getting warmer. I’ve always loved a good Gothic…Bonus points if it’s modern. Horror is so much scarier when it has a possibility of being real. SJ, forexample, knows how to strike the fear of God in a girl.
Oh, geez. I’m not reading that one. It’s too scary.
Did you guess? Good boy. But I should warn you ahead of time…it’s not scary. It’s terrifying.
Wait. Why aren’t you saying anything?
J? J???
Fine. You win. Let’s read the terrifying one.
But I thought you didn’t like terrifying things?
…I’m starting to change my mind.
And that was where it ended. No more messages, no more literary criticisms, no more developments about Jasper’s blue shirt and how it brought out the color in his eyes. Since I’d seen the messages in Tropic of Cancer, I knew that things between them must have progressed to the point where they started meeting in public and—1960s sensibilities notwithstanding—discussed things like love and lice and lying down in bed together.
I wanted to fill in those gaps. I needed it. More than a blank check. More than all the casseroles Babs could muster. More, even, than a faded phone number I didn’t have the nerve to call.
“This is really important to you, isn’t it?” Pepper asked me, her head tilted as she watched me sigh and clutch the book to my chest. Needless to say, I wouldn’t be putting this back on the library shelf—not that anyone would miss it. I’d tried scanning the book to get a glimpse of its checkout history, but for some reason, the battered barcode wasn’t in our system.
“I have to know what happened,” I said.
She pursed her lips. “He won’t like it.”
I didn’t have to ask who she meant. “I’ll give Jasper the whole collection when I’m done gathering it. Word of a Sampson.”
“He won’t like that, either. He’ll know you read everything.”
“Then I’ll hide it from him and spend the rest of my life making sure it stays hidden from everyone else in existence, too.”
“Fine,” she said. “I’ll help you.”
I was so relieved to hear those words from Pepper’s mouth that I failed to note the way she held up her one hand in warning.
“But only if you fill out that check for the full five thousand dollars and take it to the bank during your lunch break.”
As if I could do that now. “Pepper, that’s not fair! I just told you that Jasper offered to babysit Noodle for as long as I need him. I can’t accept both his generosity and his money. It’s too much.”
Her lips pursed even tighter. “Then you have to let me call in sick or sign over some of my vacation days to pitch in.”
I shook my head, feeling my heart sink with each twist and turn. I knew that look on Pepper’s face. That was her determined face, her I-will-not-be-crossed face.
“You need those days for your grandmother,” I insisted.
“You have to give me something, Chloe,” Pepper said. “I’m getting exhausted just watching you try to carry the whole weight of the world on your shoulders. Isn’t there anyone you can call to lend you a helping hand? Some unknown hero waiting in the wings?”
Something about her phrasing—that unknown hero, a man just waiting for me to send out a call—caused me to fire up. My instinct was to ignore that warm, liquidy sensation, to push it down until my stomach acid consumed it, but I didn’t. How could I, when I was clutching a bona fide romance to my chest? I didn’t believe in True Love?, and if I had anything to say about it, I never would, but even my cold dead heart felt a pitter-pattering starting to take flight behind my rib cage.
“You mean like someone who answers to the bat signal?” I asked. “I actually do know a guy like that.”
Pepper laughed. “I was thinking more along the lines of your mother, but that works, too. In fact, if it’s who I’m thinking of, he’ll work very nicely indeed.”