14. Chloe
Zach stood underneath the trellis between our house and Jasper’s, his tall head grazing the top and snagging the tendrils of a particularly flourishing clematis. It had been almost a week since I’d roped him into hunting for The Haunting of Hill House with me, but instead of losing his fervor, he was throwing himself heart and soul into the effort.
“I still don’t see why we can’t just knock on his door and ask to use the restroom or something.” Zach pushed aside the clematis. “I’m sure it won’t take long to search his bookshelves. It’s not a very big house. I could pretend to be violently ill while you look around.”
“He’d see right through you,” I said, shaking my head. “If you were going to be violently ill, you’d do it at my house.”
“No, I wouldn’t. I’m trying to make a good impression on you. I’d be mildly ill, at the very most.”
I choked on the laugh that had been bubbling in my throat ever since Zach had rolled up to the house in full heist black. It was a difficult task, mostly because the more time I spent with the man, the more I wanted to laugh about everything.
“It doesn’t matter because it’s not working,” I said. “My only impression of you is that you’ll say anything if you think it’ll get a reaction.”
That only made him grin. “Does this mean we’re going with my plan? The only other idea I have is to let Aloysius look through the house when he’s—”
“Absolutely not,” I interrupted. “I don’t want Noodle involved in this. Sending him to Jasper every day for supervision is bad enough.”
I expected a pushback, but all Zach did was shrug. “Then we’ll have to sneak in under cover of night and steal every book he owns like we’re coming after the Declaration of Independence. That’s all I’ve got.”
I snorted. For all his apparent resourcefulness, Zach wasn’t much of a criminal mastermind. I imagined it was the Boy Scout within him; as far as I knew, there was no merit badge for breaking and entering. Fortunately for our mission, I had more than enough training. You didn’t grow up in a neighborhood like this without learning a thing or two about petty theft.
“We need to come up with something less obvious,” I said. “Jasper’s not likely to let you inside without a full background check and several reference letters. He doesn’t like strangers. He doesn’t like friends, either, but I think that’s mostly because he doesn’t have any.”
As Zach tilted his head to examine the house, the clematis tickled his ear. His gaze wandered from the vibrant purple bloom to all the others dotting the yard.
“It’s kind of late in the season for a lot of these flowers, isn’t it?” he asked as he reached up to finger the flower. “What’s his secret?”
“According to my boss at work? Dead bodies.”
Zach’s laugh came as a quick, staccato burst. “What’s the answer according to you?”
Strangely enough, I had an answer ready to go. “Time and attention, mostly. I know he used to be a logger back in the day—Pepper found a picture in the library archives—so he’s always been a bit of an outdoorsman. Add in an entire lifetime spent holding people at bay, and this is what happens. His garden gets all the love he’s never been able to give anyone else.”
Zach paused to look at me. “I thought he loved that girl from your book.”
“Her name is Catherine.” As I said her name out loud, my heart gave a small pang. Of sympathy, maybe. Or possibly just sadness. “At least, that’s what I assume from some of the things she wrote. And he did love her—I’m sure of it. That’s why I’m so determined to figure out what happened. Somewhere along the way, something terrible happened to tear them apart. It’s what turned him into such a sour, miserable old man.”
“And you want to fix it? To fix him?”
This time, the answer was much slower in coming. Mostly because I didn’t know this man well enough to admit the truth. Pepper knew, though. She might have been the only person in the world who did.
The truth was that Jasper Holmes wasn’t the only one who held people at bay. I hadn’t lost a grand romance the way he had, but I had lost out on a dream. To make something of myself and get out of this town, to build a life that extended beyond the mountains that ringed our little patch of God’s green earth. Sure, I could go back to college again, or maybe even take a few online classes, but it wouldn’t be the same. Every day that passed with my hands in a sink full of dirty dishes and my bank account in the red brought me one step closer to the inevitable.
Growing old in a place like this, using my youthful disappointments as a reason to hide. Turning into a sour, miserable old woman whose only solace could be found between the pages of a book—or a garden like this one.
Solving the mystery of Jasper’s misery was as close as I could come to solving my own.
“I just want to know the truth,” I said. It was as good as I could do in the current situation. “Look, if you don’t want to help, I won’t hold you to it.”
“Oh, no you don’t.” He brought his hands up in a gesture of surrender, his grin as easy and effortless as it always was. “You’re not robbing me of my adventure now. I need this.”
“Your whole life is an adventure,” I pointed out. “You literally kill things with your bare hands and then eat them.”
“Yeah, but that’s just action-flick levels of adventure. This is intrigue. This is mystery.” He waggled his eyebrows at me. “This is romance.”
The fluttering of my heart recognized this ploy for what it was, but something about the way he spoke sparked a memory—two of them, actually, both of which tied up together in a realization that made my heart flutter even more.
The first was that in the pages of my Hemingway, Catherine had accused Jasper of being a romantic. Considering the rollout of their courtship thus far, I felt deep in my bones that she was right. Only a romantic would take the time to get to know a girl in the pages of a book before he made a single move, and then continue flirting with her through that medium for as long as possible.
The second was that when I’d walked into the backyard to find Noodle and Jasper together that first day, he’d been reading a copy of North and South. That book was arguably one of the best pieces of romantic fiction to have emerged from the nineteenth century (with all apologies to Jane Austen and the Bront?s, of course), but it wasn’t exactly topping the required reading list at the library. Anyone relaxing with a copy of that was doing it for pleasure, pure and simple.
These clues could only mean one thing: Jasper loved love. Somewhere underneath those deep frown lines and angry mutterings lay a man whose heart was as fragile and delicate as glass.
“I think I know how to play this,” I said suddenly.
“Really?” Zach cracked his knuckles. “Please tell me it involves scaling that back wall. I’ve been itching to show off ever since we got here.”
I snorted but refused to let myself be charmed any further than that. “I think I’m just going come out and ask Jasper the truth.”
“Wait.” His arms dropped to his sides. “Just like that?”
“Why not?” I turned to study the house and its gardens anew. Instead of seeing his home as the wide-eyed child who’d grown up next to it, fearing the angry giant atop the beanstalk, I imagined it as the quiet oasis of a man who was clinging desperately to the one thing of beauty remaining in his life.
“I’m pretty sure he already knows I’m on to him,” I said. “We could spend weeks tiptoeing around and planning heists, or I could roll up to his front porch and put it all out there.” I nodded and took a step forward, my decision made. “You know what? I’m going in. What’s the worst he can do to me? Shut the door in my face? Throw books at me? Refuse to babysit Noodle?”
That last one actually did have the potential to derail me, but I didn’t let it weigh on my decision. I marched forward instead, only pausing to look back when it appeared that Zach wasn’t following.
“What’s wrong?” I asked. Zach hadn’t moved from his spot under the trellis, though he’d narrowed his eyes to watch my progress across the lawn. “Scared of what he might do to you? Don’t worry. I’ll protect you.”
“You have no idea, do you?” he asked.
I blinked. The total summation of all the things I didn’t know in this world would have filled the Library of Alexandria. “Know what?”
“How many women—how many people—would just walk up to someone and ask a question like that? ‘Excuse me, sir, but did you once love a young woman named Catherine so much that you wrote messages to her in the margins of a library book? If so, would you be willing to let me read any of the other books the two of you wrote in?’”
I felt a flush of color touch my cheeks. “You think it’s too much?”
He released a long, silent laugh that left me feeling dizzy. The feeling didn’t abate when he crossed toward me in three easy strides.
“I think it’s exactly the right amount. And I think you’re exactly the person to do it. Let’s go put it all out there and see what happens.”
“What do you mean, you found this on the shelf? The library shelf?”
Jasper stood in the doorway to his house, his massive frame blocking the way inside. Over one of his shoulders, I could just make out the interior—white walls and white carpeting, both of which were offset by so many houseplants that it looked like a tropical jungle in there.
From the way his body trembled as he stood holding the copy of A Farewell to Arms, I felt pretty sure a strong breeze would send him toppling over and get me through the door, but I wasn’t going to push it—or him. His face was already so white that it almost matched the walls.
“Technically, Zach was the one who found the book.” I tilted my head at the man standing at my back. “But don’t worry about him. He’s safe.”
“I can’t decide whether to take that as a compliment or an insult,” Zach murmured in a voice I suspected was only for my ears. He brushed past me with his hand outstretched. “It’s an honor to finally meet you, sir.”
“I’m not paying you for this one,” Jasper said, completely disregarding both the hand and the man attached to it. He fixed his gaze on me instead. Already, he was starting to regain his color and his bearing—and, I need hardly add, his bad attitude. “So if you’ve come here peddling literature like it’s a box of Girl Scout cookies…”
“This one’s on the house,” I assured him. “But we’d like to come in and chat, if it’s all the same to you.”
He set his jaw. “It’s not.”
“I read through the book,” I warned him. I didn’t want to have to resort to threats, but they were one of the only things Jasper seemed to react to, so I didn’t have much choice. “I also flipped through most of Tropic of Cancer. You might as well let us in. I’m not leaving until you tell me about Catherine.”
Instead of him growing pale again, a seeping red color started to move up his neck. “Catherine,” he echoed, no hint of a question in his voice.
“That’s her name, right?” I persisted. “You only ever call her C in the books, but I put the rest together on my own.”
“That’s her name,” he agreed. His shoulders came down a fraction. “Was her name, I should say. She died a long time ago.”
My first feeling of triumph—I knew their story was tragic, and I knew Jasper had built a whole life around that tragedy—was quickly quashed under a muffling wave of sadness. She must have been awfully young when it happened.
And so, I realized, had he.
“I understand if you don’t want to talk about her,” I said, fighting every urge I had to reach out and pull Jasper into a hug. I had the distinct impression it would only ruin my chances of making it through the door. “But it would mean a lot to me if you’d at least let me inside.”
“Why?”
Jasper’s question was a simple one, but there was no simple answer. “Because I’m curious,” I admitted. “Because we’ve lived next to each other my whole life, and I know less about you than I do the guy who only comes into the library once every six weeks to re-checkout Dune.”
The last one took a little more to get out.
“Because I’ve only known your Catherine for a little while, but she already feels like a friend.”
Behind me, Zach was being awfully quiet. Before I had time to wonder why, Jasper threw open the door. He turned and shuffled inside, pausing only after he was halfway across the foyer. “Fine. You can come in. But take off your shoes first. And shut the door. The aphids are coming out in full force this year. I don’t want them in here mucking up my plants.”
I was so surprised that it took a gentle nudge from Zach before I slipped out of my worn Vans—the last shoes I’d bought before I’d moved back home, and likely the most expensive pair I’d own for a very long time.
I turned to find Zach looking at the space recently vacated by Jasper. “I thought you said this old guy hated you,” he said as he began carefully undoing his laces.
“He does hate me,” I said. Since Zach’s shoes were hiking boots that went halfway up his calves, getting them off was taking some time. “This is probably a trick to get my guard down. We need to act like every word out of his mouth is double-edged.”
The thud of one boot hit the floor. “Want me to tie him to a chair while you interrogate him?”
“If I said yes, could you actually do it?”
“Could I, as in am I physically capable of it?” Zach shrugged. “I once did the same thing to a black bear who kept trying to eat my trainees. Could I, as in would I be willing to take the risk because a pretty girl asked me to?” This time, he smiled. “I guess there’s only one way to find out.”
I examined Zach out of the corner of my eye, but he was being careful not to look at me. I had no way of knowing how much he said was the truth and how much was hyperbole, but I had the feeling he was a man who rarely gave anyone a straight answer.
The other boot hit the floor. “If you don’t like the chair idea, I could always whip up a truth serum using natural herbs from his garden,” he offered.
“Don’t tell me,” I said dryly. “You once had to do the same thing to a colony of rabbits you suspected of being enemy spies.”
“Now you’re getting it.”
Shaking my head, I stepped the rest of the way into the house. As I’d seen from the doorway, it was neat, tidy, and crawling with plant life. Vines, ferns, potted flowers, and a string of spider plants seemed to connect every room in the house. Oddly enough, there wasn’t a single book or bookshelf to be seen.
There was, however, a lonely old man sitting hunched on a kitchen stool, a smile touching his lips as he flipped through the pages of the book in front of him.
“She always did have a way of making me say and do things against my will,” he said as he ran his fingers over the scrawled lines in the margins. “Imagine me, carrying on like this with a librarian, of all things.”
“Wait,” I said, and with that, all my plans to handle Jasper with tact disappeared. “Catherine was a librarian? Here in Colville? At the same library where I work?”
“She was way out of my league. I knew that from the start.” He glanced up at me with an unreadable expression. “And if I’d had my way, that would’ve also been the end.”
It seemed as much of an answer as I was going to get. I blew out a long breath. “So she worked at the library. That’s why you guys left each other notes inside books.”
“We left each other notes because we didn’t have any of this newfangled technology you kids seem to put so much value in,” Jasper corrected me, his voice like a rap to the knuckles. “We didn’t have the option of texting naked pictures or those stupid yellow circles back and forth.”
I was careful not to look at Zach at the “naked pictures” part, but the second half got my attention. “Stupid yellow circles?”
Jasper waved an impatient hand. “The ones that smile and drool and fart. I don’t know what you call them.”
“Emojis, sir,” Zach said.
Jasper pointed a warning finger at him. “Call me ‘sir’ again, and you’ll find yourself wishing you’d never set foot inside this house.”
“Yes, sir,” he said with a bland and—in my opinion, at least—bold disregard for Jasper. “I’ll work on that.”
Jasper looked as though he was contemplating making good on his threat, but he sighed and waved around the kitchen. “You might as well sit down,” he said, sounding irritable. “I can see you won’t be easy to dislodge.”
Since he’d been the one to invite us in, I ignored the comment and made myself comfortable on a wooden stool. Zach waited only a few seconds before joining me.
“It was 1960,” Jasper said, unprompted. “That was when we started…corresponding. Her father got put in charge of the radar base during its final years of operation, so she took a post at the library to pass the time.”
This was already way more information than I’d been expecting—and offered up free of charge. I sensed a trap.
“And before you ask, no, you can’t have Tropic of Cancer back.” Jasper turned a sharp pair of eyes on me. “You still haven’t cashed that check, but that doesn’t mean the transaction is void. It’s not my fault you refuse to go to the bank like a normal person.”
I could see Zach looking curiously at us, so I was quick to turn the conversation. I had no way of explaining why that check still sat uncashed in the bottom of my purse. The more I needed that money, the less willing I was to take it. Pepper would have been quick to point out my inability to accept help, but there was more to it than that. To cash in on this man’s pain, to reduce his life story to a series of zeros and dollar bills—it felt wrong.
People had to be more than a number in their bank account. Life had to carry more meaning than that.
“So, you and Catherine started by writing to each other in A Farewell to Arms,” I said, phrasing it as a statement of fact.
Jasper’s hands moved reverently over the cover. “That we did.”
“And then you moved on to The Haunting of Hill House.”
“Did we make it that easy to figure out? That was indiscreet of us.” A smile touched his lips as he rifled through the pages. “Now that I think about it, a lot of the things we did were indiscreet, but that’s the nature of youth. None of you are as good at hiding things as you think you are.”
I was sensing an attack now rather than a trap but Jasper wasn’t done yet.
“If the book says we moved on to Shirley Jackson next, then I’m sure that’s what we did,” he said. “It’s so long ago now that I don’t remember everything we put to paper. Catherine loved horror books—the darker, the better. She was always happiest when people were being torn limb from limb.”
“Sounds like my kinda girl,” Zach murmured.
“You wouldn’t have lasted five minutes in her company,” Jasper returned as easily as batting a tennis ball at high speed. “She’d have had your measure, chewed you up, and spit you out before you could put the twinkle in your eye.”
“My measure?” Zach echoed. He looked at me and, even though I had no idea how, put a twinkle in his eye. “Should I ask?”
“You’re everything that’s wrong with modern youth,” Jasper said without waiting for an invitation. I was so happy not to be the one under attack anymore that I actually found myself enjoying the exchange. “You’re too aware of your own worth. All you kids are. You make endless videos of your exploits, preen in front of mirrors, and get a blue ribbon every time you join a sport.”
Zach chuckled and waved a hand over himself. Although he’d washed his customary dirt away, he still looked weathered and—to my eyes, at least—appealing in the extreme. “You think I preen?”
“Of course you do. You wouldn’t be following this girl all over town, swaggering about like a pig in his sty, if you didn’t think she had a thing for barnyard animals. There’s no humility in any of you.”
This was taking things too far, even if Zach was the last person who needed someone rushing to his defense.
“Now wait just a second,” I said. “A few weeks ago, you told me I needed to give Noodle a stronger, more dignified nickname. You said he had to present himself to the world in the guise he wanted to be treated.”
All at once, Jasper softened. It was like watching a hot-air balloon deflate after a long, arduous journey. “Ah, yes. But Noodle is different.”
My throat felt suddenly too thick for speech. If any other person had dared to say those words to me—Noodle is different, Noodle is other—I’d have gone full Haunting of Hill House and, like Jasper’s beloved Catherine, torn them limb from limb.
For once in his life, however, Jasper wasn’t speaking from a place of judgment. He and Noodle had only been together for few days, but those days had been enough.
He saw. He knew.
“Do you happen to have the copy of The Haunting of Hill House that you wrote in?” I asked, pushing the sharp prick of tears back from my eyes. The last thing I wanted to do in front of either of these men was break down. “The library database was a bust, and I haven’t been able to find anything in the shops around town.”
Jasper blinked at me. “Of course I don’t have it.”
“Oh.” Disappointment added to all my other swirling emotions, leaving me bereft of anything to say.
Zach gently cleared his throat and filled the breach. “We figured it was a long shot, but since the other two books were easy enough to find, it seemed worth a try. Maybe we could just skip over that one for now…” He let his words trail off.
“Is this the part where you ask me to write you out a list of all the books that Catherine and I corresponded in so you can get your filthy, irreverent hands on my love story?” Jasper asked.
Since this was exactly what I wanted to ask, I held my breath and waited for the answer.
“Too bad. Those are mine. Catherine is mine.”
I feared this might signal the end of his frankness, but he kept going.
“If it makes you feel better, I doubt any of those old books are still around. Why would they be? She’s the one who kept them all. And when she died, I…” He shook his head as if to rid himself of the memory. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter what I did. Let’s just say I’m surprised you were able to find the two books you did. Catherine must have hidden them so her parents wouldn’t find them—one in the library basement, the other in plain sight on the library shelves.”
Instead of dashing my hopes, these words filled me with a sudden burst of optimism—not just that there might be more books out there, but that they’d been saved for a reason. It was as if Catherine had known how much the discovery would mean someday…not necessarily to Jasper, but to me.
A librarian more than sixty years in the future. Someone lost and looking for answers to questions she didn’t even know she had.
“Does this mean you think she hid them on purpose?” I asked, knowing I was pushing too hard but unable to stop myself. “Because she wanted them to be safe from prying eyes? Or because she wanted them to eventually be found?”
Jasper cast me a pained look. “She didn’t hide those books for a nosy, meddling not-a-librarian to start a wild-goose chase, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Technically, it’s not a wild-goose chase if you catch the goose in the end.”
“I knew it was a mistake to let you two in here.” Jasper groaned and got to his feet, though I noticed he was careful to keep the copy of A Farewell to Arms close at hand. “Go home. Leave me alone. Stop poking your nose into a past that’s gone, buried, and already mourned.”
Since Jasper had clearly reached the end of his patience, I gave in and stepped toward the door. My steps were helped along by the gentle press of Zach’s hand on the small of my back.
We’d made it to the door and were in the act of slipping our shoes back on when Jasper spoke again.
“If she hid the rest of them, it was because she knew her parents would have found a way to destroy them,” he said, his tone so soft that I could barely hear him over the beating of my heart. “They didn’t approve of the two of us.”
The question popped out before I could stop it: “Because you were a logger?”
A flicker of surprise crossed his face. “Someone’s been doing her homework,” he said. Then, “Yes. Because I was a logger and she was the daughter of an Air Force officer. Because I didn’t have money and she did. Because the only thing I had to offer was a windowless one-bedroom apartment above the hardware store, and she deserved the world.”
This was so sad that I had to pause a moment and remind myself to breathe. To most people, those barriers didn’t sound insuperable, but I wasn’t most people. Books were always trying to teach us that the power of love could overcome any hardship and that money didn’t buy happiness. In many ways, I believed those things to be true—I really did.
But crossing that line was a lot to ask of someone. Especially someone you loved.
“I’m sorry,” I said and meant it.
Jasper must have sensed my sincerity because he offered me one final gift.
“Ask Lonnie Pakootas,” he said as he swung open the door and pointed us out through it. I nearly stumbled on the frame, saved only by Zach’s ready and waiting hands.
“Lonnie?” I echoed. All of a sudden, that passage about L liking sappy, dramatic books was starting to make sense. Like Pepper, she’d once been employed by the local library—a thing that I, in my fervor to get to the bottom of this whole mystery, seemed to have forgotten. “You mean Pepper’s grandmother?”
“If anyone would know where to find that book, it’s her,” Jasper said by way of answer. His eyes took on a dreamy, faraway look, and I realized he was no longer standing with us. Not in any way that counted. “Once upon a time, Catherine and Lonnie were best friends in the whole world.”