36. Chloe
In the final story of my life, it will be written down that my opening chapter started in the year 1960. Long before I was born or even thought of, back when a young woman and a young man fell in love over an illicit copy of Tropic of Cancer, events were put into motion. Hearts were broken and babies born, money earned and hard labor performed. A garden was also planted, its seeds taking root in ways that would take more than six decades to bear fruit.
“She’s here! She came!”
“It’s about time. We’ve been waiting forever.”
“Chloe, did you remember to bring over the nondairy creamer I texted you about? I’m making a bomb with it. Just an eensy-weensy one, so you don’t need to look like that. It’s for Jasper.”
I blinked at the scene of mayhem I stepped into, surprised to find not only my own brothers and sister cluttering up the place, but Jasper, Catherine, Lonnie, Pepper, and even Gunderson, who was holding a casserole dish of something green and looking delighted to be invited, well, anywhere.
“A bomb for Jasper?” I asked, ignoring the sea of faces to focus on the most salient of all Theo’s remarks. “Theo, he’s been nothing but nice to us. You can’t repay his generosity by blowing up his house.”
“I said it’s just a small one,” Theo protested. “To help him clear out his weeds. He made us pick them all by hand yesterday. Look.” He held up his rough, work-reddened palms. “He said if I can find a different way to uproot them, then I’m more than welcome to give it a go.”
“I also said you couldn’t do more damage to my flower beds in the process,” Jasper said in a voice that wavered uncertainly. He cast me an agonized glance. “I meant to make that part very clear.”
“Not clear enough,” Trixie muttered. “He also thinks we should adopt a goat.”
“Can we get a goat, Chloe, please?” Theo asked. “I want to name him the Great Goatsby. Jasper has been reading aloud to us at bedtime.”
I laughed, too pleased to find that my siblings were very much up to their usual tricks to care that they were plotting ways and means to build explosives.
“No, we will not be getting a goat, and no, we will not be helping Jasper in any way but with our hands,” I said as firmly as I could. Then, aware that all everyone was watching us, “Did Mom and Todd bring you guys home from school today?”
Trixie rolled her eyes. “Yes. And then they drove off into the sunset together. How romantic.”
“Does this mean we can go home now?” Theo demanded. “Because Jasper’s floor isn’t very comfortable.”
Noodle drew closer and slipped his hand into mine. “You’re not sad about it, are you, Chloe? It’s okay if it goes back to just being us again?”
As all three kids stood there, watching me and anxiously awaiting my reply, the tightness that had been in my chest since the conversation with my mom loosened. I wouldn’t have chosen to discuss this in front of a gathering of people who could be counted on to ask me questions and poke their noses in my life for weeks to come, but that was the whole point. I’d never be able to raise these children on my own—not the way they deserved to be raised. If I was going to make a success of this, then I needed to admit that I didn’t have all the answers…or even very many of the questions.
“I’m not sad,” I said. I offered my siblings a watery smile—and then I cast it around the whole room. “I don’t need her when I have all of you. It’s taken me a long time to realize it, and I know I haven’t made things easy, but I appreciate everything you do for us—everything you have been doing for a long time.”
I might have been overwhelmed by a group hug then, but Catherine spoke up before the collective group could pounce. She didn’t raise her voice or even make a big show of speaking, but it was easy to see why she’d managed such a long and varied career. She had presence, this slip of girl who’d once done the impossible—this slip of a woman who was doing it again.
“‘It was not the thorn bending to the honeysuckles, but the honeysuckles embracing the thorn,’” she murmured playfully. “Now, where have I heard that before?”
Jasper’s eyes caught mine and held them for what felt like an impossibly long time. No one else in the room might recognize the Wuthering Heights quote, but we certainly did.
“Okay. I think it’s officially time to eat.” Lonnie broke the sudden silence with a swift clap of her hands. “I don’t know about you all, but I haven’t been to a good going-away party in ages. Pepper, the music?”
“On it,” Pepper said as she whipped out her phone. “Sinatra standards for the olds and Taylor Swift for the rest.”
“Wait. Does that make me an old?” Gunderson asked, his face falling.
Pepper slung an arm around his shoulder as her grandmother lifted the casserole from his hands. “Nice try, Gunderson. You’re one of us, and you know it. I’m pretty sure I heard you singing all the words to ‘Bad Blood’ during inventory last week.”
He brightened perceptibly. “My daughter Ophelia is nine, Pepper. Of course I know all the words.”
“Then there you go. You’re a Swiftie just like me.”
With a wink meant for my eyes only, Pepper bore him away to the kitchen. Zach, gathering up the children, wasn’t too far behind her. I suspected it was a plot to throw Jasper and Catherine together for a private place to say their goodbyes, so I reached for Gummy Bear and prepared to drag him behind me.
Jasper, however, beat me to it.
“I’ve gotten used to that damned dog following me around everywhere,” he grumbled, but with a playful pat on Gummy Bear’s head as he led the dog away. “I keep telling him that he needs to learn to keep up, but you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” He paused before adding, “Well, you can, obviously, but don’t go telling anyone I said that. I have a reputation to maintain around here.”
“Wait,” I called, since it felt strange to be left alone with this woman I understood so well yet barely knew. When Jasper paused and arched his brows, I blurted out the first thing that came to mind. “Are the kids really okay? About our mom leaving again? I was afraid they’d take it pretty hard. The last time…”
He stared at me for a long moment before speaking. In that moment, it felt as though entire libraries passed between us. “The last time, they only had you to look out for them. Now they have us both.”
With a duck of his head, he ushered both himself and the dog into the kitchen, where the sound of happily squabbling voices continued. Even though the volume of their conversation didn’t change, the longer I stood in the living room with only Catherine for company, the more the sounds receded.
“I don’t bite, you know,” she said as she settled herself on the couch, one leg crossing smoothly over the other. She looked very much at ease among the creeping vines and bursts of greenery. She patted the seat next to her. “Come. Sit.”
I had barely managed to set my bottom on the cushion when she spoke again. “Since you’re here, I’m assuming my grandson’s apology worked? At least a little?”
I had to fight a roll of my eyes. “Are you surprised? I’m pretty sure that smile could get him out of a twenty-year prison sentence.”
“He gets that from his grandfather.” Her own chuckle sounded, rich and assured. “Oh, I know they don’t look much alike, but the similarities are there all the same. It used to take me hours to coax that smile out of Jasper, especially in the beginning, but once I did—whoo boy.” She made a fanning motion as if to cool herself off. “To Zach, that smile comes as naturally as breathing. I apologize in advance. You’ll have a long, hard life trying to get the better of him in anything.”
A flush of heat rose to my cheeks. “It’s not like that between us,” I was quick to say. “I mean, not yet. Or ever, maybe? I don’t know. We’re just—”
I was grateful when she leaned across the cushion and pressed a hand on my leg, stopping my babbling short. “I was only teasing. I know it’s early days, and your future is still very much unsettled. That’s why I wanted to talk to you.”
The touch of her palm seemed to exert a soothing effect on me. I let myself relax into the cushions, more curious than afraid.
“Actually, my future is pretty much guaranteed,” I said. “For the next decade, at least. Theo’s only eleven, and getting him to adulthood with all his limbs intact is likely to take every ounce of concentration I have.”
No emotion crossed her face—not even a flutter of her eyelashes. “So you’ll work at the library?”
“Yep.”
“Shelving books and cashing a paycheck with the occasional envelope of funds when your mom remembers to send one?”
I splayed my hands helplessly. “It’s what I’ve done for the past four years, only without the envelope. Another decade won’t kill me.”
“No,” she agreed. “It won’t kill you. It’ll hurt, though, won’t it? Knowing you’re trapped? Knowing that the great wide world is out there going on without you?”
Even though the question could have easily been taken as a rhetorical one, I gave it serious weight—partly because this woman would be leaving in the morning, so the things I said to her didn’t matter, and partly because I’d never given myself an opportunity to really think about it before.
“The world has always been going on without me,” I said—not sad about it, but calm. Accepting. One might even say happy. “Even when I went away to college, it’s not like I was out living it up every night of the week. I was buried in books the whole time. They were just different books, that’s all. Ones where I didn’t already know the ending.”
She withdrew her hand from my leg. I thought she might be getting up from the couch, but she reached into her oversized bag, one of those huge expensive things that Trixie is always telling me is essential for a woman who wants to make a splash in the world. When she pulled her hand out again, she was holding a folded piece of paper.
“This is for you,” she said, her hand unwavering as I stared at the white square. “It’s not a gift—not in the way you’re thinking—so you don’t have to feel bad about taking it. Go on.”
I did as she asked, but when I unfolded it, it was to find a single email address scrawled across the top line. In and of itself, the letters didn’t mean much, but the handwriting unlatched something deep in my heart. I knew, logically, that this woman was the same girl from the books—the one whose pretty, scrawling script had once carried so much heart and hope—but it wasn’t until I saw the evidence for myself that the truth of it hit home.
Catherine and Jasper. Jasper and Catherine.
“I’m so sorry,” I said, sudden tears springing to my eyes. I rarely cried, and even more rarely did it in front of strangers, but I couldn’t help myself. I dashed at my cheeks in a belated effort to keep them at bay.
“Don’t be sorry, child. You don’t even know what the email address is for yet.”
It didn’t matter. I wasn’t crying for myself so much as for all the things that had been given up in this place of shattered dreams and broken hearts. Catherine, walking away from the man she loved for the sake of both their futures. Jasper, spending sixty long years believing himself to be alone in the world. My mom, unable to find happiness in her own children.
Me, trying desperately to find happiness in them for her.
“You know, the thing I’ve always loved most about books is how they make it possible to live a thousand different lives,” she said, speaking as though my heart wasn’t leaking out all over my face and dripping onto her expensive purse. “Things in this world rarely go according to plan, and we often find ourselves on roads and in cities we never planned to visit, let alone stay in forever. I take comfort from knowing that I can always pick up a book—a new one, if I want to travel someplace unique; an old one, if I find myself in need of a friend—and make everything feel right again.”
“I don’t understand,” I gasped. “What does this have to do with me?”
She continued on as though I hadn’t spoken. “It’s why I became an editor. I started out as a librarian, like you, but it wasn’t enough for me to simply pull books off the shelf for others to explore. I wanted to be the one putting them there in the first place. That way, I got to control a little bit of my own destiny.”
I stared down at the email address again. This time, I saw beyond the handwriting to the actual letters, which contained the name of one of the top publishing houses in New York.
“I think you’ll like Payton,” Catherine said with a smile. “She’s only a few years older than you, but she’s already making a name for herself. The internship isn’t much to start out with. It’s only part-time, and it’s mostly wading through the slush pile, but it can be done remotely. And it’s paid, so you can pick and choose how you work around your library shifts. She’s expecting your email sometime next week.”
The paper fluttered down from my hand. “I don’t understand,” I said, but it was a lie. I understood completely.
She reached over and plucked the paper from midair. This time, when she gave it to me, she crushed it into my hand. “The world isn’t what it used to be, Chloe.” She gave a short laugh. “Well, that’s not true. It’s the same relentless, beautiful, soul-crushing place it’s always been. But it’s bigger now. More connected. If you don’t like where you are, you don’t have to pack up your whole family and abandon everything you know and love. All you have to do is grab a different story from the shelf.”
At the sound of laughter from the direction of the kitchen, she rose to her feet and smoothed the imaginary creases from her skirt. Then she grinned the same grin that I’d seen so many times on Zach’s face and beckoned for me to follow.
“‘Forget the past,’” she quoted. “‘Let the dead bury the dead. Things are working out fine, and that’s the only thing you have to remember.’”
Something about her words snagged at a memory. “Is that Wuthering Heights?” I asked. I wrinkled my brow as we pushed our way into the kitchen. Everyone was there waiting for us, so full of joy that I thought my heart my burst with it all. “Or—wait. Tropic of Cancer?”
“It’s Psycho, obviously,” she said with a laugh. “I never could resist a story with death, decaying matriarchs, and a surprise twist at the end.”