Chapter 23 #2
Penelope eases the library door shut. “Go sit down. I’ll put on tea.”
Twenty minutes later, Penelope not only listens intently to Nelle’s story—how Quill created her and imprisoned her for twenty-one years, how she escaped and has been exploring the world, Quill’s unexpected and unwanted visits, the vision of the cottage—but accepts it as fact.
Maybe she was talking to Quill. No sane person reacts to a story like that with calm understanding. Nelle shivers.
Penelope pours herself another cup of tea and stirs in a dash of cream. The spoon tinks against the rim of the cup. She sips, and Nelle sees a response formulating under her methodical movements.
“Wallace has his mother’s curse,” Penelope finally says. “His father, Thomas, didn’t want to admit it, but I knew.”
“All I know about Lily is that she wrote poetry,” Nelle says, concealing her suspicions. She needs proof if she is going to risk ruining her relationship with her only loving family.
“Wallace and his mother were both writers. And avid readers.” Penelope walks to the doorway of the magnetic room.
“This is my library. All of these were Wallace’s and Lily’s.
Their personal collections and their own works.
” She pauses as if thinking twice, then nods into the room. “Take all the time you need.”
Nelle hesitantly enters the small library.
She spins once, twice, before sitting back on the chaise, overwhelmed by the sheer volume of books.
It’ll take her days to peruse them all, if she even wants to.
Quill only ever brought her misery, so reading his and Lily’s—her grandmother’s—writing might take Nelle to a dark place.
Maybe to the place she has sought after.
Roots curl into Nelle’s chest, locking her to this room. These people.
Penelope sighs. “I’ll make something to eat. Take all the time you need.”
Then, with the soft click of the door, Nelle is alone.
She picks a random shelf and finds a soft leather journal, the inside cover signed Lily Waters.
She takes it to the chaise and begins to read.
Her grandmother’s poetry streams fluid, natural, without a structured rhyme scheme, carried beginning to end by a linguistic musicality.
When she is finished absorbing the first journal, she finds another, bound by navy cloth.
Then another. And another. Hundreds of poems, each like a shard of Lily’s stained-glass mind.
She finally works up the courage to pick a book with Quill’s name on it.
Thin, hardback, handwritten.
The first line sucks her in.
“She’s been in there for an hour,” James says over roasted rosemary chicken and peas, served on a hand-painted cat-themed plate. Two a.m. and his eyes are salty with sleep, but Penelope insisted they wait for Nelle. “Shouldn’t we ask her if she’s hungry?”
“I suspect she’ll be in there for a few more hours, at least. Maybe a day. Who knows how long it takes?” Penelope wipes her mouth with a napkin. “Though she may like a plate brought to her.”
“How long what takes?” James asks. “What’re you expecting her to find in there?”
“Answers.”
James scoops food from a Tupperware onto another cat plate, heats it in the microwave, and brings it with a glass of water to the library door. He knocks twice with the toe of his shoe.
“Coming in.”
Nelle is reading in the corner, swaddled in a blanket on the chaise, a book open on her lap. Too engrossed to notice his entrance. When the plate clinks on the table beside her, she doesn’t look up. Doesn’t say a word. Whatever she’s reading has sucked her into another dimension.
He backs out and eases the door shut.
Nelle slides another volume of Lily’s poetry onto the shelf, the words ringing in her head, a welcome break from Quill’s moody, brilliant prose.
As she reads, the pieces of her family history begin to form an intricate conglomerate. Hints found in lines of Lily’s poetry:
My olive skin, obsidian eye, shining star
And you who walks alone, cursed with red, little moon
Two brothers. Wallace and Sam. The star and the moon. One favored by their mother, the other by their father.
Nelle reaches for another of Quill’s books. Leather, thick, with a buckle strap. Wallace Quill is carved into the cover in a slanted, professional script. Must have been expensive. The leather is worn but carries a cool, fresh aroma, and the spine crackles as she opens it to the first page.
The Cottage on the Hill, a novella by Wallace Quill.
The next page: For Mother and Sam.
Nelle sits and starts to read. The words resonate in her like the hum of a coming storm.
These are not just words, they are the words of the man who wrote her into existence.
These stories, these characters, are her family.
Her blood. The ink on the page in front of her is the same ink thrumming beneath her skin.
Stories about a mother—Nelle’s mother—stories about brothers—Nelle’s brothers—stories about love—Nelle’s lovers. All written by Quill, including her.
She closes the book. Through the window, night has given way to the soft blue of early, early morning. Maybe 3:00 a.m. Her exhausted eyes burn. Her cheeks are sticky with tears.
A painful resolution settles into Nelle, as final yet infinite as a funeral.
Her quest is not yet complete. The truths revealed to her in this novella, in these stories and poems, fictional and autobiographical, have shown her that much. That magical rope tugs her from the inside.
Trust yourself.
“So you’re a writer.” Penelope bends over a chessboard on the coffee table. She moves her rook. “What are you writing?”
James sets aside his cup of tea and concentrates on the board. “Are you trying to distract me?”
“Not necessary,” Penelope says. “You don’t stand a chance.”
He finds a square for one of his knights. She laughs, and her rook takes the knight, swiping his piece onto the rug.
“So what are you working on?”
“The dreadful question.” He moves his queen. “Not much.”
“You’re lying. Writers write. So either you’re keeping whatever it is secret, or you’re not truly a writer.”
James locks his nervous fingers together. “I just finished a novel, actually. My first. The Summer Curse.”
“What’s it about?”
He scrutinizes Penelope’s eyes. They are a mug of tea on a rainy day, not the harsh ice of her grandson’s. He wants to trust her—he likes her—but how can he after what he overheard?
“The bones of the story are about our journey together,” James says. “Mine and Nelle’s, that is. But the meat is different. I guess I’d been marinating the idea for a while, then, when we went to New York, I was on fire, and I wrote it in, like, two weeks.”
“How honest were you?” Penelope asks. “Is your story more a memoir or a novel?”
James purses his lips. “It was closely based on us, until the characters arrive in New York, then the plot spirals off in a different direction, because I obviously didn’t know what would happen to us. The characters took on their own personalities. It all felt very natural.”
“And Nelle’s character is . . . the same as she is?” Penelope asks.
“Yes.”
“I’m not a writer,” she admits, “but I was married to one, and raised another, so I know a thing or two. From what I’ve gathered, there are different types of writing: the kind that lets you breathe but should never be seen by anyone else, and the kind that is crafted to share with the world.
Most of what’s in that room is the former. Which kind of story is yours?”
“You don’t think I should try to publish it,” he says. “To protect her, right?”
“What you have to ask yourself”—Penelope sips her tea—“is whether or not there is a cost to publishing this story that you’re not willing to pay.”
James has never considered the possibility that his book could harm Nelle. But if anyone found out, her life could be over. If word leaked that Nelle isn’t a human, what would the government do? Sweet Jesus, what would the media do?
“I would never reveal to the world what Nelle is,” he admits. Which means he may never publish this book. Like Penelope said, some writing is just for wringing out the soul.
“And if she wasn’t here to be harmed by your honesty, if your story could really be considered fantasy?”
“Then yeah, technically,” James says, “but I don’t want that.”
Penelope grunts and stands, shuffles into the kitchen, and returns with two more cups of tea. James takes his mug with both hands. It’s painted blue, with the faces of two palm-size fairies bulging out with little noses and lips. Jessie would obsess over it.
The floorboard creaks, and James snaps up from his tea.
Nelle steps out of the library, a satchel full of books hung from her shoulder.
“Take me,” she says to Penelope. “Take me to the cottage.”
James sets down his cup. “It burned down, we saw it—”
“No.” Nelle doesn’t break her stare. “Take me to the cottage. Now.”
“Write it down for her,” Penelope says.
The words don’t register in James’s head, too befuddled by Nelle’s sudden entrance and insane demand.
“Write it down for her,” Penelope repeats, and this time he catches her urgency.
He scribbles in the journal, Nelle rides in the car.
Penelope takes Nelle’s hand, and together they disappear out the front door. James stares in disbelief at the rectangle of night. Insects vibrate. A wet chill splices the air.
Then he snatches up the blue backpack and races out the door after them.