Book Lovers(67)

“That Clint was your true love?” Libby guesses.

“That it was all a game. My paintings hadn’t changed, but suddenly all these places that had turned me down wanted me. People who’d never looked my way were all over me. Hardly mattered what I made. My work became a status symbol, nothing more, nothing less.”

“Or,” I say, “you were extremely talented, and it took one person with good taste to say so before the masses caught on.”

“Maybe,” Sally allows. “But by then I was tired. And homesick. And usually pretty hungry and broke, and the curator came on to me when I was just lonely enough to fall into bed with him. Not long after my father passed, we broke up, and I came home to be with my mother. While I was here, she asked Clint to come clean our gutters.”

“The jokes just write themselves,” I say.

“So then you realized he was your true love?” Libby says.

Sally smiles. “That time, yes. He was engaged by then. Didn’t stop my mother’s machinations. Her mantra was It’s not official until they’re down the aisle. Thank God she was right. As soon as I saw Clint again, I knew I’d made a huge mistake. Three weeks later, he was engaged to me.”

“That’s so romantic,” Libby says.

“But didn’t you miss it?” I say.

“Miss what?” Sally says, clearly not tracking.

“The city,” I say. “The galleries in New York. All of it.”

“Honestly, after all those years of toiling, it was a huge relief to come here and just . . .” She lets out a deep breath, her arms floating up at her sides. “Settle.”

“No kidding,” Libby says. “We moved to the city so our mom could try to make it as an actress—the most chronically exhausted person in the world.”

“That’s not fair.” She was spread thin, sure, but she was also full of life, ecstatic to be chasing her dreams.

Libby shoots me a look. “Remember that time she was a nickel short at the bodega? Right after that Producers audition? The clerk told her to put a lime back, and she broke down.”

My heart squeezes. I had no idea Libby remembered that. She’d just turned six, and Mom wanted to bake Lib’s favorite corn-lime cookies. When Mom started melting down at the register, I grabbed the extra lime in one hand and Libby’s little fingers in my other and dragged her back to the produce, taking our time zigzagging back to Mom while she gathered herself.

If you could have any treat, from any book, I asked her, what would you choose?

She picked Turkish delight, like Edmund ate in Narnia. I picked frobscottle from The BFG, because it could make you fly. That night, the three of us watched Willy Wonka and cleaned out the remains of our Halloween candy.

It’s a happy memory, the kind that almost sparkles. More proof that every problem could be solved with the right itinerary.

Everything turned out okay, I remember thinking. As long as we’re together, it always does.

We were happy.

But that’s not what Libby’s telling Sally. She’s saying, “Mom was broke, tired, and lonely. She put her career ahead of absolutely everything and was miserable because of it.” She turns to Sally, conspiratorial. “Nora’s the same way—worked to the bone. No time for a real life. She once refused a second date with a guy because he asked her to put her phone on Do Not Disturb during dinner. Work always comes first for her. That’s why I dragged her here. This trip is basically an intervention.”

She says it all like a joke, but there’s something hard and thorny underneath, and her words land in my gut like a punch. The room has started to pulse and waver. My throat feels full, my clothes itchy against my skin, like something is swelling inside me. She’s still talking, but her words are garbled.

Tired, lonely, no real life, work always comes first.

For weeks, I’ve worried how people will see me once Frigid hits shelves, but Libby—Libby’s the only person who’s ever really known me. And this is how she sees me.

Like a shark.

The shame hits hot and fast, a desperation to crawl out of my skin. To be anywhere else. To be someone else.

I break away, heading for the bathroom in the front hall, but it’s locked, and I beeline toward the front door instead, only to find a handful of people crowding it. I double back, dizzy.

I want to be alone. I need to be somewhere I can vanish into a crowd, or at least where no one will acknowledge what’s happening to me.

What is happening to me?

The stairs. I take them to the second floor. There’s a bathroom at the end of the hall. I’m almost to it when a room on the right catches my eye. A wall of books is visible through the cracked-open door.

It’s a beacon, a lighthouse on a far shore. I step inside and close the door behind me, the party receding to a muffle. My shoulders relax a little, the thud of my heart settling as I take in the cherry-red race car bed against the wall on my left.

Not a store-bought plastic monstrosity, but a homemade wooden frame, painted to glossy perfection. The sight of it sends a pang through me. As do the homemade bookshelves lining the far wall. There’s so much care, not just in the construction but in the organization, Charlie’s touch and Clint’s as visible as inky fingerprints.

The books are meticulously ordered by genre and author, but not pretty. Not rows of leather-bound tomes, just paperbacks with creased spines and half-missing covers, books with five-cent thrift store stickers on them, and Dewey decimal indicators on the ones that came from library sales.