The Bookseller(97)



I look down at my lap. “You could have asked your parents for help.” I tentatively raise my eyes to meet hers.

“How could I do that?” She presses her lips together. “How could I ask them? How could I go to them, tail between my legs, and admit failure? I hadn’t . . .” She looks out the plate-glass window, then back at me. “I hadn’t made a success of the bookstore. I hadn’t done anything right, in their eyes. I hadn’t . . .” She hesitates, and then adds, “I hadn’t married. I hadn’t found another . . . person . . . to share my life with.”

I wait for her to go on. But she is silent, her eyes downcast. She taps her cigarette against the ashtray on her desk, and a few ashes float in the air for a moment before settling into the porcelain dish.

I think about Jim Brooks, the man Frieda told me about in the other world, the imaginary world. He sounds so right for where she is in her life—in that life. Well, of course, I think. Naturally, I would invent a happy ending for Frieda, in that happy-ending world.

In this world, the real world, things are different for her, both personally and professionally. I don’t know where or how she got the funds to move forward with the business. I don’t believe she would have gone to her parents, but Frieda is clever and resourceful enough to have come up with something. Perhaps she did find an investor, just as she did in my made-up world. Nonetheless, I doubt that the affable and smitten Jim Brooks—or any actual person who resembles him—has a place in the life Frieda has here.

And I realize, quite suddenly, why that is.

Frieda doesn’t want Jim Brooks, or anyone like him. That sort of person was never the partner she longed for.

What Frieda wanted was a true companion. Just as my mother said. No—more than that. More than what my mother thinks Frieda and I have, in the imaginary world.

But I made a different choice. What did my choice do to her? Not just to our business—that was one thing, a small thing, really.

The real question is, what did my choice do to her heart?

I shake my head. I can’t believe I failed to see it until today.

“Freeds,” I say softly. “Freeds. I’m so . . . I’m sorry.”

She looks up. “Well,” she says, putting her cigarette to her lips. She breathes in, then turns her head to the side and exhales. “Life takes its own peculiar twists and turns, does it not?”

I lean forward, the fingers of both hands clutching my handbag, rhythmically closing and opening the gold-toned clasp. “I hope you . . . maybe someday you can . . .” I trail off, because I don’t know what to say.

Frieda watches me silently. “Perhaps you’re right,” she says finally. “Perhaps I can.” Her eyes gaze into mine. “Maybe seeing you is what I needed. Maybe it will help me . . . go on from here.”

I smile timidly. “I hope so, Freeds. I truly hope so.”

She stands up, takes one last drag on her cigarette, and stubs it out. “I need to return that call,” she says, her voice even. She comes around the desk and puts her hand lightly on my shoulder, then removes it immediately. “Please know, Kitty, that I really am very sorry about your parents.” Our eyes meet—and hers, usually so dancing and light-filled, look dreary and dark.

I turn away, blinking.

Frieda takes a breath. I force myself to swivel my head, to look at her again. “And I’m sorry I didn’t come to your parents’ funeral,” she goes on. “You were right. I should have been there.”

I rise. My knees feel wobbly. “Thank you,” I say. “It means a lot to me, hearing you say that.”

She nods. “Well. Take care of yourself, and that husband, and the children.”

“I will. You take care of yourself, too. Maybe . . .” I hesitate. “Maybe we can see each other again . . . sometime.”

“Maybe.” Her eyes turn again toward the window, then back to me. She wraps her arms around herself, tucking her hands under her sleeves. “My secretary will see you out. Good-bye, Kitty.”

Frieda swallows hard, and I can tell that she not only wants but needs me to leave.

I nod at her one last time before crossing the carpet and walking out the door.





Chapter 34


Outside, the snow is melting on the sidewalk. Cars whiz past on Eighteenth Street; a bus rumbles to the curb, then pulls away without dispensing any passengers. The sun gleams in the west, and I shade my eyes as I step through the revolving door of Frieda’s building.

And there, standing on the sidewalk in front of me, are my parents.

“Mother,” I breathe. “Daddy.”

They smile at me, and I want to go to them, hold them—but I know that my parents are not actually there. They are present only inside my head.

“I’m imagining you,” I say. “I’m making this up. Right?”

“Kitty.” My mother comes forward and puts her hand on my shoulder. I marvel at the way my mind has conjured her touch, exactly as if she were truly standing there with her fingers pressed to the fabric of my coat.

The imagination, it turns out, is a remarkably clever and hardworking creature.

“We just want to say good-bye, honey,” my dad says. “That’s all. Just good-bye.” He steps next to my mother, inches from me. “And that we love you.”

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