The Night Country (The Hazel Wood #2)(14)

My heart settled as I walked in, breathing coffee and paper and sunburnt dust. Like all good bookshops, Edgar’s was a pocket universe, where time moved slow as clouds. Mainly I read on the clock, or listened to him enumerate his various grievances with the world, or drank coffee in the surreal quiet till my fingers started to quake.

Edgar and I had a running contest going since the day I’d first come in: whoever found the weirdest thing in a used book wins. Since discovering the marked card that first day, I’d found an extremely formal typed breakup letter, a photo-booth strip featuring a man posing with a pineapple, and a business card for a “Noncorporeal Matchmaker” based out of South Florida (and called her; the number was out of service). Edgar was currently ahead, with the flattened toupee he’d found in a copy of Pamela.

Today was the day I would win our contest for good, though Edgar would never know it.

I circled the store when I got in, checking the spaces between shelves, my head full of rubies and blood. I plugged my phone into the bookshop speaker and listened to Pink Moon on repeat, prodding at the missing memories of the night before like a rotten tooth. When Edgar opened the front door a couple of hours later, he made it a few steps into the shop before he saw me, and screamed.

“What is wrong with you?” he shouted, ripping out his earbuds. “Do you live here now?”

“Sorry,” I mumbled. God bless Edgar, he had no follow-up questions.

By ten a.m. we were sharing a bag of Swedish licorice in companionable silence, and I was feeling halfway normal. By eleven the bookstore was busyish, my nerves winding tighter with every jingle of the bell. It didn’t feel right, that one city, one life, could hold all these things: A rush of shoppers carrying clever tote bags. A night in Red Hook colored by liquor and blood. And three dead ex-Stories, pieces of them spirited away. Finally, during a lull, I sidled to the front and turned the sign to CLOSED, flipping the lock shut.

Just for an hour, I reasoned. Then I’d go buy Edgar a compensatory coffee. He was too lost in his book to notice anyway.

For some reason the carpet was squishiest between English Literature and World Mythologies, so I sat there and pulled down Persuasion. I’d been reading it on shifts for the past week, and sank back into it now like cool water, letting my fevered brain trapdoor into Austen’s amiable world. I started out distracted, but soon I was reading headlong because I was getting to the sexy part, where Captain Wentworth writes Anne the letter.

I can listen no longer in silence, it began. I’d read it a hundred times, sometimes out loud to Ella on the road. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach.

I sped through the pages toward the letter. Anne had her conversation with Harville, Wentworth stood stricken at the other end of the room. He scribbled something on paper, rushed from the room, then returned to press the letter into her hand. I swallowed my last half inch of coffee, gritty with undissolved sugar, as Anne opened it and began to read.

I am lost and stupid and doing this all wrong, it began. Maybe you’ll never read this.

I sat straight. Reread the words, not Austen’s. They stayed the same, in bleary black text on a page that smelled like paste and old houses.

I am lost and stupid and doing this all wrong. Maybe you’ll never read this. If it reaches you, the magic worked. And if the magic works, that must mean we’ll meet again. I think we’ll meet again. I think we’re meant to. I don’t know what I think anymore.

Have you forgiven me, for not coming back? Do you think of me out here, banging around the stars? Sometimes the image of you hits me so hard and sudden I believe the only explanation is you’re thinking of me at that exact moment, too. But I might be kidding myself. Maybe you’ll never read this. Or maybe when you do, you won’t let yourself believe in impossible things.

But I don’t think so, because you are one of those impossible things. When you left, I was lost. But I think I’m finding my way back now. Will we meet again? Some days I think yes, others, no. You’ll never read this, will you? I’ve said it three times now, it must be true. I don’t know how to end this. How do I end this? Maybe I just stop





8


There was no signature. The letter ended, Anne swooned. I paged forward, my fingers clumsy. Wentworth got his girl, and she got her captain. I paged back—the detestable Mary Musgrove, poor Captain Benwick, Louisa falling from the wall. All of it unchanged, except for the letter.

All my anxious thoughts gave way under a wave of wonderment. The world went bigger and smaller at once, closing in on the page and expanding around me into a place of impossibilities.

Where had we gotten this book? It was old, though in perfect condition, and the letter—the wrong, new, not–Captain Wentworth’s letter—matched the type in the rest of it. The page fit snugly into the binding. If I asked Edgar about it, he’d grow suspicious—he had a Spidey sense for weird, it was why I liked him. But I had the silliest, headiest feeling anyway: that I knew who wrote this. That it was meant for me.

I troubleshot the notion, trying to keep my head clear. It could be an extremely unlikely printer’s error. A very old joke. A newer joke, neatly done. Or it could be—could it be?—a letter written to me.

I’d found stranger things in a book.

Someone battered the front door with the heel of their hand. The floor creaked as Edgar wandered toward it.