The Pepper in the Gumbo (Men of Cane River #1)(20)
But he knew he wouldn’t. Even as he considered it, he pushed it back out of his mind. Paul walked to his briefcase and pulled out the tidy pile of old pages that he’d cut from the Alexander Pope poetry book. Opening the portable scanner, he gently started to feed the pages through the machine. The red seraph logo on the side was the only thing that connected ScreenStop to his other life.
There was only one way to resolve the mystery of Alice. He would meet her face-to-face and see if she really was everything her bookshelf claimed to be. The only problem would be that she wouldn’t know who he was. To her, he would be Paul Olivier, businessman.
Paul swallowed a lump of unease. This was more complicated than he thought it would be. But he couldn’t think of any other way around the problem. He knew one thing for sure. He had to know if Alice Augustine, Natchitoches bookstore owner and swapper of intimate shelf portraits, was for real.
Chapter Seven
I force people to have coffee with me, just because I don’t trust that
a friendship can be maintained with any other senses besides a computer
or a cell phone screen. ― John Cusack
Alice sat down at her desk and stared at Van Winkle. It must be great to sleep one’s life away in a patch of sunshine. She wished with all her might that the legal letter would disappear, along with “Norma the beloved niece.” She rubbed her parents’ wedding rings between her thumb and forefinger, trying to calm her thoughts. There was no use worrying about it right then. She couldn’t do a thing until she found a lawyer.
She wandered the store, desperate for some distraction from her anxiety. She wanted to call this woman and ask what gave her the right to take something that wasn’t hers. More than anything, she wished she could talk to Mr. Perrault.
Apart from the customer looking for books by BWK, no one else had opened the door. Alice had enjoyed talking to Karen, and had even exchanged phone numbers with her after the woman mentioned wanting to talk about the books she’d read with someone over coffee. Karen said the online forums were fun, but they could never replace a face-to-face book discussion over coffee. With that, Alice warmed to her completely. As different as they were, they were also very much alike. They both preferred friends to be of the breathing variety, rather than the cold screen and profile picture type.
Alice caught sight of her little shelf of personal books and grimaced. She should know better than to share private information with strangers. But he’d seemed so real, so much like herself. They even had the same small volume of poetry, The Seraphim and Other Poems. Except for the science fiction part. She couldn’t see how reading that much sci-fi would serve anybody well in the real world.
With every new email, she’d been drawn in to the conversation, beginning to think of him as a new friend. After an hour passed with no response, Alice wished she could snatch back the picture and hide it away. She’d been flirting and was ashamed of herself. Maybe he hadn’t read it that way, but she felt the way her heart rate quickened every time she’d seen a new message. Of all the traits she respected the most, loyalty was one of the highest and she hadn’t shown Eric any loyalty this morning.
A lot of people would laugh at her scruples, but Alice saw it very clearly. She’d become momentarily infatuated with someone she’d never met and completely forgotten Eric. Again. He was coming to take her to lunch in less than an hour and he hadn’t even crossed her mind.
Alice hung her head for a moment. Eric deserved better. He deserved honesty. Slumping into her chair, she caught her reflection in the long mirror across the room. She sat up straighter. Starting now, she’d be a better person, inside and out. She squinted. Maybe she’d neglected her outside a bit, too. Her normally tan skin reminded her of Dickens’ description of Miss Havisham’s wedding dress: “pale, like something shut up inside too long.” The shock from this morning showed. She put her hands to her cheeks and rubbed them. Maybe she needed to get into the sun a little more. Her dark hair was going every which way, but that wasn’t unusual and she didn’t bother to redo her ponytail. Her brothers used to joke that she looked like Marge Simpson in the mornings, her hair a towering column of crazy curls. It wasn’t quite that bad at the moment, but it was definitely not a smooth, professional look. She didn’t really care. She had bigger problems.
She drew back her lips, showing off her best asset: straight, white teeth. The mirror was dusty and the glass wavered with age, but the image reflected wasn’t too bad, considering. She turned her face to one side, and then the other, keeping her wide smile in place. Squinting, she lifted her chin and noted the softening of her jawline. Every year, she looked more and more like the old photos of her mother.
“It doesn’t bother me. Doesn’t bother me a single bit,” she said into the quiet, but she heard the lie in her own voice.
She tossed her ponytail over one shoulder and flashed another smile. Her upper-eye area seemed puffy. She hadn’t cried when she’d read the legal letter so maybe she was retaining water. She widened her eyes and smiled again, trying to reproduce the look of a girl ten years younger.
The barest echo made Alice’s heart drop, along with her smile. She whirled in her chair, hoping it was just the mail falling through the slot, or Charlie coming in early so she could go to lunch. A man stood just outside the glass door, eyes fixed on her. He was young, tall, with straight black hair. His tailored button-up shirt and jeans said he was wealthy and on vacation. His expression was a cross between amusement and confusion.