“I’d be a hypocrite if I was,” Arnie said, folding the parchment paper over the unfinished half of his sandwich. “There’s something else I haven’t told you. I’ve wanted to tell you for years, but I kept putting off revealing the magic, and if I didn’t tell you that, this other thing wouldn’t make sense. I still don’t know if you’re better off not knowing.”
Stella looked at Jack. He shrugged.
“What is it?” Stella asked.
Arnie clasped his hands together on the table. “I’m assumingyou found my copy of Jack’s book beneath the hidden panel in the desk drawer.”
Jack touched Stella’s thigh beneath the table. “I showed her.”
Arnie nodded. “Did you notice the other book with it?”
Stella scanned her memory and recalled there had been a second book. “A green one.”
“The Unraveling of Mrs. Russo,” Arnie said. “I need you to go get it and bring it back here.”
“Now?” Stella asked.
Arnie nodded.
Stella pushed away from the table, rushed out the door, and ran across the yard between the cottage and library. When she arrived at the circulation desk, she was grateful no one was there. A quick scan of the library revealed that Melanie was talking with someone in the children’s section, and she heard Dan’s voice upstairs.
Stella yanked open the drawer as quickly as possible and removed the extraneous items, then grabbedThe Unraveling of Mrs. Russo, which rested below Jack’s book and the ink pad and stamp. She assembled everything back into place and hurried out of the library.
She flung open Arnie’s door, out of breath and sweaty. Jack looked at her from the table, his expression curious, but Arnie appeared pale and unwell. Stella sat back down and placed the emerald-green book on the table between them.
“Open it to the back,” Arnie said.
Stella flipped open the back cover. The library due date card was still tucked into its sleeve. She pulled out the card and saw that the date stamped on it was from more than thirty years ago. A prickly sensation started in her fingers. Words resembling a child’s crayon scribblings wiggled out of the sleeve.Disappeared. Why? Come back.
Jack frowned at the words as they wobbled off the table.
“What is this?” Stella asked, her mouth dry.
Arnie inhaled slowly and exhaled before speaking. “It’s the story of Mrs. Russo. I found it years ago when I first moved to Blue Sky Valley. At the time, it hadn’t been checked out in years, and the author had already passed away. But it’s about a woman born to Italian immigrants in New York City in the 1920s. While she’s still a young woman, she dreams of stardom on Broadway but is trapped in a loveless marriage and an unfulfilling life with a man her parents insisted she marry. She tries to assert her independence and reclaim her dreams, but she has her own personal demons to overcome first.”
Stella didn’t speak, so Arnie continued.
“I was drawn to her, so I brought Mrs. Russo out years ago,” he said. “Her story fascinated me for some reason. I imagined she was beautiful, a passionate woman. I thought bringing her here would give her a way to see the world without feeling oppressed. It wouldn’t be as fancy as Broadway, but it would be a chance for her to relax and laugh and talk about her dreams.”
Stella’s hands started shaking. She flipped to the front of the book. The opening line of the novel read:Every night, as Maria lay beside her husband in their cramped apartment in Little Italy, she closed her eyes and stepped onto a Broadway stage, a world away from the life she had never chosen.
“Maria?” Stella whispered.
Arnie continued, “Your father came into the library two days after she arrived, and he was smitten. Maria had never experienced a man so doting and generous. She begged me to let her stay. She wanted to get married, have a family. I didn’t know she would leave you.”
Stella’s eyes widened. “But she couldn’t have stayed. You said... you said—”
“I know what I said!” Arnie barked. He inhaled a noisy breathand held it before releasing it. He reached for the book. “You were right. The magic is tied to the place because the source is there. If I bring out characters in the library, when it’s time for their return and they’re in the library, they return to their books.”
Jack sat rigidly in his chair. “And if they’renotin the library when it’s time for them to return?”
Silence stretched between them for a few moments.
Arnie sighed. “I wasn’t sure at first. Ruby Lou and Pearl went missing years ago, and their book completely disappeared. I thought the same would happen with Maria’s.”
Stella slapped her palm flat against the table, and the men flinched. “My mother is from a book? Mymotheris fictional?”
Arnie lowered his gaze. “You know firsthand that characters areveryreal when they’re here.”
