Stella covered her mouth with her hand. Nearly a lifetime of unanswered questions about her mother swirled within her. She lowered her hand. “If Ruby Lou and Pearl’s book went missing, why is hers still here? Why didn’t you bring her back out? Why didn’t youmakeher stay and be our mother?” Furious tears stung Stella’s eyes.
“Don’t you think I thought of that?” Arnie said, raising his voice again. “Don’t you think I tried to bring her back out? Nothing happened, Stella, because she’snotin her book. Even the date stamps I applied immediately disappeared.”
“Why didn’t her book vanish?” Jack asked.
“Because she’s not dead,” Stella said and shoved back from the table and stomped into the living room, her curls dancing wild around her head.
“Are you sure?” Jack asked.
Arnie got up from the table and walked into his room. The sound of rustling followed and then he returned with a postcard. He handed it to Stella.
The front photo was of the Statue of Liberty, and the date stamp was from twenty-four years ago. The cursive writing was sloppy and hurried, written in fading blue ink. The message had been addressed to Arnie.
Tell them I’m sorry. Forgive me for leaving, Arnie, but I must pursue my dreams to find my true self. My family has been a great joy, and I hope they understand my journey one day.
Love, Maria
The postcard trembled in Stella’s hand, and the words blurred with her tears.
“If she’d died, the book would have disappeared,” Arnie said, looking at Jack. “Every last copy of her story would be gone, like with Ruby Lou and Pearl. That’s how I know Maria’s still alive and they aren’t.”
Stella’s arm fell to her side, dangling the postcard from her hand. Nausea swept through her. “All these years she’s been alive? She just neverwantedto come back.” Stella’s dad had lived the rest of his life thinking he’d somehow failed at marriage, never knowing his troubled wife was from a fictional story. Never knowing Maria had escaped a miserable marriage. Never knowing her dreams, whether fictional or real, were always taking her to Broadway.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner,” Arnie said.
Stella wiped at her tears. “I wouldn’t have believed you.” She wrapped her arms around her middle and doubled over with an ache so deep it seemed entangled with her very core. Then a roguethought popped into her head, and she straightened. “Is that why I can see words?”
“What words?” Arnie asked.
Jack stood from the table and walked closer. “Because you’re—”
“Half fictional?” Stella’s laugh sounded cynical, tempestuous.
“What words?” Arnie asked again.
“Don’t you remember years ago when I asked you about Stella and the words around her?”
Stella waved her hands through the air as though sprinkling fairy dust. “I see wordseverywhere,” she said. “And I don’t mean on a page or printed in books. I mean, alive and three-dimensional. Jack can see them, and Maria knew about them. In fact, she encouraged me to write them down, saying it would guide me to my dreams.” She placed her palm against her forehead. “She wasn’t wrong, but this is too much.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Arnie asked.
“Seriously?” Stella asked. “Are you the pot or the kettle?” Another wild thought bolted into her mind. “What if when it’s time for Jack to go back, we’re not in the library?”
Jack reached for her hand and swung his gaze toward Arnie. “Is that possible?”
“Of course it is,” Stella answered. “We’d just need to keep you away from the library. We can move. Anywhere!” She squeezed Jack’s hand. “If Maria can stay away and survive all this time, then why can’t you?”
“There’s something else you don’t know,” Arnie said. He grabbed Maria’s book off the table and carried it to Stella. “Flip through it.”
Stella took the offered book and thumbed through the pages. Three-quarters of them were blank.
“At first, nothing happened to the book,” Arnie said. “Then afew years after she left, pages started going blank, starting in the back. Just one or two every couple years. But in the last few months, they’ve been disappearing faster. I worry the entire story will be gone in a matter of weeks, maybe less.”
Stella squeezed the book. “What does that mean? Is she... dying?”
Arnie shrugged. “I don’t know.”
Anxiety clenched Stella’s body. “But you have a guess.”
