“No.” That had indeed been Alice’s plan. More or less. “When people are in love, you can feel it. It charges the air. If they’re in love, we’ll know.”
“Why does it matter to you anyway? Why is it so important to you that my stories didn’t fail?”
“Because there are people I care about that I’ve written stories for. I need to believe, I need to know that I’ve given them something pure. Lasting.”
“And barging into Abigail’s home and finding out if she’s in love will somehow prove that?”
“No, but it’s a start.”
“A start to what?”
“To proving to you that you brought goodness into people’s lives. That you don’t need forgiveness.”
Madeline studied Alice, who did her best to look confident. In truth, she wasn’t clear about what it would accomplish to meet Abigail, but Madeline needed to see that not all her love stories had ended badly.
“Fine,” Madeline said. “But I’m driving.”
They barreled down Stagecoach Road, past the tavern onto CA-154, where Madeline spun the steering wheel and pumped the gas pedal along the bends like she was playing a video game. Seventy-five minutes later, they pulled to a stop in front of an orderly ranch house with a lawn too green to be real grass.
“Well, what’s the plan now?” Madeline said.
They could pretend to be going door to door, collecting signatures. Or Alice could feign looking for her lost dog. She could pretend to be a graduate student doing a study on households in the area. As she debated whether any of these scenarios were believable, a minivan pulled into the driveway. From the back, three preteens tumbled out and barreled toward the door. A woman climbed out of the passenger seat and shouted to them, “Shoes off. I don’t want to see any mud on my new rug.” They waved her off as they raced inside.
Madeline gasped. “That’s Abby.” She slunk down in her seat so as not to be seen. Abigail hadn’t noticed them. A man stepped down from the driver’s seat and threw an arm around her shoulders. She looked up at him, her eyes softening as he leaned down and kissed her. Their steps perfectly aligned as they walked to the door.
Once they disappeared inside, Alice turned to Madeline. “Okay, you can’t tell me that couple is not in love.”
“Because they kissed? Kisses lie all the time.”
“Eyes don’t lie. And I saw hers. They were practically sparkling.”
“Look who’s suddenly a hopeless romantic.”
“Shouldn’t you be excited?” Alice pointed toward the house. “That is a successful love story.”
Madeline nodded in a way that intimated acceptance, if not the relieved satisfaction Alice was hoping for.
On the drive back, Madeline’s chaotic driving was no match for the formidable traffic. As they inched toward the mountains, Madeline spoke first. “I appreciate what you’re trying to do, Alice. Really. But I saw the pain I brought into others’ lives. I know the pain I brought into my own. A hundred love stories aren’t worth a single broken one.”
It took them over three hours to return to the house. By that time Orion and Gemini were watching over them from the cloudless sky above. Madeline said she was too tired to eat and disappeared into her bedroom. Alice scavenged the fridge for a plate of leftovers and carried it upstairs to eat in bed. When she arrived at the top of the stairs, she hesitated. The door to the library was ajar. For the first time Madeline had left it open.
16
The Wager
“Didn’t I make myself clear yesterday?” Madeline asked when she found Alice sitting cross-legged on the floor of the secret library. Piles of red books cascaded around her. Her limbs twitched from lack of sleep. Madeline’s eyes surveyed the shelves, her expression turning from irritation to horror as she saw how Alice was rearranging her books.
They were organized by color, a few shelves for red, a wall each for blue, green, and yellow, a mere shelf for purple. The only exceptions were the top two shelves, which remained out of reach, and thus a random pattern of color. There were 2,398 books in total: 207 red, 734 yellow, 834 blue, 596 green, and 27 purple—at least for the moment. Every time Alice assumed she had them all organized, a book would turn. Red to yellow. Green to blue. Blue to green. Yellow to purple. Alice couldn’t deny there was something ominous about those few purple books. Their rarity, for one. Also, they emitted a sorrowful moan every time she touched one. The other books had an energy to them too. The blue books were slightly warm like a tepid bath. The yellow were chilled like a window on a winter morning, but nothing compared to the purple books. To the best of her ability, Alice kept her distance from them.
“What have you done?” Madeline whispered.
“Don’t worry, I’ll put them back exactly where I found them. I want to show you something.” Alice hopped up and pointed to the shelves of red books. “I’ve started to go through them one by one and find the couples in them.” Alice tossed Madeline a red book, forcing her to catch it. “That’s Sarah and Rickie D’Angelo. They just renewed their vows after twenty years. And—” she tossed another book “—this is Lydia and Marvin Winterson. They moved to Hawaii, where they surf every day.” The pile Madeline was holding continued to grow. “This is Emmalee and Vincent Brown. They’re cowriters in Hollywood. In their Oscar acceptance speech, they said that they don’t know where one of them ends and the other begins.”
Madeline stroked the cover of Emmalee and Vincent’s book. “They were one of my favorite couples. Vincent had been in a fire as a child. His arms were badly scarred, and he had trouble using his left hand on account of the keloids on his skin.” Madeline absentmindedly stroked her own scar. “He thought no one could love him because of what he viewed as his deformity. He was a lovely man, inside and out. I knew he was wrong. So I wrote him a story about a woman with a birthmark on her shoulder blade in the shape of an archipelago. That way he’d always have a place to live. They met at a wedding, under a full moon. Emmalee was the bride’s sister, and Vincent worked with the groom. He almost didn’t go. He was tired of celebrating other people’s love when he never seemed to find love for himself. During the ceremony Vincent noticed Emmalee in the same distant way he noticed all the pretty bridesmaids, dressed in unflattering gray satin and diaphanous shawls to ward off the night chill. As she was walking up the aisle at the end of the ceremony, the shawl slipped. Vincent caught it. When he looked up to give it to her, he saw a birthmark on her back, a series of spots arranged like tiny islands.”
Madeline looked longingly at the book, and just as she seemed to accept that some of her stories had brought people the love they desired, the book started brightening, turning lime green before darkening to the emerald of so many other books in the library. Madeline screamed and dropped it. Unthinkingly, Alice clutched the old woman as they darted out of the library together, thudding the door closed behind them.
“Did that just happen?” Alice asked, panting as she leaned against the bookshelf beside Madeline.
