Alice could feel, as distinctly as she’d felt her father’s absence, that Madeline was gone, but she needed to find out for certain. So she left the secret library a mess of books and made her way down the hall toward Madeline’s closed door.
At first she knocked tentatively, then more assertively, until it grew absurd to continue knocking on a door when you presumed no one was inside. She creaked the door open to find the bed neatly made, the poppy wallpaper a mix of blooming orange flowers and buds not yet opened, just as it had been the first time she saw it. On the night table beside the ceramic bowl with the two wedding rings and the antique key was an envelope withAlicewritten in practiced cursive on the front.
The envelope was sealed with the same red wax stamp as the letter Madeline had left under Alice’s door, the start to their journey. Alice fingered the initials, observing their symmetry. A mirror hung above Madeline’s dresser. In its reflectionMAbecameAM, her own initials. Beside the envelope Alice caught her own image. The few strands of white she’d recently found in her mane had spawned. Her hair was now more white than brown. Humidity hung in the air, tightening her curls into a halo around her head.
Alice sat on the bed, slipped her finger beneath the wax seal, and pulled out the card. She expected to know what the letter said. The words, like so much of Madeline, were unfamiliar.
My Dear Alice,
By now I trust you know our connection, how we’re bound, how we reflect one another. Don’t be mad at me for this deception. It’s something you’ve kept from yourself, something you needed to embrace slowly. In the end it wasn’t a deception at all. I did call you here to write me a story. Only the story was for you.
By now you’ve also discovered what the colors mean—red for lasting passion; blue for a cooler, steadier love; yellow for fleeting romance; green for relationships ruined by jealousy and envy; purple for a hate too profound to call love. Except stories are never just one thing. In love we find loss. Humor is so often laced with sadness. In lies you’ll see truth. In every ending we can find a beginning. Take Dee Lauren, for instance. When her niece sold the diner, she used the money to open the Dee Lauren Women’s Shelter. It’s housed hundreds of women, saved dozens of lives. This doesn’t undo Dee’s tragedy, but her death is only one part of her story.
You’re at a critical moment when you must decide if it’s worth the risk to continue to be a love scribe. I won’t tell you to stop writing or to keep going. Just promise you won’t let fear guide you. And don’t be so distracted by the way relationships end that you miss the middle. That’s where life exists, the moments we build into memories that shape who we become.
Though our time together has ended, your story isn’t over. You have so much love still left to give, Alice. To yourself and to others. Be brave, my dear. Discover who you truly are.
With gratitude,
Madeline
Alice’s eyes returned to the beginning to reread letter. As she retraced the words, the ink faded, word by word, line by line, until just the last two sentences were left:Be brave, my dear. Discover who you truly are.Then they vanished too. The card began to age, crumbling in her hand until it was just a pile of dust. A wind wafted in from a window that blew open, catching the bits of powdery paper and scattering them across the room.
Alice remained seated on the bed, revisiting Madeline’s words, which she realized came from somewhere deep inside herself. She wanted to be brave. It was time for Alice to let her stories belong to their readers.
As she stood from the bed, the white eyelet comforter began to yellow until it disintegrated along with the sheets and the mattress. The mahogany frame desiccated into sawdust on the floor. The other wood furniture suffered a similar fate, the wallpaper curled away from the wall, the curtains frayed until there was nothing left of the room.
Alice made the familiar journey to the library and slipped through the crack into the secret space behind it. The books were just as she’d left them, scattered across the floor. Book by book she filed them away. She stepped up toward the top shelf before her other foot was firmly planted below and slipped. Her elbows took the brunt of the fall. Pain radiated through her arms to her neck and head. Her cheek stung where she’d landed on a book. Hearing the commotion, the cats raced in, nosing her as she lay on the floor, panting through the pain.
“I’m okay,” she told the cats, noticing one more encircling her than there’d been before. It was her own cat, Agatha. Agatha had never been outside Alice’s apartment. Alice buried her face in her fur. “Aggie, how did you get here?”
Agatha jumped away from Alice and joined Madeline’s cats, becoming part of their clowder. Alice touched her right cheek where the book had left its impression. When she pulled her fingers away, they were covered in blood. She was surprised a book could draw blood, but books drew blood all the time.
The book she had fallen on belonged to Stefanie, Alice’s most violent case. She could see the rim of purple around Stefanie’s left eye, the brutality of it an affront to love. Yet here the book was red. Stefanie’s story wasn’t over. She was a survivor. She would be alright. She still believed in love.
Alice let the blood congeal on her cheek. The cut was deep. It would scar. Alice found she didn’t mind. She stood and continued to work until the books were shelved in their original chronological order.
When she tucked the last book onto the shelf, a white light exploded into the room. Alice covered her eyes until the sparks died out and when she opened them every book in the library was red again. It was impossible to determine which ones had been blue, which purple, which were her books, which were Madeline’s, although Alice now understood they were all hers. The stories she’d written. The stories she might write if she chose to continue. They all looked the same, though they housed a thousand different endings, just as they housed a thousand different beginnings, a thousand middles too.
Alice herded the terrified cats into the main library. As she pushed the secret door shut, Alice watched the red books quickly dissolve. The now-empty shelves collapsed, then the secret library itself disappeared. She shoved the wall shut, locked the candelabrum into place. In the main library, the fireplace was again ignited, flames flickering up the walls emblazing the books, reds, yellows, greens, purples, and blues flaring wildly.
The cats followed Alice into the hall, breaking into a run when the floor trembled. Alice shut the door and flipped the key back and forth in the lock until the woman’s parasol pointed to one. As she pulled the key from the brass plate, the house began to quake violently and the walls began to crumble. Alice and the cats raced downstairs. Outside, they watched the house collapse to rubble.
The clowder skulked toward the debris to investigate. Alice scooped Agatha up and said, “Not you,” carrying the cat to her car. As they drove away, the dirt road dematerialized in the rearview mirror inch by inch until all that stood behind them was the forest.
38
A Story of One’s Own
Inch by inch until all that stood behind them was the forest.Alice jumped back from her desk, nearly landing on Agatha, who screeched in protest. Timidly Alice leaned forward and tapped her laptop screen to sleep. The buzzing sensation had abated, and Alice knew she’d reached the end of her story.Her story. She’d never imagined writing anything for herself. Then again, she’d never imagined writing anything for anyone else either.
This story was not like the others. It felt real. Not metaphorical or symbolic but lived. Alice stroked her cheek, surprised to find it smooth instead of scabbed. When she looked in the mirror, her curls were loose again, falling to her shoulders with the same chestnut brown shade she’d always known. She could hear her future self, calling to her to be brave.
“Alice, I’m not going to read that,” Gabby said, looking down at the pages Alice had printed. It had been five days since she’d written the story for herself. It did not belong to anyone. As soon as she read it, it would be hers, something she’d never experienced. She wasn’t sure how the magic would work when she read her own tale.
Alice and Gabby were at the beach bar they’d taken to regarding as their bar, with its white leather couch and the library in the back, complete with poppy wallpaper and candelabra on the bookshelves. They came here almost every week, drinking those blue ladies that turned their tongues an electrifying shade. Gabby wasn’t looking for her ex, Brian, anymore, and Alice was fairly certain that Gabby liked the bar for the same reason she did. It symbolized how far they’d come from those first blue ladies, from that hummingbird.
Since Gabby returned from her silent retreat, she’d been staying with her mother while she looked for a new condo. At eighteen, she had sworn she would never spend another night under the same roof as Renata. In adulthood, however, they proved to be good roommates. Renata had taken over as Gabby’s primary hiking partner—“Just for now,” Gabby promised Alice, who pretended to be disappointed—and they’d started going salsa dancing together, her mother the perfect foil for anyone who tried to hit on Gabby.
