“I wrote you a text message.”I didn’t send it, but you don’t have to know that. “Morrie and I stayed up late watching a film, so I decided to crash at the shop. And then Jo and I were hanging out last night, and she’d had too much wine to drive me home, so I kipped on the sofa. Here, I’ll help.”
“I didn’t get this text,” Mum muttered. I slid in beside her and turned on the hot tap to fill the sink, piling the dishes neatly on the counter to make more room.
Guilt chewed on my gut. I should have texted her. Quoth was right – she worried about me. As I moved, the edge of the letter brushed my leg. All the guilt flew from my mind as my father’s words came back to me.
Did you know my father was a time-traveling bookbinder?It was on the tip of my tongue to ask. “I’m sorry, okay? I’ll let you know more details next time.” It came out more petulant than I’d intended. “Morrie and I are going to the Jane Austen festival this weekend, so I won’t be home. There, now you know.”
“Are you and Morrie dating?” Mum’s eye sparkled. My transgressions were forgotten with the prospect of a son-in-law who was richer than Croesus.
“I’ve told you a hundred times, no.” The lie felt uncomfortable on my lips, but I couldn’t very well tell her the truth about the three guys. “We’re just friends. I’m capable of being friends with guys without sleeping with them.”
“But if you were to date Morrie, I want you to know that I’m okay with it. I think you and he would make a lovely couple.”
“What about me and Heathcliff?” I raised an eyebrow. “Or me and Allan?”
“Mina, it’s mean to tease your mother like that.” She threw a tea towel at me. “You’re not serious, are you? Morrie is a much better match. Don’t make the same mistakes I did.”
The letter dragged against my leg.What does that mean, Mum?She didn’t elaborate, of course. She never did about my father. She just called him, ‘that bastard’, then reached for another mug of tea, which was what she did now.
“Speaking of your mistakes,” I blurted out. “I received a letter from Dad.”
Dad.The word sounded ridiculous. I might as well have said a letter from ‘Pope Gregory the Ninth’. I’d never called anyone ‘dad’ in my life.
SMASH.The mug slipped from Mum’s hand and crashed against the countertop. Sherds of ceramic flew everywhere. She leaned over the counter, her face white.
“Mum?”
“That’s not possible,” she whispered, gripping the edge of the counter.
I hadn’t meant to tell her about the letter. But now that she knew, I’d see what I could discover. I took her hand and led her over to the table. I pulled out the nearest chair and Mum slumped down into it. “It came to the shop. It’s on this weird old-fashioned paper.”
“Can I see it? What did it say?”
I paused, my fingers pinching the corner of the envelope in my pocket. I wanted desperately to fling it across the table at her, but her pale face gave me pause.
If what the letter said was true, if my father really was Herman Strepel, then he knew about whatever magic had a hold on Nevermore Bookshop. When I thought about it rationally, I didn’t believe my mother knew anything about it; otherwise, she would have tried much harder than she did to keep me away from the place. She was living in Barchester when she was with my father, so she didn’t connect him to Argleton or Nevermore.
She doesn’t know.The certainty hit me like a punch in the gut. Whatever secrets my father was protecting, he’d kept them from her, too. That made me feel a little better, and I hated myself for that.
I withdrew my hand from my pocket and bent down to clean up the broken mug. “I left it at the shop. I didn’t want to look at it, you know? He said that he still loves us, and he left us because he was a danger to us. It kind of sounded as if someone was after him.”
“Howdarehe? After all these years.” Mum slumped down in her chair. “I suppose it was some elaborate poem surrounded by fiddly drawings. He fancied himself an artistic soul, did your father. Really, he was just a crooked second-rate criminal.”
“What kind of crimes? Please, Mum, you’ve never told me anything about him. Was he a druggie? A thief?”
“Counterfeiting.” Mum gritted her teeth, as though she couldn’t bear to get the words out. “He sold copies of Banksy paintings and old medieval manuscripts.”
I wasn’t expecting that. It fit with Herman Strepel’s unique skills. “What was he like? What about his family?”
She sniffed. “He didn’t have any family, but he got on well with my parents. Dad wanted him to join the family business, but he kept insisting we’d get rich one day off his manuscripts, and he wouldn’t need to peddle drugs anymore. Apparently, he was working on a masterpiece. Some never-before-discovered work by Hester or Horatio or something.”
“Homer?”
“Maybe. I don’t remember. He was always talking nonsense about old writers and artists.” I picked up the bigger pieces of broken cup and tossed them into the rubbish bin, my mind whirring. It couldn’t be a coincidence that Herman Strepel’s copy of The Frog-Mouse War had shown up in the shop when he was counterfeiting Homer in my time. Was it a message from my father somehow?
“That would make sense, then. The letterwashandwritten, and there were drawings in the border.” I hunted out the brush and shovel and swept up the tiny ceramic fragments and as much unicorn poop as I could. My hands shook with excitement. This was more than I’d ever found out about my father. “Do you have any idea what he might be talking about when he says he’s in danger?”
Mum shook her head. “He’s a criminal, Mina. He’s probably pissed off the wrong people. If he writes any more letters to you, he’s going to be in danger fromme.”
