Diane found me near the hors d’oeuvres. She was wearing something silver and architectural that only Diane could pull off, the kind of dress that looked like it had been designed by someone who thought fabric should have opinions. Her hair was shorter now, a sleek bob she’d adopted the year she turned forty-five and declared she was done apologizing for anything, including her hair.
“There you are.” Diane grabbed a stuffed mushroom and examined it with suspicion. “I’ve been looking for you for twenty minutes. This place is a maze.”
“You’ve been here before.”
“Not sober.” She took a bite of the mushroom and nodded approvingly. “Not bad. Jack?”
“Getting me more champagne.”
“Of course he is. Twenty-eight years and the man still waits on you hand and foot.” Diane shook her head with the exasperation of a best friend who has opinions about your husband. “It’s disgusting.”
“You love him.”
“I tolerate him. There’s a difference.” But she was smiling, the same smile she’d had in that Jamaica Plain kitchen, the one that saidI see through your bullshit and I still love you.We’d kept our promise to each other with Wednesday phone calls, visits every two months that had eventually become monthly once Diane moved to Connecticut with Tom, twenty-eight years of refusing to let distance or life pull us apart.
“Did you see the display case by the entrance?” Diane asked, reaching for another mushroom.
“No. Why?”
“They’ve got a little exhibition. Books and literacy, that’s what the charity’s for, right? Literacy programs?” Diane waved vaguely. “Anyway, they’ve got a whole case of books that have raised the most money for their foundation over the years. And guess whose book is front and center?”
My heart did something complicated.
“You’re kidding.”
“Front and center, Mags. Gold nameplate. The display says something like ‘Most impactful literary donation, author proceeds have funded the construction of fourteen communitylibraries nationwide.’” Diane grinned. “Your old librarian and his cat.”
I excused myself. Walked through the ballroom, past the string quartet and the champagne tower and the clusters of well-dressed philanthropists, until I reached the entrance hall.
The display case was there, elegant and understated, lit from within. And in the center, on a small pedestal, was a book I hadn’t held in twenty-eight years.
The List of Nine (and Louie)by Hazel Winterbrook
The cover was beautiful, simple, literary, a watercolor of a cat sitting on a piece of paper, its expression one of supreme indifference. The same edition I’d read in Patricia’s office all those years ago, except this one had a gold National Book Award sticker on the front and a quote from the New York Times that called it “one of the most profound and quietly devastating novels of its generation.”
I stood in front of the case, reading the small placard beside it.
The List of Nine (and Louie) by Hazel Winterbrook was first published in 1988 by Calloway & Marsh, championed by a young editorial assistant who recognized its genius in the slush pile. The novel went on to win the National Book Award, sell over three million copies worldwide, and inspire the establishment of the Winterbrook Foundation, which has built fourteen community libraries in underserved areas. Hazel Winterbrook dedicated the book “to the young woman who believed in Chester and Louie before anyone else did.”
My vision blurred.
I remembered. Not the old life, not the timeline I’d left behind, those memories were gone, had been gone for twenty-eight years, faded like an overexposed photograph. But I remembered this. The manuscript in the slush pile. The rubber band and the prayer. Louie’s voice first—the cat watching theman on the third floor from behind the dumpster, patient and knowing. Then Chester’s, dry and precise and devastating, a librarian trying to shelve his grief and failing.
I remembered standing in Patricia’s office, hands shaking, telling my boss that safe didn’t win National Book Awards.
I’d been right.
“There you are.” Jack appeared at my side, champagne in hand. He followed my gaze to the display case and smiled. “Your book.”
“Not my book.”
“You found it. You fought for it. Patricia told you it was a waste of time and you stood your ground.” He put his arm around my shoulders. “It’s your book, Mags.”
I leaned into him, looking at the watercolor cat on the cover. Louie, sitting on Chester’s list with the supreme confidence of a creature who understood that sometimes the best things in life were the ones that showed up uninvited.
“Fourteen libraries,” I said softly. “Hazel built fourteen libraries.”
“Because you read page one and didn’t stop.”
