“Aren’t these weird old homes thebest?” says Amelia Mae, who’s stuck her head out the other window. “Some of them are practically haunted! It’s like the entire town is set up like a horror movie—you know, the part when the kids are still riding their bikes under tree-lined streets and the guy with the knife hasn’t shown up to murder everyone yet.”
“Well…” says Miguel, glancing at her in the rearview mirror.
“It’s a compliment,” she assures him. “Mom, this is way better than Chicago, and it’s probably safer, too—I was totally kidding about the serial killer. I bet the kids are nicer than they are at my school.”
Unfortunately, it’s not that hard for me to imagine some students being unkind to her. My Amelia said that growing up, all her best friends were books, because childhood is hardest for those who don’t seem like everyone else.
“And imagine all the writing I could do if we lived in a house with a turret!” she adds.
Fiona twists around to face her daughter. “I don’t think we’re moving anytime soon, but I do like the idea of you writing. You take after your uncle that way.” To Miguel, she adds, “How’d you end up here?”
“Amelia,” he says quietly.
Fiona doesn’t ask him to elaborate, but maybe one day he’lltell her that this is where my Amelia was born and raised. When she was young, she dreamed that eventually her little town would have a bookstore where people like her would be able to find the books they loved—even the ones that others stuck their noses up at or tossed in the trash, like her parents did when they found her stash of romance novels under her bed. They met in Ann Arbor, where Miguel had moved to attend college and never left; she’d arrived there to work as a copyeditor at a local paper. A few years later, after her parents had moved farther north, she and Miguel packed up and headed across the state to West Haven.
“We found the perfect place for our happy ending,” my Amelia would sometimes say when she told others about the store’s origins.
That was one of the only things she was wrong about. Endings can’t be happy, because they’re the opposite of forever—and no one wants to spend the rest of time without the one they love.
“Well, here we are,” says Miguel, pulling up in front of the bed-and-breakfast. It’s a big house, not unlike the spooky ones Amelia Mae pointed to on our drive, with dark paint that’s peeling in places and vines creeping up the sides.
“Already? That was too fast,” Amelia Mae pouts.
“I wasn’t kidding when I said there wasn’t much to see.”
“Love, you’ve had a very long day. It’s time to wind down and get some sleep,” Fiona tells her. She turns to him. “That was lovely—thank you. But we never did talk shop.”
“That’s okay,” he says. “This was nice, too.”
“Well, I’d still like to if you’re game. We’re free tomorrow if you want to get together to discuss it,” she says, climbing out of the car.
He opens his mouth, but no words come out.
We’d like to get together!I think, slobbering on Amelia Mae to make sure she gets the message. She giggles and wipes her cheek before stepping onto the sidewalk.
The passenger door’s still ajar, and Fiona leans in to address Miguel. “Just give me a call if you feel up to it, okay?”
“Will do,” he says, and if that’s not a lingering gaze he’s giving her, then I’m an overgrown ferret.
“Bye, Harry!” Amelia Mae calls, walking backward as she waves. “I had the best time with you today!”
I did, too.
She and Fiona disappear into the bed-and-breakfast, but Miguel doesn’t drive away. Instead, he grips the steering wheel and stares at the lake in the distance.
Finally, he glances back at me and mutters, “Harold, if only feeling good for a change didn’t make me feel so bad.”
I know,Miguel,I think.I know.
Twenty-Three
I have not fulfilled my duty, but I am closer than I have been at any other point. Despite his guilt, Miguel was humming last night as he did the dishes that had been piling up in the sink. He even washed his sheets—and what is spontaneous laundry-doing if not a sign of a man who has found a reason to care again?
He does not love Fiona yet, but I believe he could.
Hecould.
Yet to my dismay, he does not call her the morning after our around-town excursion. And when he tells me he’s going out to run errands, I’m certain he’s not attempting to bump into Fiona and Amelia Mae at the farmer’s market, or wherever it is he’s going; otherwise, he’d say so, and probably bring me along for the journey. When he returns, I demonstrate my displeasure by refusing to look at him. Except he doesn’t even seem to notice! He just commands me to go outside because he was watching me like a hawk when I went into the yard this morning and he knows I didn’t finish my business. “Don’t run off again,” he warns when he opens the back door forme.
