“Yes,” he said. “I’ll take it over London in February any day.”
“Or Fort Meriwether,” she said, smiling. “I mean…Astoria.” She scoffed. “Ridiculous name.”
“Don’t complain. They host a Rainy March Book Fair every March in your honor.”
“Really?” She blushed. “A book fair for me?”
“We used to go there every year when Maxine was feeling up to it. We would’ve lived there except Maxine’s health was too fragile for those brutal winters.”
“So why did she set my stories there then?”
“She’d visited once when she was younger. In the off-season. March. She didn’t realize how wet it would be, but she said it was the best trip of her life. She stayed inside and read the whole time. A weather reporter said something on the radio about it being a particularly ‘rainy March.’ And that’s where your name came from.”
“I knew it! Iwasnamed after a weather report!” She winced and looked at him. “Sorry. Got excited there.”
He gave a little laugh. “I’m sitting in the back of a limousine with a fictional character.”
“I’m sitting in the back of a limousine with the husband of my writer,” she said. “Crazy. Any theories on how this is happening?”
“I have one, but you might not believe me,” he said.
“Anthony,” she said, pursing her lips at him, “I fought Dracula.”
“All right, perhaps you will believe me.” He took a long breath. “Once, Maxine did a good deed. A deed so good, so brave, so self-sacrificial that the entire universe took notice.”
“Rosa,” Rainy said. “Reading the Nancy Drew book to Rosa when she was dying.”
“That was only the first part of the story. There’s more.”
He took a ragged breath and Rainy almost stopped him. Talking about Maxine was so clearly agony for him, like walking on glass, the broken glass that had once been their life together.
“If you don’t want to talk about her—”
“I’ve seen people lose loved ones before,” he said. “The day will come when I’ll want to talk about her, and no one will be willing to listen. If you’ll listen, I’ll tell you.”
“I’ll listen.”
He sat back in his seat and glanced out the window, as if it were easier to speak without making eye contact.
“Maxine was sick for weeks. What was worse, of course, was…Well, you’ve readThe Velveteen Rabbit.You know what happens when a child has scarlet fever, what happens to their toys, their clothes…their books.”
“They burned her books?” Rainy asked.
Anthony nodded. “They had to. She stood at the window and watched them make a bonfire in a bin in the back garden. In went herclothes. In went her sheets. In went Nancy Drew andThe Secret of the Old Clock.In went her composition notebook and all the little stories Maxine had written starring her and Nancy Drew together.”
“No wonder Maxine was so upset by book burnings. It had happened to her.”
“I think it took some of her will to live. She got much, much worse after that. They finally took her to the hospital. The girls at St. Sophia’s pooled their few nickels and pennies and bought her a get-well gift. A used, falling-apart copy ofThe Secret of the Old Clock.You would’ve thought it was a teddy bear. Maxine slept with it under her pillow.”
He cleared his throat.
“One night,” he continued, “Maxine woke up. A girl with blond hair wearing a blue dress with a matching hat stood by her bed.”
“Nancy Drew?” Rainy breathed.
“The very one. Maxine’s hero, her favorite character, her best friend. She told Maxine she had a surprise for her. She worked a little magic, and suddenly the used copy of the book became a nice brand-new copy. She told Maxine to get better so they could share more adventures together. It worked. Maxine got better. When she told me that, I thought she’d dreamed it but…well, now I think that Maxine simply loved Nancy Drew into existence.”
“I always thought only Book Witches could do that,” Rainy said. “Was Maxine a Book Witch?”
