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When the banging on my roof began, I abandoned the book, stopped hitting refresh on my email, and headed out to the street. At first, I couldn’t see anything, but then he appeared.
Jeans. No shirt. All … Nolan.
“What the heck are you doing up there?”
He came too close to the roof’s edge for my liking.
“Fixing your roof. Your gutter’s half melted and the flashing’s toast.”
He had a million jobs to do, his hardware shop was closed which means he wasn’t making money and … he was fixing my roof?
“Nolan,” I scolded. “I know full well how many jobs you have. The insurance guy is supposed to come this week. Why are you fixing my roof?”
“Now that is one fine-looking repairman.”
A group of four women, girls’ trip most likely, stopped next to me.
“He can fix my roof anytime,” another said.
“Is the bookstore open?” asked a third.
“Sure is. Don’t mind the banging though.”
“I don’t mind it at all,” said the one who originally spotted him as the others giggled and headed into the store. The brunette stood with me, apparently content to watch Nolan on my roof. To be fair, she wasn’t wrong. “Even in his prime, my husband never had more than one ab. I’m not sure that I’ve seen a six-pack in real life.”
Nolan, who apparently could hear us, chuckled.
“If you ladies are done admiring the goods,” he patted his very fine-looking stomach, “I’ll get back to work.”
“Nolan,” I called, attempting to reprimand him, but he’d already walked away. Sighing, I shook my head and escorted the woman into my shop.
“You don’t look happy about him being up there,” she observed.
“I’m not. He’s a friend, doing me a favor.” Because I’d told him I was worried about it getting fixed.
She blinked. Smiled. “Uh, just stating the obvious but, he didn’t look at you like a friend. Excuse me a sec, I’m getting summoned.”
With that, I was alone again in the shop's front, Nolan’s banging above me, and the tourist’s words echoing in my ears.
He didn’t look at you like a friend.
She wasn’t the first, or even the fiftieth, person to say that. My friends, my parents … pretty much everyone had been shipping Nolan and I for years. But usually they said things like, “You’d make a perfect couple.” That was very different from “He didn’t look at you like a friend.”
Was that true?
My reverie was interrupted by one of the women purchasing a mug. At first, I’d resisted selling anything but actual books, but the bills had to be paid and the cutesy bookish and wine related items flew off the shelves. Catering to wine-country tourists kept the doors open.
For a few blessed moments, I’d forgotten about the chronicle until I opened my email.
Subject: Re: Inquiry on De Cura Sanguinis Manuscript
Lena,
If the title page also bears the same embossed crest as the cover, that split cross encircled by vines, then what you have isn’t a copy. It’s a Father Simon original, or a very convincing forgery.
That chronicle was believed lost in the mid-fourteenth century. The title’s translation, by the way, isn’t “Cure of Blood” but “The Keeping of Blood.” That distinction has… unsettling implications. I’d like to see it myself, but please handle it carefully in the meantime.
– Dr. Hensley
P.S. The title's meaning is disputed, but some scholars believe "Keeping" refers to binding. Not preserving, but “holding” something across time. Blood memory, perhaps. Or souls seeking their mirrors. Just something to note.
Handle it carefully? That had to be the most understated warning in history.
I fired off an email, hoping to connect with him sooner rather than later, and somehow put the book from my mind. Not that Dr. Hensley totally validated that I hadn’t lost my mind—clearly there was something strange about that text—but it was a plan. A start.
I wasn’t alone.
By the time I ate lunch with Nolan, grabbing us hoagies and trying to ignore his bare stomach that had suddenly become such a distraction, I'd made up my mind. I quickly changed for the night to meet Mazzie's author musician and decided … I was done being controlled by a book. It was time for some answers, and now the book would answer to me.
