Book Lovers

LIBBY HOISTS ME out of Hardy’s cab, toward the sound of chatter, and positions me for optimal drama. “Ta-da!”

I pull down the scarf-cum-blindfold she made me wear and blink against the pink and orange of dusk. I’m facing an elementary school’s marquee.

TONIGHT, 7 P.M.

SUNSHINE FALLS COMMUNITY THEATER PRESENTS:

ONCE IN A LIFETIME

“Oh,” I say. “My. God.”

She lets out a wordless shriek of excitement. “See? Local theater! Everything New York has, you can find right here too!”

“That is . . . quite the leap.”

Libby giggles, hooking an arm around me. “Come on. The tickets are general admission, and I want to get popcorn and good seats.”

I’m not sure there’s such thing as “good seats” when you’re choosing from rows of folding chairs in a school gymnasium. The stage is elevated, meaning we’ll be craning our necks for the length of the play, but as soon as the house lights drop, it’s clear the seating arrangement is the least of this production’s issues.

“Oh my god,” Libby whispers, gripping my arm as an actor shuffles out in front of the painted apothecary backdrop. He wanders to the prop counter and gazes wistfully at a framed picture there.

“No,” I whisper.

“Yes!” she hisses.

Old Man Whittaker is being played by a child.

“What about the drug abuse?!” Libby says.

“What about the overdose?!” I say.

“He can’t even be thirteen, right?” Libby whispers.

“He has the voice of a ten-year-old choirboy!”

Someone harrumphs near us, and Libby and I sink in our chairs, chastened. At least until Mrs. Wilder—the owner of the lending library—comes onto the stage and I have to turn my bark of laughter into a cough.

Libby wheezes beside me. “Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god.” She’s not looking at the stage, just staring at her feet and trying not to explode.

I drop my voice next to her ear: “What do you think the age gap is between these actors? Sixty-eight years?”

She clears her throat to keep a handle on her would-be laughter.

The woman playing Mrs. Wilder could easily be Old Man Whittaker’s grandmother.

Hell, maybe she is. “Maybe little Delilah Tyler will be played by the family Rottweiler,” I whisper. Libby flings herself forward over her belly, hiding her face as her shoulders quake with silent laughter.

Another dirty look from the woman to our right. Sorry, I mouth. Allergies. She rolls her eyes, looks away.

Into Libby’s ear, I whisper, “Uh-oh, Whittaker’s mommy is mad.”

She bites my shoulder, like she’s trying not to scream. Onstage, Little Boy Whittaker grabs his back and winces out the F-word at the pain of his character’s chronically pinched nerves.

Libby squeezes my hand so hard it feels like she might break it.

“It is very clear,” she whispers haltingly, “that small, bearded child has yet to experience physical pain.”

“That boy has yet to experience the dropping of his testicles,” I reply.

As if to disprove this, his next line sends his voice lurching, cracking into a squeak that makes Libby scrunch her eyes shut and cross her legs. “I will not pee myself!”

We stare at our feet, erupting into silent shivers of laughter every few minutes. It’s the most fun I’ve had in years.

Whatever else is happening, with Brendan, with the apartment, with my sister, right now, we’re us, like we haven’t been for a long time.

The second the play ends, Libby and I sprint out. We’re both about to lose it and would rather do so privately. Halfway to the marquee, a cheery voice stops us.

“Nora! Libby?” Sally Goode cuts a trail toward us, alongside a blond behemoth of a man using a wheelchair. Her dimpled smile is Charlie-esque; the cloud of jasmine and marijuana in which she arrives is not. It’s hard to imagine structured, sharp-edged Charlie being raised by this woodsy, freewheeling waif.

“Fancy seeing you here!” Libby sings.

“Small towns and all that,” Sally says. “I don’t think y’all have met my husband?”

“Clint,” the man offers. “Pleasure to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you,” Libby and I say in unison.

He asks, “What’d you think of the play?”

Libby and I exchange a panicked look.

“Oh, don’t make them answer that.” Sally swats his arm, smiling. “At least not before the salon. You gotta come—we always have friends over for drinks and pie after a show.”

“This is a regular occurrence?” My sister almost chokes over the words. We’re still too slaphappy to be having this conversation.

“They do four shows a year,” Sally says.

Clint’s brow lifts. “Is that all? Seems like a lot more.”

Libby swallows a laugh, but a squeak still makes it out of her throat.

“Please say you’ll come,” Sally pleads.

“Oh, we couldn’t intrude—” I begin.

“Nonsense!” she cries. “There’s no such thing as intruding in Sunshine Falls. Or did you not just watch the same play as us?”

“We definitely watched it,” Libby mumbles.

Sally hands her purse to her husband and digs through it for a scrap of paper and a pen, then jots down an address. “We’re just on the other side of the woods and up the path from you.” She hands the paper to Libby. “But there’s a street and driveway that runs right up to our house, if you don’t feel like tromping through the dark.”

She doesn’t wait for an RSVP or even a reply. They’re moving off, the crowd bottlenecking behind us.

“Oh, Boris did wonderfully,” an older gentleman is saying. “And only eleven years old!”

Libby squeezes my hand, and we take off down the sidewalk, giggling like preteens high on Mountain Dew.

The Lastra-Goode home sits at the end of a long drive lined with mature oaks. It’s far enough outside town that there’s little light to interrupt the sparkling blanket of night sky overhead or the masses of fireflies blinking in the shrubs.

It’s a two-story colonial, with white siding and freshly painted black shutters. In the oversized driveway, around ten cars are already parked, with another pulling in behind us as Hardy stops to let us out.

As we approach the front doors, Libby gazes up at the front of the cozy house and says dreamily, “I would pay a million dollars to be here on Christmas.”

“I guess that explains why Brendan does the budgeting.”

Libby’s arm stiffens through mine. I glance over at her. She’s paled a bit too. I can’t tell if she looks stressed or sick, or both. Either way, the knot of dread gives a sharp pulse behind my rib cage, a reminder that even in those hours when it shrinks, it never vanishes.

I jog her arm. “Is everything okay, Lib?”

Her surprise melts into neutrality. “Of course! Why wouldn’t it be?”

“I just mean, if you need anything,” I say, “you know I’d always—”

“Hello, hello!” Sally calls, swinging the door open. “Come on in!” She has to shout to be heard as she ushers us through the jasmine-scented front hall toward the thunder-roll of laughter and hum of overlapping conversations at the back of the house. “Just so you know, we typically pretend everything was good.”

“Excuse me?” I say.

Her smile deepens her crow’s feet. She looks every bit like a woman in her sixties, and all the more striking for it, in a woodsy, sun-beaten way.

“The play,” she clarifies. “Or when it’s a ceramics show, or a craft market, or whatever else: We pretend it’s good. At least until we’ve had a couple rounds.” She pats our shoulders and moves off, calling, “Make yourselves at home!”

“I’m gonna need everyone to make it through a couple rounds real quick,” Libby says.

“What I was saying outside, Lib—”

She squeezes my arms. “I’m good, Nora. I’ve just been off because I’m having this restless leg thing that interrupts my sleep. Stop worrying and just—enjoy our vacation, okay?”

The more she insists everything’s fine, the more sure I am that it’s not. But as has been the case for years, she’s just shuttered at the first sign of worry.

This is how it is. She never asks for help, so I have to figure out what she needs and how to get it to her in a way she feels okay about accepting.

Even with her wedding dress, I had to pretend to track down a sample sale and get a damaged dress at a discount, when actually I put it on a card and smudged some concealer inside the bodice myself.

But with this—I don’t even know where to start.

Oh god.

A sudden, terrifying clarity hits me like a sandbag to the stomach. The list. All these homages to Libby’s almost-futures: building, baking, bookstore . . . marketing.

Is this all some foray back into the working world? Or a way to prove she could survive on her own if she needed to? Three weeks away from her husband. I should’ve thought that was strange. Especially with how strange she’s been acting. Especially more than five months along in her pregnancy.

She loves Brendan, I remind myself. Even if they’re going through something, buckling under the stress of a new baby, that can’t have changed.

My clothes feel too tight, too hot. I look around, searching for something to focus on, to ground myself with. My gaze catches on Clint, standing with a walker across the crowded kitchen, then over to the equally tall, though far younger and brawnier man beside him.

“Wooow,” Libby says, clocking Shepherd at the same time I do.

His green eyes find mine, and he murmurs something to Clint before extricating himself and sauntering our way.

“Oh my god,” Libby says. “Is that archangel coming toward us right now?”

“Shepherd,” I say, distracted by the hamster wheel of worries spinning inside my skull.

Libby asks, “Is that a shepherd coming toward us?”

“No, his name is—”

“Ohhhh. Shepherd,” she says, realization dawning, right as he stops in front of us.

“See,” he says, beaming. “This is why you’ve gotta love small towns.”