M. K. Stelmack - Coming Home To You

Judy growled, picked up the nearest thing at hand—a thick, shiny hardcover from James Patterson—and slammed it on the counter. Tuque Girl jumped in her seat. “You have got to be kidding me. What was the excuse this time?”

Mel shrugged. “The usual. It wasn’t me. It was her.”

Judy shook her head. “Women are insane. I have lost all confidence in my gender. All. You’re a great catch. Own your own business. Own your own place. Excellent health. No criminal record. You clean up good.”

“Why is it again that we don’t date each other?” Mel said.

“I like you too much,” Judy said.

“I knew it was something,” Mel said. “Listen, about the book?”

“You tell me the real reason you want it, and I’ll check to see if we have it.”

He didn’t want to bring up his discussion with Daphne. His time with her in his truck felt...well, not intimate but...private and new. Like an unbelievable bargain at an auction. “I could go check the shelves myself.”

“You could, but what would you do if we needed to order it in?”

“I could do that online.” It occurred to him that he might have a copy in the stack of old books he had in storage. No, more convenient to go through the library.

“I could figure out how to access your account and delete your request.”

“You can’t—” He sighed. “Ok, fine. I met a woman who’s reading it. She’s a professor.”

“Was this before or after Linda broke up with you?”

People shouldn’t change on his account. Still, he wouldn’t mind if Judy took up whispering. Everyone at the terminals—all six pale, acned kids—was staring. Apparently Mel’s love life trumped avatars on missions. “During,” he muttered.

“This I gotta hear.”

“You heard about the motor home that hit Tim Hortons?”

“Who hasn’t?”

“Linda and I were there and this woman was in the motor home.”

“You’re interested in the woman who drove into Tim Hortons?”

“No, her goddaughter. She was the passenger. And I’m not interested in her . She said something interesting, is all.” He had to get this moving. If he gave Judy enough time, she would drag every last detail about Daphne from him. “Could you check on the book now?”

Judy set to tapping the keys, humming. She could do nothing silently. She even talked in her sleep, which had contributed to the breakdown of her third marriage to an insomniac. “If she was in the motor home, is she even from around here?”

“Halifax.”

She frowned. “Then why—”

“The book, please.”

She typed and hummed. “Not here. I can bring it in, but it’ll take a week. However, we do have the complete works of Jane Austen in one book. Do you want that one?”

“I do,” he said.

Judy retrieved from the stacks an oversize hardcover book with old-fashioned illustrations and letters the size of ground black pepper.

“You’re squinting,” Judy said. “We’ve got the movies, too.”

“That’s fine,” Mel said. He didn’t like to watch movies alone. Especially funny ones. Laughing in an empty room made him feel loony. “But order the books separately. I don’t want to carry this brick around for longer than I have to.”

Checking it out required buying a library card, his patronage of the library before today having consisted entirely of chatting with Judy. When he would’ve taken the book, she held on to it and said in a voice that only he could hear, “Professor or not, there’s no point trying to catch someone who’s already on the move.”

First Linda, then Daphne and now Judy. All telling him not to settle. He tugged the book free from Judy’s hold. “I know that. All I’m catching is up on my reading.”

* * *

“DAPHNE MERLOTTE, YOU will give me those keys right now or I’ll—I’ll...”

Fran scanned the interior of The Stagecoach.

She had been released from the hospital after one night of observation under strict orders not to drive for five days until her body had adjusted to the new painkillers. The one hundred and twentieth hour had now passed, and she was determined to make it to the mountains before nightfall.

Only, she was not better. Her siestas nearly lasted all afternoon now, and when Daphne had arrived back from her walk this morning, she’d smelled the cloying scent of air freshener over the acrid stench of vomit.

Fran had denied all knowledge and spent the morning bustling around the motor home in preparation for a late-afternoon departure, scattering Daphne’s books and papers before Daphne hustled them all into the safety of cupboards and boxes.

Daphne could say nothing to dissuade Fran. Repairs to the RV were not yet done. Fran’s answer: Daphne’s fault for not seeing to it during the last five days. Her prescriptions were only partly filled. Fran’s answer: Daphne’s fault for walking the town instead of getting them filled. They didn’t have enough groceries. Fran’s answer was, of course, that Daphne was to blame.

Accusations that weren’t entirely untrue, yet belied Fran’s basic unfitness behind the wheel.

Desperate, Daphne had seized the RV keys.

Now Fran snatched Daphne’s Sense and Sensibility from the couch.

“Give me the keys or I’ll rip this up!”

Fran had it stretched open exactly in the middle, where Marianne learns of Willoughby’s deception. Nearly every word was underlined, and Daphne’s notes trailed up the side. She had inputted all her notes into her digital copy but still, this limp, dog-eared paperback grounded her. And Fran knew it.

Daphne gripped the keys so hard they cut into her palm. “I will not give you the keys.”

No one called Fran Hertz’s bluff and got away with it. Not breaking eye contact, Fran started pulling at the binding. The book sagged and twisted, but despite the worn spine, it didn’t tear. She was too weak.

Daphne’s heart folded like the book. “Fran, listen—”

Fran tossed the book into the kitchen sink, flung open a drawer and took out the barbecue lighter. Then she set Daphne’s beloved volume on fire.

Daphne screamed and ran for the sink, flipping on the water, which, if possible, damaged the book even more. She opened the door and slid open all the windows and set the fans whirring on high. She turned to Fran, who was sitting with a straight back and crossed knees at the small square dining table. “You knew how much the book meant to me.”

“It meant too much. More than me.”

Daphne drew a deep breath of damp smoke. “How can you say that?”

“You’ve had your nose stuck in one book or another from the moment we left Halifax.”

Fran was right. Daphne had deliberately ignored her. To talk long to Fran was to see not only the imminent death of her godmother, but of her entire family. Since the car accident that had killed Daphne’s parents when she was sixteen, Fran was Daphne’s one claim to family. And through Fran, she’d gained admittance to Moshe’s family. Once Fran was gone, in a few short months, Daphne would be well and truly alone. Better to bury herself in a book than confront the grief that hunkered in her heart.

“What else do you want me to do? I can’t drive, and by the way, I’m writing a book. I have a deadline.” It wouldn’t advance her argument to say that the deadline was more self-imposed than real.

“An utterly irrelevant book.” Fran waved her hand with its slipping rings, the polish chipped from two of her usually impeccably polished nails. “Who cares if a bunch of fictional characters experienced hard times?”

Fran had never criticized Daphne’s work before; she had instead lampooned Daphne’s marriageless, childless, near-friendless, petless life.