Page 68 of The Lonely Hearts Book Club

“No. But I heard from Cap and he gave me a full update.” She sighed and scuffed the tape line with the toe of her sneaker. “Do you think what Mateo said the other day was true? About teenage girls being—what did he call them?—heinous bitches?”

She said that last bit as though there was a chance that Bella might overhear, like the girl was so ingrained in this room that a part of her lingered. I answered with equal care. As much as I appreciated Mateo’s attempt at comfort, I don’t think he quite understood the depths of Maisey’s despair.

“Do I think all teenage girls are like that? No. Do I think Bella might have a little bit of heinous bitch in her?” I hesitated. I’d overheard enough of the conversation between the two of them to make lying impossible. “Maybe. You deserved a better goodbye than that.”

Maisey adopted the voice all of us were starting to use whenever we quoted a passage from the book we were reading. “‘I am ashamed she is ashamed. Because she is my daughter and I am proud of her, and I am her mother but she is not proud of me.’” She sighed and sagged against the doorframe. “I finished reading between my calls this morning, in case you couldn’t tell. Maybe Bella will be like Jing-Mei and finally come around to loving me once I’m dead.”

Suddenly remembering who she was talking to, Maisey slapped a hand over her mouth. “Oh God. I’m so sorry, Greg. I didn’t mean—”

“It’s fine,” I was quick to say. Itwasn’tfine, obviously, but I mostly wished another member of the book club was here to help. Mateo would say something irreverent and caustic. Sloane could pull out some sentimental, deeper meaning from the text. Even my grandfather might have been able to put things in an academic context. But the only thing I’d been able to glean from the book was mothers were one hell of a gift in this world, and we all just fucking wasted them.

“My mom and I got along really well,” I said, since it seemed like I needed to say something to divert her attention. “Toowell, according to all the Freudian scholars out there, but she always said she had a great role model to mold herself after. Her mother. My grandmother.”

“Really?” Maisey took a step into the room, her toes nudging across the line. “Arthur never talks about any of this.”

I grimaced. “He wouldn’t.”

Maisey made a gesture for me to continue. It was so nice to talk about my mom withanyonethat I doubted I’d have been able to stop even if a train had burst through the room.

“My grandmother died young. Too young, a few weeks after my mom turned twelve.” From breast cancer, but I didn’t want to say that part out loud. Too many women in my family had fallen on that particular sword. “It would’ve been tragic foranylittle girl, but my mom was left alone in that house with Arthur. For six whole years, it was just the two of them facing their grief alone.”

I let the words settle for a moment, feeling the real weight of them for the first time. I’d always known that my grandfather was a difficult man, even as a kid when the only difficult thing I had to do was remember to make my bed every morning. On the few instances when I’d met him, he’d always seemed more of an ogre than a person, the wicked wizard in the fairy tales my mom used to read to me at bedtime. In fact, she used to spin him exactly like that, building him up to be a creature to be vanquished by anyone brave enough to try.

Now that I knew him less as a mythical being and more like a hard, tyrannical man who could only be reached on an intellectual level, I understood what my mom must have really endured. Not evil in the way the books made it out—a twirling mustachioed bad guy plotting the hero’s downfall—but the pain of a thousand imperceptible cuts. Of closed doors and angry meals, of a pain she’d been forced to endure alone.

I knew, because I was enduring that same pain. I’d been enduring it for five long months.

“Your poor mother,” Maisey said now, the words coming out in a whoosh of air. She stepped even further into the room. “And poor Arthur. Some men get like that, you know, when they lose the person they love most. I get their calls a lot. They have all these jumbled-up emotions—anger and grief and deep, overwhelming despair—but the one person they trusted with those emotions is gone. It’s the saddest thing. What are you supposed to do with your heart when it’s already been buried six feet deep?”

“You pretend,” Sloane said, suddenly appearing behind her. I had no way of knowing how long she’d been standing in the hallway listening, but from the quiet way she spoke, it was long enough. “You go through the motions as best you can, knowing deep down that you’ll only experience half the life you were promised.”

“Oh good.” Mateo popped up before any of us could respond. He clearly hadn’t heard a word of what we’d said, because he rubbed his hands together and cast a glance like a lasso roping us all in. “Everyone’s here. We need to talk.”

I didn’t know whether or not I was relieved that our conversation was interrupted, but there was no chance for me to decide. Throwing himself across the masking tape line and onto Bella’s bed, Mateo broke every barrier we had.

“Our book club is being infiltrated from the outside, and I need your help figuring out why.”

***

“According to Google, Nigel Carthage is an award-winning Shakespeare scholar. Never married, lots of review publications under his belt, no controversies to speak of. Though he did have one very sassy exchange with Stephen King over Twitter.”

Sloane turned her laptop to face us. Sure enough, the saturnine face of America’s favorite horror writer stared out at us from across Maisey’s living room. Maisey had somehow managed to materialize a full plate of tea sandwiches, but no one was doing much in the way of eating.

“Apparently, they disagreed about the recent influx of television adaptations of Shirley Jackson books,” Sloane said. “The whole thing is kind of funny, actually.”

“Ugh, Sloane. You’re terrible at this.” Mateo yanked the laptop from her and started furiously typing. At least, he typed as furiously as anyone using the one-finger hunt-and-peck technique could. Each press of the key clacked loud and determined. “If we want to find out what this guy is really up to, we can’t look on the nice parts of the internet. We need to go to the dark side.”

“Twitteristhe dark side,” she protested. “People get really mean on there sometimes.”

Mateo ignored her and peered closer at the screen. “Hmm. He speaks fluent French. His middle name is Bernard. Oh, ew. He really needs to visit a podiatrist. And for the bargain price of $19.99, we could run a full background check. Just in case anyone wants to volunteer their credit card information.”

No one did. Heaving a long sigh, Maisey held out her hand. “Give me the laptop.”

Mateo held the laptop closer. “Uh, no offense, Maisey, but I doubt you’ll find anything except more fungus on his toenails.”

Instead of saying anything, Maisey waggled her fingers.

“Fine, but don’t say I didn’t warn you,” he said, handing it over. “It’s ninety percent book reviews.”