Page 75 of The Lonely Hearts Book Club

“Look, I know you keep saying you don’t want to be paid for taking care of my grandfather, but—” I began.

She cut me off with atskof annoyance. “I know you mean well, Greg, but you have to stop offering us cash.” She moved toward a nearby garbage can and tossed the extra coffee in. It was on the tip of my tongue to cry out—I wanted to know what she’d picked for me, if it was dark and bitter or light and sweet—but I fortified myself with a sip of my own drink instead. I’d gotten myself a pumpkin spice latte, out of season and cloyingly spiced, but comforting all the same.

“I can’t help it,” I said as the cinnamon and cloves rolled over my taste buds. “I don’t know how else I’m supposed to show my thanks.”

We headed into the library shoulder to shoulder, our bodies careful not to touch as we squeezed through the door. I offered the tray of extra coffees to the woman standing at the checkout counter, an action that caused Sloane to look sideways at me.

“What?” I said uncomfortably. “I didn’t want to just throw them away.”

“You’re nothing like your grandfather,” she said, and in such a way that there was no option to refute her.

My feeling of discomfort only grew. “Of course I’m not. I barely know the guy. I don’t understand why everyone keeps expecting me to have all this insight into how he thinks or what’s going on with this Nigel Carthage business. As far as my grandfather is concerned, I’m just some random man his daughter gave birth to and who’s suddenly pushed his way into his life.”

Even though we were in a library and all my childhood training called on me to whisper and tiptoe, Sloane seemed perfectly at ease in her surroundings. Which made sense, considering how much time she’d spent in one.

“Do you know how I left him this morning?”

I was guessing she left him much the same way I had—by slipping out the door as soon as the coast and her conscience were clear—but she only kept watching me in that quiet, intensely scary way. If she’d been my librarian when I was a kid, I’d have probably given up on reading and taken to a life of crime instead. It would have been safer.

“I walked him over to Maisey’s house so he could spend the day with her,” she said.

“Wait.” I blinked. “Really? I thought you said she had to work.”

“She does. He wanted to, and I quote, ‘see a real charlatan in action.’”

I didn’t want to laugh in this place of reverence and stern librarian stares, but I did anyway. “That wasn’t very nice to poor Maisey.”

She answered me with a smile of her own, but there was something about it I didn’t quite trust. There was irony in that smile—irony at me.Forme.

“Are you kidding?” she said. “It was poor Maisey’s idea. She thought your grandfather might benefit from seeing human kindness being put into action. A few hours of listening to her patiently and gently helping people with their problems will do him a world of good.”

“Um…”

“He’ll argue with her, of course, and call her mean names, but I can’t think of anything better for Maisey right now. She’ll stand up for herself, and feed him, and with any luck not think about her daughter once all day.”

This was such a naively terrible idea that I couldn’t help but pause. “You think?”

“Iknow.” She reached for my hand—the one not holding the coffee—and squeezed it. This marked the first time she’d touched me, the first time she’d crossed over the barrier that surrounded me like a junkyard dog, and I felt it. So did she, if the quick way she dropped her fingers was any indication. Her color heightened, she added, “Objectively, it doesn’t make any sense—throwing the two of them together and hoping for the best. But Maiseylikesspending time with your grandfather, and strange though it seems, he likes spending time with her, too.”

I suspected that what they both really liked was pleasing Sloane, but I didn’t say so. For one thing, we needed to start our research if we wanted to uncover any answers about my grandfather and Nigel Carthage. For another, I wasn’t about to sit this woman down and explain how someone with soft eyes and a softer heart could make everyone around her better—not because they wanted to impress her or because they secretly feared she was taking advantage of an ornery old man, but because she was the only thing holding the entire world together.

“Well,” I said, drawing a deep breath and surveying the rows upon rows of books ahead of us. “You’re the expert. Where do we start?”

At the prospect of all this literary and encyclopedic splendor, Sloane grinned. “We start with the librarians, obviously. No one knows more about anything than they do.”

***

I could’ve spent three days inside the North Idaho College library poring through old alumni records and class schedules from the past five decades and not come up with a fraction of the information Sloane was able to get out of the college librarians in half an hour.

“I can’t believe you’re Professor McLachlan’s grandson,” said one of the librarians. We’d accosted him on his break, but he didn’t seem upset about it. If anything, he was almost starstruck to have met me. “I failed his Literary Theory class three times.Three.He was the best teacher I ever had.”

“That doesn’t sound like a very good teacher to me. I feel like I should offer you a refund.”

Sloane pushed her reading glasses to the top of her head. We sat around a conference table, stacks of papers from the seventies in front of us, and she couldn’t have been more delighted about any of it. Library people were weird. “Don’t listen to him. He’s always trying to give people money to make up for his grandfather’s terrible personality.”

“That must be an expensive habit,” said another librarian, this one carrying an armful of college yearbooks, their leather covers yellowed and cracking with age. She placed them reverently in front of me. “What would you pay if I told you he once called me a feckless waste of space?”

I sighed. That sounded exactly like something my grandfather would say, if only because I had no idea what that word meant. “I don’t know. Does fifty bucks sound fair?”