Page 76 of The Lonely Hearts Book Club

All three of them—Sloane and her two new library friends—laughed.

“At that rate, you’d better be Jeff Bezos,” the male librarian said with a grin. “Your grandfather was a teacher here for over forty years. You might want to start with a lower bid and work your way up.”

“Hey.” Sloane’s hand covered mine with a quick, friendly squeeze. “It’s okay. You don’t have to keep apologizing for him. My parents are just as unpleasant, and I haven’t tried reimbursing you for your Airbnb yet, have I?”

My fingers twitched underneath hers. As if by unspoken agreement, we’d never mentioned the day of our meeting—of the tight-lipped way she’d ridden that elevator, of how small and scared andsadshe’d seemed during that visit to the basement.

“No,” I said slowly, as if once again hiding in a corner to avoid startling her. “And now that you mention it, Ididpay through the whole month.”

She slid her hand away, but with a smile that I had no choice but to return. For weeks, I’d been terrified of what would happen if I found myself alone with Sloane again, but this was good. This was better than good, actually.

We were being friendly. We were beingfriends.

The female librarian tapped the stack of paperwork with the tip of her pen. “Okay, so everything here is admin—class registers and syllabus information, things like that. And over here”—she touched the yearbooks—“you’ll find stuff about extracurriculars, clubs, et cetera. We’re working on pulling up his academic research and publications, but that could take a little longer.”

“What are we hoping to find?” the male librarian asked with an eagerness that seemed misplaced, given how dull the subject matter was.

“We aren’t sure yet,” Sloane said as she dived into the paperwork. “But we’ll let you know when we find it.”

We found it five minutes later.

It was a little disappointing, to be honest—not that I was able to uncover the mystery so quickly, but that the answers were so easily available…and that my latte didn’t even have time to grow cold first. I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to this fun, playful version of Sloane. Or, to be more specific, to this fun, playful version ofme.

I hadn’t seen this Greg in a long time. I missed him.

“Look at this.” With surprisingly steady hands, I turned the yearbook from 1973 around to show Sloane. A black-and-white photo of a faculty dinner sat in the center. My grandfather, looking robust and happy in a checkered scarf and voluminous pants, stood next to a bespectacled Black man in pants of equally alarming breadth. The caption underneath identified them as clearly as if they were in the room with us—Arthur McLachlan and Nigel Carthage, PhD.

Which, okay, wasn’t the most illuminating thing in the world. Obviously, they’d known each other, and obviously, this college was where it had happened. But the fact that they both had their arms around a slight, pretty woman in a pinafore—and that they were both smiling at her as if she were the only person in the photo, the room, theworld—told its own tale.

Especially since I recognized her at a glance. I’d never met her and never would, but I knew that slightly upturned nose and wide forehead as if they belonged to me.

Mostly because they did.

“Oh, what a nice photo of your grandfather,” Sloane said, unaware as of yet that the world was slipping and sliding beneath us. “He looks so happy—he and Nigel both. This proves they must have been friends once upon a time…but I don’t understand. Who’s this woman? Her name isn’t captioned.”

“Her name is—was—Eugenia Pittsfield.”

Sloane must have picked up on the emotion in my voice because her expression became immediately subdued. I don’t know what it was about her that could so easily echo the numbness in my veins, but she seemed to know instinctively that my blood had gone cold. “Was?” she echoed.

“My grandmother.”

26

“It’s a love triangle! Iknewit was a love triangle.” Maisey held her hand to her chest and swooned so hard she fell across my grandfather’s couch. “I love love triangles.”

“Slow down.” Mateo lifted Maisey’s feet and settled himself on the cushion next to her, neither one of them finding anything odd in the familiar, comfortable position. “It’s one picture, not a written confession. For all we know, Arthur and Nigel are looking longingly at a cake. Or each other.”

Maisey lifted her head long enough to glare at Mateo. “Don’t ruin this for me. This is the closest I’ve gotten to real romance in years.”

“The two of them looking longingly at each otherisromantic. Maybe Nigel has come to claim Arthur after all these years.”

Sloane intervened before the two could take their squabble any further. “Whatever it is, can we please keep our voices down? Arthur will be up from his nap any minute, and the last thing we want is for him to know about this.”

“Is it?” I asked, unable to help myself. It wasn’t my fault. This whole thing with my grandmother had thrown me for a serious loop. “What would happen if we just came out and asked him about Nigel? What’s the worst he could do? Call us names? Throw us out? Disband our book club once and for all?”

Since these were all things he’d done and/or threatened to do on multiple occasions, I felt pretty confident about throwing caution—and my grandfather—to the wind. Until, of course, he spoke.

“What about Nigel?”