Page 77 of The Lonely Hearts Book Club

Everyone in the room turned to find my grandfather standing a few feet away, clutching the doorframe so hard that we could count each vein on the marbled topography of his hand.

“Arthur!” Sloane exclaimed. She started up as if to help him but changed her mind at the last second. “We thought you were asleep.”

“I’m sorry. Do you need me to leave so you can sit around and talk about me like I’m a feeble old man? To hatch and scheme and conspire against me?”

This speech seemed a touch dramatic, even for a man who could create drama out of the daily delivery of theCoeur d’Alene Press.

“No one is conspiring against you,” I said. “We were just discussing the possibility of expanding the book club. Who’s Nigel Carthage?”

All of the heat of the room seemed to vanish at once, which was odd considering how inflamed my grandfather got. In an instant, he went from a slightly stooped, sleepy curmudgeon to the devil himself. His nostrils flared and his color heightened, his blood boiling over for everyone to see. Even before he started speaking, I could see everyone wincing at what was to come.

Thatwas the man my mother had run from.Thatwas the man she’d begged me to return to.

“Don’t you dare speak that name out loud again,” he said.

I dared. After all, he and I were cut from the same coarse cloth. “Nigel Carthage? Why? What did you do to him?”

“That man is never to be mentioned inside this house again, do you understand?” My grandfather lifted a finger and pointed it around the room like a witch cursing a blasphemous kingdom. “I’ve borne the four of you taking over my house and my bookshelves, listened to you share your wrong opinions on literature and sob endlessly about your personal problems, but this is where I draw the line. It’s down, it’s permanent, and I won’t hear a single syllable otherwise. Got it?”

I didn’t agree with almost everything my grandfather had just leveled at our heads, but I knew a dressing-down when I heard one. So, it seemed, did everyone else.

“I’m sorry, Arthur.” Maisey swung her legs from Mateo’s lap and sat contrite, her head hanging. “We didn’t realize he was a sore subject.”

Her quick apology did little to alleviate my grandfather’s wrath. “He isn’t a sore subject. He’s a man who belongs buried in the past where I left him. How would you like it if I brought up how badly you’d mishandled your relationship with your daughter?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Maisey said, her color bright.

Even though she obviouslydidknow what he was talking about—and wanted to shut the conversation down as politely as she could—but my grandfather kept going. “For God’s sake, woman. You call yourself a psychic, but you’re the most obtuse person I’ve ever met. Dandelions have more introspection than you.”

A pained expression twisted her features. “That’s not true.”

“Any idiot could see that what that child needed wasspace, not some overbearing helicopter mom without a life to call her own. It’s no wonder she went to another state to get away from you. How else was she supposed to escape your endless prattle?”

“Now, see here—” I began, but my grandfather only turned to Sloane next.

“And you.” He laughed with a callousness that felt foreign, even for him. “What if I mentioned the promotion that your boss gave to Mateo instead of to you, even though you’re vastly more qualified for it?”

“Hey! I’m just as qualified as she is,” Mateo protested, but my grandfather wasn’t done yet. His cruelty was only starting.

“Both of you run around and yammer on about books like theymeansomething, but it’s obvious you’ve never learned a thing from them. If you had, you wouldn’t waste your time following dreams that belong to someone else. Sloane, marrying a man who will bore her to tears within six months. Mateo, shuffling through careers that mean nothing to him.” He opened his mouth in a soundless laugh. “And why? Because you’re too chickenshit to do something that really matters? So afraid of failure that you’re both willing to lie down before you even try to stand? I thought we were finally starting to get somewhere, but I see I was wrong.”

“Grandpa, you’ve done enough—”

It was no use. He turned his ammunition toward me next. I knew, even before he spoke, what was coming. Already, I could feel myself flinching away from him, curving my body in an effort to prevent the blows from landing on my vital parts.

“And you. My grandson. My legacy.” He practically spat the last word out at me. “It took you all of six months to come crawling back after your mother died.”

Five.It was five.

His upper lip curled. “Hannah would have been ashamed to see you hunkering on that hospital bed in the corner, begging for whatever scraps of affection I decide to give you. Thank God she can’t see you now. The day she left, she swore she’d never willingly cross my threshold again—not for all the money in the world, not if I got on my knees and begged. Dammit if she didn’t stick to her word to her dying breath. You might be twice her size, but you’ll never be worth half of her.”

There were no defensive maneuvers for this kind of attack—at least, not any that I’d learned. I could parry and slip with the best of them, but there was nothing I could do to stop his words from driving hard and deep.

“What would she say if she could see you now?” he demanded. “What would she think if she knew how quickly you’d fall?”

I had no idea when everyone in the room had started moving, but when I finally managed to breathe, it was to find that Maisey, Sloane, and Mateo had formed a protective arc in front of me.

“Don’t you dare say another word,” Sloane said in a voice so hard and distant that it sounded as if it was coming from someone else. “I don’t care if thisisyour house. You have no right to speak to another human being that way.”