Page 9 of The Lonely Hearts Book Club

“They’ll stop eventually,” I promised.

“That’s what they all say.”

Since the man showed no signs of leaving me to my business, I started backing slowly away. My heel thumped against an empty box, and I faltered.

That was when he noticed me—I mean,reallynoticed me—for the first time. A little nervous and a lot shy, a key pointing outward from my fist. He took one look at me and uttered a low curse that would have done Arthur McLachlan proud.

It was on the tip of my tongue to apologize, but he didn’t stick around long enough for me to form the words. With an abruptness that left me dizzy, he turned on his heel and returned to the elevator. It swallowed him in one quick bite, leaving me all alone and with far more adrenaline than I knew what to do with.

“O-kay then,” I said, relieved and feelingsillyfor being relieved, hoping the sound of my own voice would inject some normalcy into the scene. It didn’t, but I’d never been one to give up a lost cause. “I’d say that went well.”

I hesitated, half expecting a reply, but there was no sound down here. It was just me and my echoing footsteps. Me and the rattling of the storage cage door swinging open. Me and the thump of the dusty boxes that contained everything I used to be.

It didn’t take long to find what I was looking for. My parents may have had a messy relationship, but they were scrupulously tidy when it came to every other aspect of their lives. My own apartment was a disaster of dirty laundry, dishes, and far more knickknacks than any person under the age of eighty should own. Brett hated it, and had mentioned on more than one occasion that my hoarding couldn’t continue after our marriage, but I didn’t know how to explain to him that Ineededthe upheaval of mess all around me.

That upheaval meant I was living. Notwell, obviously, and not in any way that would spark envy among home renovation enthusiasts, but enough so that some evidence of my existence remained. Even the smallest, most insignificant Roman housewife got to leave her shards of pottery behind.

The box of my college belongings was smaller than I remembered and composed primarily of old, battered textbooks and sweatshirts emblazoned with the University of Washington logo. Back in those days, I’d lived on a diet of my dorm room, my headphones, and all the dead-white-guy classics I could stomach. I’d partied with the likes of Sylvia Plath and dressed myself in Miss Havisham’s splendor. Ihadhung out with a few real, living friends, which was why I was so happy to discover my old address book wedged in the bottom of the box, but I’d have been lying if I said I’d spent half as much time with them as I had the inhabitants of East Egg.

That was when I spotted it.

At first, I thought the flash of purple was a trick of the overhead fluorescent lights, but my fist closed around the brooch before I knew what I was doing. The gleaming bronze setting and rich amethyst-colored stone made it seem like it should be a heavy, burdensome thing, but I knew for a fact that the bronze was just twelve layers of metallic Sharpie over plastic and the stone a paste gem that was starting to cloud with age.

“Hey, Emily,” I said as I sank to my knees and stared at the brooch.

Like my large, intimidating friend from the elevator, I didn’t believe in ghosts. I’d tried—I really had. I’d booked myself overnight stays in several haunted hotels, walked through every single graveyard in Coeur d’Alene well past midnight, and even attended a séance that ended up being a sales pitch for a set of pots and pans that promised to “last your entire lifetime…and beyond.” None of them had brought me any closer to the afterlife—or to the person I most wanted to see there.

Still. That didn’t stop me from trying to reach out. It was like I said—when it came to lost causes, Saint Jude and I were in a neck-and-neck race to see who would end up on top.

“I thought Mom and Dad threw this old thing away years ago.” I turned the brooch over to find that the clasp still worked, albeit with a slight bend to the pin. I lifted it to the fluttering collar of my floral blouse and stabbed it through. The silk would never be the same after that, and even the small weight of that plastic setting tugged at my neckline, but I didn’t care.

“‘A perfectly elegant brooch,’” I said, fingering the edges with a smile. “‘What I used to think diamonds were like. Long ago, before I had ever seen a diamond.’”

As I quoted the words aloud, I could feel myself slipping into the light British accent that both Emily and I used to adopt whenever we’d enacted a scene fromAnne of Green Gables. I wasn’t sure where we got the idea, except that somewhere in our youthful brains we’d decided that all events that had taken place before the 1950s were somehow British in origin.

We’d loved this stupid old brooch. In fact, we’d loved the entire Prince Edward Island community—nosy neighbors, closed-minded old ladies, and all.

“You’ll see, Sloane,” Emily had said late at night when we’d been hiding under the covers with a book and a flashlight, our eyes bleary from lack of sleep. It had been against the doctor’s orders, but some childhood rites of passage never wavered, even when you were living with a ticking time bomb in your chest. “Someday, we’ll get out of here and find a place just like Green Gables. A place where—THUMP—everyone takes care of—CRASH—everyone else and no one—HOWCOULD YOU—gets mad.”

I’d believed her, then. It had been easy enough to do, our feet warm from the pockets of air, the dog-eared pages of the library book bearing witness to how many times we’d checked it out. With Emily’s arms around me and her broken heartbeat keeping time with mine, nothing in the world was as terrible as it seemed. But then daytime came—and with it, reality. Emily had always been good at ignoring the signs of emotional upheaval that lay scattered all over the living room floor the next morning. I was…not.

I left the brooch pinned to my blouse, allowing it to knock gently against my sternum as I packed the rest of the things inside the box and returned it to its rightful place. The sensation wasn’t the same as my sister’s gentle, erratic heartbeat lulling me to sleep, but it was close.

As close as I’d been able to get in this lifetime, anyway.

With the address book tucked firmly under one arm, I locked up the storage bin and headed back toward the elevator. Now that I had a concrete plan of action, I felt better about my chances of landing a bridesmaid. People loved weddings—or at least they loved theideaof them, which amounted to the same thing. Someone from my collegiate days was sure to crave the romance of—

“Don’t scream.”

The address book fell from my armpit as I jumped back from the elevator, the scream trapped in my throat per the large man’s command. I’d always been exceptional at following directions; I was basically a kidnapper’s dream come true.

“It’s not what you think. I’m not here to hurt you.” He leapt to his feet with his hands up. It was meant to be a soothing gesture, but that only counted when the person doing it didn’t have fists the size of small hams.

“Have you been sitting in there the whole time?” I asked. My voice only sounded hysterical on the downbeat, so that was something. “On the elevator floor?”

“I think I need your key to get out of here,” he said by way of answer. “I pushed all the buttons. Even the emergency ones. The elevator won’t move.”

When I didn’t do more than stand there, my mouth at half cock, he swallowed and took a step back.