Page 97 of The Library of Borrowed Hearts

“‘It was not the thorn bending to the honeysuckles, but the honeysuckles embracing the thorn,’” she murmured playfully. “Now, where have I heard that before?”

Jasper’s eyes caught mine and held them for what felt like an impossibly long time. No one else in the room might recognize theWuthering Heightsquote, but we certainly did.

“Okay. I think it’s officially time to eat.” Lonnie broke the sudden silence with a swift clap of her hands. “I don’t know about you all, but I haven’t been to a good going-away party in ages. Pepper, the music?”

“On it,” Pepper said as she whipped out her phone. “Sinatra standards for the olds and Taylor Swift for the rest.”

“Wait. Does that make me an old?” Gunderson asked, his face falling.

Pepper slung an arm around his shoulder as her grandmother lifted the casserole from his hands. “Nice try, Gunderson. You’re one of us, and you know it. I’m pretty sure I heard you singing all the words to ‘Bad Blood’ during inventory last week.”

He brightened perceptibly. “My daughter Ophelia is nine, Pepper. Of course I know all the words.”

“Then there you go. You’re a Swiftie just like me.”

With a wink meant for my eyes only, Pepper bore him away to the kitchen. Zach, gathering up the children, wasn’t too far behind her. I suspected it was a plot to throw Jasper and Catherine together for a private place to say their goodbyes, so I reached for Gummy Bear and prepared to drag him behind me.

Jasper, however, beat me to it.

“I’ve gotten used to that damned dog following me around everywhere,” he grumbled, but with a playful pat on Gummy Bear’s head as he led the dog away. “I keep telling him that he needs to learn to keep up, but you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” He paused before adding, “Well, youcan, obviously, but don’t go telling anyone I said that. I have a reputation to maintain around here.”

“Wait,” I called, since it felt strange to be left alone with this woman I understood so well yet barely knew. When Jasper paused and arched his brows, I blurted out the first thing that came to mind. “Are the kids really okay? About our mom leaving again? I was afraid they’d take it pretty hard. The last time…”

He stared at me for a long moment before speaking. In that moment, it felt as though entire libraries passed between us. “The last time, they only had you to look out for them. Now they have us both.”

With a duck of his head, he ushered both himself and the dog into the kitchen, where the sound of happily squabbling voices continued. Even though the volume of their conversation didn’t change, the longer I stood in the living room with only Catherine for company, the more the sounds receded.

“I don’t bite, you know,” she said as she settled herself on the couch, one leg crossing smoothly over the other. She looked very much at ease among the creeping vines and bursts of greenery. She patted the seat next to her. “Come. Sit.”

I had barely managed to set my bottom on the cushion when shespoke again. “Since you’re here, I’m assuming my grandson’s apology worked? At least a little?”

I had to fight a roll of my eyes. “Are you surprised? I’m pretty sure that smile could get him out of a twenty-year prison sentence.”

“He gets that from his grandfather.” Her own chuckle sounded, rich and assured. “Oh, I know they don’t look much alike, but the similarities are there all the same. It used to take mehoursto coax that smile out of Jasper, especially in the beginning, but once I did—whoo boy.” She made a fanning motion as if to cool herself off. “To Zach, that smile comes as naturally as breathing. I apologize in advance. You’ll have a long, hard life trying to get the better of him in anything.”

A flush of heat rose to my cheeks. “It’s not like that between us,” I was quick to say. “I mean, not yet. Or ever, maybe? I don’t know. We’re just—”

I was grateful when she leaned across the cushion and pressed a hand on my leg, stopping my babbling short. “I was only teasing. I know it’s early days, and your future is still very much unsettled. That’s why I wanted to talk to you.”

The touch of her palm seemed to exert a soothing effect on me. I let myself relax into the cushions, more curious than afraid.

“Actually, my future is pretty much guaranteed,” I said. “For the next decade, at least. Theo’s only eleven, and getting him to adulthood with all his limbs intact is likely to take every ounce of concentration I have.”

No emotion crossed her face—not even a flutter of her eyelashes. “So you’ll work at the library?”

“Yep.”

“Shelving books and cashing a paycheck with the occasional envelope of funds when your mom remembers to send one?”

I splayed my hands helplessly. “It’s what I’ve done for the past four years, only without the envelope. Another decade won’t kill me.”

“No,” she agreed. “It won’t kill you. It’ll hurt, though, won’t it?Knowing you’re trapped? Knowing that the great wide world is out there going on without you?”

Even though the question could have easily been taken as a rhetorical one, I gave it serious weight—partly because this woman would be leaving in the morning, so the things I said to her didn’t matter, and partly because I’d never given myself an opportunity to reallythinkabout it before.

“The world has always been going on without me,” I said—not sad about it, but calm. Accepting. One might even sayhappy. “Even when I went away to college, it’s not like I was out living it up every night of the week. I was buried in books the whole time. They were just different books, that’s all. Ones where I didn’t already know the ending.”

She withdrew her hand from my leg. I thought she might be getting up from the couch, but she reached into her oversized bag, one of those huge expensive things that Trixie is always telling me is essential for a woman who wants to make a splash in the world. When she pulled her hand out again, she was holding a folded piece of paper.