Page 57 of The Lonely Hearts Book Club

“I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I saw the highlighted sections and assumed—”

“Youreadthem?”

“Yeah, but only a few. Did you know your grandfather does the exact same thing?”

“Don’t touch my things,” Greg said. After a brief struggle with himself, he added, “Please.”

“Geez. What’d you do to that poor guy?” I asked as soon as the door swung to a close behind him. “He was perfectly nice to me before. Friendly, even.”

The tight compression of Sloane’s lips seemed to indicate that it wasn’t a subject she cared to tackle right now, but she managed to pry them open long enough to speak.

“He doesn’t like me very much. We didn’t exactly meet under the best of circumstances. He thinks I…” Her voice trailed off and she shook her head. “I don’t know what he thinks, to be honest. But it doesn’t matter. Arthur needs him a lot more than he’s willing to admit. The last thing I want to do is get in the way of whatever they’re working out between them.”

This was such a Sloane thing to say and do—to lay herself out on the railroad tracks to repair someone else’s relationship—that I sighed.Myproblem might have been avoiding emotional entanglements of all kinds, but Sloane had never met an emotion she could resist. Most days, she bathed in them like Elizabeth Báthory undergoing a new skin-care regimen.

“Most people would have given up on Arthur McLachlan a long time ago,” I said. “I’m not sure he deserves this much care.”

Her voice grew quiet. “Why else do you think I’m so determined to make sure he gets it?”

19

“Mateo, you beautiful little sneak. Why didn’t you warn me?”

I stood hunched over a box of art supplies in Area 51, the catch-all storeroom in the basement level of the library, when Octavia came rustling in. I should have known she was heading this way from the swish of silk over linen, but I’d been searching for the papier-mâché supplies for so long that I was starting to lose track of my senses.

“Warn you about what?” I asked as I straightened. This marked the last time I was volunteering to cover Sloane’s Let’s Make a Book Cover! class. It was back to straight story time after this, and I wasn’t accepting arguments. Twenty wriggling kids asking questions about Little Red Riding Hood’s life choices was bad enough; I didn’t need mass quantities of newspaper and glue to make things worse.

“About the donation,” Octavia said, beaming at me from the doorway. She didn’t elaborate further, but I caught her meaning anyway. I caught ithard. “We haven’t seen that kind of money from a single donor in years.”

“No way,” I breathed. “He did it? That old miser actually signed a check?”

“I don’t know that I’d call him a miser, but yes. He dropped it off this morning—and sangyourpraises while he did it. If I hadn’t already given you that promotion, you’d be next in line for it, no questions asked.”

This seemed odd, since Sloane was the one who deserved most of the credit for any and all things related to Arthur, but I wasn’t about to balk at the sudden influx of appreciation.

“Does this mean I can hand off Little Readers Corner duty to Janell?” I abandoned my attempts at finding the art supplies and shoved the box back on the shelf. “Because that seems like a fair trade for a five-figure Arthur McLachlan check. I hope he didn’t say anything about turtlenecks, because I was kidding about that. Mostly.”

This gave her a sudden pause. “Arthur McLachlan? Turtlenecks? What are you talking about?”

My pause was only slightly less sudden. “That depends. What areyoutalking about?”

“If you’re implying that Arthur was the one who gave us the donation, you couldn’t be farther off. This has nothing to do with him.”

“Wait.” I blinked. “Really? If we’re not talking about Arthur, who gave us a donation? And what does it have to do with me?”

“Nigel Carthage.” Octavia handed me a fluttering piece of paper. It took me all of two seconds to identify it as a receipt for twenty thousand dollars. “I had no idea you knew one of the reviewers forThe New Yorker, but I can’t say I’m surprised. I’ve always thought you had hidden depths.”

I wanted to protest that my depths weren’t the least bit hidden but my heart was thumping too heavily.

“Nigel Carthage?” I said, more to myself than to Octavia. “An older Black gentleman with a British accent? A little gaunt? Great clothes?”

“The one and only.” Octavia stood back and crossed her arms with satisfaction. They crackled like they held entire bags of Doritos. “Where on earth did you meet a man like that?”

“My mother’s nightclub,” I said. My heart still thumped, but it was more like an anxious pitter-pattering now. This was starting to feelverysketchy. Nothing I’d said to that man should have resulted in an outcome like this. A phone call, maybe. A chance meeting outside another nightclub, sure. But that kind of money dropped without warning at my place of business? That was the start of a murder docuseries if I’d ever heard one.

I paused and added, “He stalked me outside and asked me to let him into my book club.”

“Then by all means, let him in,” Octavia said. “You know what this kind of donation can do for the library. For thecommunity.”