Page 82 of The Lonely Hearts Book Club

“She had a congenital heart defect,” she added before I could ask. “She was born with an early expiration date.”

Suddenly, those angry parents reenactingThe House on Haunted Hillwere starting to make a lot more sense.

“Favorite memory?” I asked.

She must have known this one was coming, because she fingered the old Victorian-looking pin she always wore. “She made this for me. It’s from our favorite book. Once things got bad, we didn’t get outside a lot, so reading together was our only way of experiencing the world. Even though our surroundings were confined, we went so many places together, shared so many adventures. And after she was gone, well…” Her voice trailed off and she looked out the window toward the backyard I’d been examining for myself less than an hour ago. When she glanced back at me, it was with a look of self-deprecation that brought out a small dimple I’d never noticed before. “I’m a disgraced former librarian so desperate to find that feeling again that I forced a book club on an unwilling old man. Clearly, I haven’t changed much.”

It was the answer I’d been seeking from the moment she’d walked into my grandfather’s house. What she was doing here and why—how a woman with a fiancé and a life of her own could spend so many hours taking care of a man who didn’t deserve it—but I didn’t feel a fraction of the satisfaction I’d expected.

“What would you say to her?” I asked, my next line just as clear as all the rest. “If she was with us right now?”

I’d never know the answer. As she took a deep breath and prepared to unburden her heart, we heard the sound of a car pulling into the garage around the back. She slid off the counter and ran to the window, both of us watching as Mateo jumped out of his car and ran to open the door for a well-dressed older gentleman. I immediately recognized him from the snapshot in the yearbook.

“I can’t believe we’re actually doing this,” Sloane said as her hand shot out and sought mine. I recognized her sweaty, tenacious grip for what it was—a friendly gesture meant to soothe and be soothed—but that didn’t stop my stomach from doing an actual somersault. I liked how hot she felt, howreal. “Are we sure this is a good idea?”

“Not even remotely,” I said, not daring to move until she did. “But there’s nothing we can do to stop this train now.”

ARTHUR

28

Most of the books I’d read in my lifetime started with an origin story. People loved that kind of garbage when they were looking back on the wreckage of their lives, of years wasted and pain suffered, of opportunities that whizzed past because they were too scared to reach out and grab them.

So, fine. This was mine.

I was born in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, back when the city first started to fall from its mining glory to become a tourist trap for people who didn’t have the means or the mettle to leave. No one around here remembered those times anymore, but that was typical. Memories were short when it came to anything unpleasant, and those rough, tough, ramshackle days of turmoil hadn’t been pleasant for anyone but the mine owners.

As for my lousy childhood, well, it was too late to start crying about that now. What was the use of blaming my mother for decisions she’d made seventy years ago? Life was different then. Harder. Leaner. Whittled down so sharply there was no way to reach out and grab it without getting hurt.

That was the thing I couldn’t get these kids to understand aboutThe Joy Luck Clubno matter how hard I tried. Or aboutThe Remains of the Day. Of coursethere was a chasm between generations—between past and present, the people we were long ago and the people we were now.

Life stories were written in ink, not pencil. Once they were down, the only thing you could do was turn the page.

“Ah, Sloane. There you are.” I struggled to my feet as Sloane pushed her way out of the kitchen, my grandson following doggedly at her heels. He’d been doing that a lot lately, nipping along wherever she went, his eyes never straying far from her face. I’d have berated him for it if I wasn’t guilty of the same.

It was pathetic, really. I’d lived alone in this house for almost thirty years, and I’d done fine with each and every one of them. I had a routine to keep me from getting bored, my books to keep my mind active. I’d gone for days at a time without having to speak a word to anybody, and I regretted none of them.

All that had changed the day I met Sloane Parker pushing her little library cart down an aisle in the Fiction section. She’d played book-title games and sweetly suggested the most basic reading list possible, and I’d fallen for it. Me, a professor of literature. Me, a man who’d been reading Dumas in the original French for longer than she’d been alive. It had all been a snowball barreling down the hill from there, her presence in my life building up until there was no escaping its path.

“I want to talk to you about the next book we’re reading for the club,” I said before she could tell me to sit back down or drink a cup of tea or otherwise act like the old man I had no intention of being. “There’s this new treatise on mathematical principles I’d really like to—”

“A math treatise?” Sloane laughed and brushed me off without letting me finish my proposal—and it had been a good one, too. We needed something with logic and reason, something that demanded we sink our teeth in and refuse to let go. “Sorry, Arthur, but there’s no way you’re getting Maisey and Mateo to sign off on something like that.”

“Dumas, then,” I said, unwilling to give up without a fight. “Or even Vikram Seth. A rich cultural context could really—”

“Maybe you should sit back down.” Greg was the one who interrupted this time, only he didn’t soften it with a laugh. He folded his arms like he was about to escort me off the premises. Of my own house.Thatwas how much respect I was garnering these days. “Mateo is on his way in.”

“I don’t give two figs what Mateo is doing. I want to talk about the next book. It’s my turn to pick, and I say we dig deeper. No more of this light fare. I want something with meat on its bones.”

I didn’t mention that I also wanted a book that couldn’t be finished in a night or two.A Suitable Boywas a good fifteen hundred pages long.The Count of Monte Cristoonly missed that mark by about fifty pages. Once we started something like that, it would take months to finish reading and discussing, especially if we let Maisey set the pace.

They couldn’t just walk away in the middle of a book. They wouldn’t. No matter how strong the provocation.

Or how terrible the man.

A knock sounded at the front door. Even if Greg and Sloane hadn’t glanced at each other in a quick, meaningful way, that sound would have put me on my guard. None of these people knocked. They waltzed in and out of my house like they owned it, sleeping and eating, rearranging things however they saw fit. Feral pigs had better manners.

“What is it?” I demanded. “Who’s here?”