Page 95 of The Lonely Hearts Book Club

Greg’s hand crashed down and gripped me by the shoulder so hard that I almost cried out—not in pain, but with the sudden, comforting pressure of it. “Then we’ll figure it out, Grandpa. I know she means a lot to you, but she’s not all you have in this world.”

His smile grew tremulous. I could tell he wanted to add more, but there was no need. Not in words and not in the lines of a book.

Not anymore.

32

“I don’t care which lines you pick out, just as long as you don’t include the one about Octobers,” I said. “Ihatethe one about Octobers.”

Greg sat at the end of the dining room table, a blue highlighter in his hand and a brand-new hardback copy ofAnne of Green Gablesin front of him. He also had a rapidly dwindling glass of scotch that Nigel kept discreetly topping up.To boost morale, he’d said.

“What’s wrong with the October one?” Greg asked.

“October is a wet, cold, miserable month, and anyone who pretends that a few rotting leaves make up for it is an idiot.”

Nigel laughed. “Isn’t that rather the point? Beauty in decay? The last fiery burn of life before it goes dormant?”

I waved him off. The man was seriously starting to get on my nerves. Neither Greg nor I had invited him to participate in this, my last-ditch effort to hold on to theonething of true beauty I had in this world, but he’d showed up like Rumpelstiltskin leaping about on a bed of straw.

“Seasonal changes have nothing to do with how I feel about Sloane.” I set my jaw. “So keep looking.”

“There’s always ‘My life is a perfect graveyard of buried hopes,’” Nigel suggested.

“Or ‘It is ever so much easier to be good if your clothes are fashionable,’” Greg offered, grinning. “We’rekidding, Grandpa. Don’t forget to breathe.”

I had no idea what would have happened if Maisey hadn’t burst through the front door at that moment, carrying with her an energy that exceeded her usual maximum limit. For what was probably the first time since she’d started showing up at my doorstep, there wasn’t a scrap of food anywhere.

“Guess what just happened to me,” she said, not blinking at the tableau in front of her. She accepted Nigel with the same ease that everyone in this godforsaken group had—with neither question nor care for the wrongs of the past. I found more hope in that than they could possibly know. “Never mind. You’ll never guess. I got a phone call.”

“Alert the authorities,” I said. “This is a matter of national security. Or maybe we should call theEnquirer. Take out a full-page ad in—”

Maisey clasped her hands to her chest and beamed, ignoring every word from my lips. “It was from Bella. She got into a huge fight with her father and wants to come home.”

I clamped my mouth shut again before capping my highlighter and setting it aside. The woman might drive me batty nine days out of ten, but she’d been waiting for this for weeks. I wasn’t about to rob her of it.

“Maisey, that’s fantastic.” Greg was up out of his chair and lifting her in a bear hug faster than most people blinked. “I mean, the part about her fighting with your ex isn’t good, obviously, but the fact that she turned to you. Do you need help buying her plane ticket?”

She shook her head. “No, and I told you a million times to stop trying to buy me off. She’s not coming back.”

“Wait.” Greg blinked. “Why not? You just said—”

“That shewantedto come back, not that I was going to let her. We talked for half an hour. Thirty whole minutes, Greg. I can’t remember the last time we had a conversation that long.”

She turned to me with simple pride. For once, I didn’t mean that as an insult. Maisey would never be a complex woman, and if you handed her Schrödinger’s box, she’d immediately open the lid so she could slip a can of tuna inside, but I was coming to appreciate that about her.Someonehad to remember to feed the damn cat.

“She said she could see why people paid me $3.99,” Maisey added. “Because I was helpful. Because I was wise.”

Greg and I both nodded, though he was the only one to speak. “I bet you knew exactly what to say to her.”

“I did.” Maisey fell to one of the dining room chairs without waiting to be invited. “It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life, but I’ve had a lot of practice. I just had to pretend she was one of my clients. I’m always fighting with myself not to tell them what I really think—and believe me, some of themdesperatelyneed to hear it. But they don’t call because they want the truth. They call because they need someone to listen.”

“So that’s what you did?” Nigel’s brows were lifted in genuine interest. “You listened?”

She beamed like a golden retriever who’d just been praised for excellent showmanship. “Yep. I let her get it all out—apparently, they’ve been fighting over curfews—but that was only one piece of a much bigger problem. She’s not making friends as quickly as she’d hoped. She’s lonely, poor love. She misses her old life.”

We all grew quiet. Loneliness was something that hit a little too close to home for everyone here.

“She’s going to join a few clubs to see if that helps. I suggested volleyball and drama. She’ll give them a two-week trial and call back to update me on her progress.” She tapped the side of her nose and winked at Greg. “See? I can learn. Keep her on the hook. Give her an opening so she has no choice but to come back for more.”