Page 11 of The Library of Borrowed Hearts

Her mom waved her off with a dish towel. “Then let me see neither hide nor hair of you until three at the earliest.”

Catherine didn’t have to be told twice. She bustled out and found the bicycle exactly as promised. It leaned against the clapboards, the floral basket affixed and already holding a collection of her favorite tomes, just in case she wasn’t able to get a library card today.

The house they were living in while her father began his new duties as commander of the radar base was very large, very white, and very inconveniently located a mile from the town center. Such qualities might not seem like they were connected to one another, but Catherine had moved around enough times to know that those three things had been the top priorities for off-base housing since time immemorial. The size bestowed prestige. The color was a mark of distinction. And the location meant that they remained aloof from the general riffraff.

Fortunately, Catherine enjoyed getting out into the air, her feet pedaling gently as she took in the sights and sounds of what was to beher new hometown. Swinging her leg over the center bar, she veered a sharp right, her eyes taking everything in.

Unfortunately, the town of Colville was…not impressive. When she’d first heard the destination of their newest station, she’d actually cried. Sat down on her twin bed, dropped her head to her hands, and sobbed as though her heart were breaking. On a map, Colville was a dot in the middle of the forest, a nothing place surrounded by wilderness and trees.

Catherine didn’t like wilderness. Or trees. When your life was as small as hers—confined to home and family, dependent on the whims of the Air Defense Command and a man who’d dedicated his life to serving it—location mattered. In cities like Dallas and Grand Rapids, she’d at least had access to culture. Plays and the theater, the occasional opera or ballet. Out here, she didn’t have anything except a few hardware stores, a feed store, and a tiny speck of a grocer.

She did, however, spot a tiny art deco movie theater with posters forThe Hound of the Baskervillespasted out front. Catherine was so distracted by them—of all Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories to be made into film, that was her favorite—that she didn’t notice the car taking the corner at a clipping pace. She was just about to turn down the street that would deliver her to the library when a red Mustang convertible whizzed too close and set her skirt fluttering. The fabric caught in the spokes, and she was down before she even knew what was happening.

“Don’t try to get up,” a low, gruff male voice said as Catherine struggled to get out from underneath her bicycle, the wheels spinning almost as hard as her head. The back of her skull ached, and there was a stinging on her palms that felt as though skin had been scraped clean away, but that was as far as she could assess her own damages.

“You went down hard,” the man added.

“That’s because you ran me over,” she murmured as he lifted the bike off her as though it weighed no more than a matchstick. As she watched him gather up her scattered books, she put a hand to her headand, despite his warning, tried to get up. “Do you always take a street corner like you’re in the Grand Prix?”

He didn’t answer. Instead he pulled out a handkerchief and handed it to her. The white square of fabric was clean and smelled like a combination of soap and pine needles, so she didn’t hesitate to start dabbing at her hands with it.

She also peeked up to make a better assessment of the man who’d run her over. If he was any indication of the population around here, then she was in for a much more rustic time than she’d anticipated. Not only was he dressed as though he’d just come down from a six-month stay at the top of a mountain, but he looked more like a bear than a person. His shoulders were wide and his chest shaped like an oil drum; a patchy growth of hair scraped across his jaw. He was a far cry from the men she was accustomed to, the clean-shaven boys of the military, all of them baby-faced and—in her father’s squadron, at least—more interested in science and technology than physical strength.

“Do you feel woozy?” he asked with a grunt.

“No.” She started to tenderly test her limbs. “I feel like I just got clipped by a reckless driver with no regard for the safety of others.”

He reached for her again. “Here, let me—”

“No, don’t,” she said, feeling anger starting to replace the shaking fear that had been holding her dazed. As much as she enjoyedreadingabout damsels being butchered on street corners and evil spirits that went bump in the night, she liked to keep her real-life body parts intact. “You’ve done enough already. I can get up on my own. It’s just a few scrapes and bruises.”

“Your bike looks broken. If you want, we can put it in the back of my truck and I can—”

“What?” She laughed. “Drive me off the nearest cliff at full speed? Thank you, but I’ll take my chances on two broken wheels.”

He rocked back on his heels and studied her with a lowered brow,his expression so quelling that she wondered whether she should scream for help while she still had the chance.

“Your blood coagulates beautifully,” he said.

She gave a start of surprise. “I beg your pardon?”

He rose to his feet and nodded down at the bloodstained handkerchief. “You can keep that. Are you sure you’re all right?”

“Of course I’m sure,” she said, but with a kind of dazed detachment that made her suspect she bumped her head harder than she’d thought. Had he really just said what she thought he’d said?

“You might want to stick to side roads from here on out,” he said. He took a moment to right her bicycle and fiddle with the gears before stepping away. “Colville is a small town, but some of the drivers here still think they’re in big cities.”

It was then and only then that Catherine realized that the vehicle pulled off to the side of the road was neither red nor a Mustang convertible. The black Ford truck was covered in dust, and the bumper showed no signs of having recently clipped a bicycle. She was just about to call out to him—an apology? her thanks?—but she bit her tongue to stop herself.

She might have still been befuddled from her fall, but his words from before were starting to echo somewhere deep inside her brain.

Your blood coagulates beautifully… Your blood coagulates beautifully.

“Did that mountain man just quote Hemingway at me?” she wondered aloud. Since he was already sliding into the driver’s seat by that time, he didn’t hear her—not that she’d have expected much by way of reply. Whatever he’d said was probably a fluke, a random combination of words not unlike a room full of monkeys on typewriters eventually churning out the full works of Shakespeare.

But something about thewayhe’d said it, and the way he’d been so careful to gather up her books…

Catherine shook her head and forced the entire interlude to the back of her mind. Whatever the man had done to her bike had turned itoperational again, so she was able to swing a leg over and gingerly begin picking her way the last block toward the tiny brick library.