Page 49 of The Library of Borrowed Hearts

JASPER, PRESENT DAY

Jasper heard the rumble of the car pulling up next door before he saw it.

At first, he thought it might be the guy from before—the one Chloe had dragged behind her the day she’d stopped by. Zach, he’d been called, a young man who looked as if he’d crawled out of the forest only to stand in the middle of Jasper’s house with his hands tucked in his armpits, his gaze never straying far from Chloe’s face. Jasper had recognized the smitten, stupefied look too well to expect never to see him again. That boy would be back to visit the Sampson house, and he’d be back often, or Jasper missed his mark.

It was a strange feeling, the pulse of jealousy he felt when he considered the task Zach had ahead of him. His battle was an uphill one, to be sure. Chloe Sampson wasn’t the sort of girl to make things easy on a suitor. She’d laugh and smile and flash the dimple in the middle of her right cheek at all the right moments, but she wouldn’t bend without putting up a fight first. If Zach wanted to get anywhere, he’d have to throw his whole heart into the task of wooing her, and even then it wasn’t a sure thing.

Not that Jasper was the least bit interested in Chloe for himself. Hejust missed the uncertainty of it all—the fluttering, uneasy feeling that he was in over his head, the secret smiles that meant more than a touch.

It had been a long time since he’d felt that. More than sixty years, if he was willing to do the math, which he wasn’t. At his age, math was never a good idea. The sums and subtractions always ended up being depressing.

He peeked out the window above his kitchen sink, the one that looked out over into the Sampson’s front yard, offering him an unbroken view of the house. The car that pulled up wasn’t one he recognized. It was dark blue and sleek, the windows so tinted he couldn’t see any signs of life inside.

The last time a car like that had pulled up, it had belonged to Child Protective Services. It had gone against every instinct Jasper possessed to put in that call when he had, handing those poor kids over to a system where there was no guarantee that they’d be treated fairly or even kindly, but what other choice had there been? Sneaking in a few groceries while the kids were at school and sitting out on his porch to keep a nighttime vigil had worked for a few days, but he was an old man—and a tired one. There was only so much help he could offer from behind a closed door. He’d waited as long as he could, and even then, he feared he’d waited too long.

He braced himself as the door swung open and a man’s legs stepped out of the car. They were too short to belong to Smitten Zach the Mountain Man, and the shoes were much too fussy. So were the shoes that got out the passenger side—a pair of high heels that would ruin a lawn faster than you could say “aerator spikes.”

That was when he realized who it was.

“No,” he said, even though there was no one to hear him but a hundred different plants that never, no matter how much he talked to them, talked back. “No, no, no, no.”

His words were as futile as the rest of him. As he watched the womanemerge from the car and shake out her flaming-red head of hair, he knew that everything good he’d been working toward was at an end. No more Chloe barging over and handing him books that made his heart flip over in his chest. No more Noodle sitting shyly in the yard, reading aloud to him from the Nightwave graphic novel he was obsessed with. No more of those other two kids, so loud and clamoring andalivethat it sometimes hurt to watch them.

Ravenna Sampson was back. And from the size of the suitcases she started instructing the short man to pull one by one out of the trunk, she looked as if she planned to stay.

Jasper waited ten minutes before deciding to act.

For the first five minutes, he listed all the reasons why he shouldn’t get involved in the drama he could hear unfolding on the other side of the fence.

It wasn’t his business.

He hated drama.

The Sampson kids could take care of themselves.

He was already too involved with them.

Seriously. He’d managed to go sixty years without emotional entanglements. There was no reason to end the streak now.

For the last five minutes, he’d paced up and down his living room, wearing a tread in the thick white carpet. No matter how many times he tried to tell himself that he didn’t care, that they’d survive without him, that no one needed him or even wanted him around, he couldn’t rid himself of the feeling that something terrible was going on over there. It was too quiet. Those kids wereneverquiet. Between the dogbarking, the television playing at full volume, the occasional explosions that rocked the whole neighborhood, and always—always—the Frisbees whizzing into his quiet retreat, it was like living next to an active volcano.

He’d just hit on a plan to head over with a few of those Frisbees when a loud knock at the back door interrupted him.

“Mr. Holmes?” called a female voice. “Please, Mr. Holmes. We know you’re in there. Let us in. It’s an emergency.”

Jasper’s first thought, that Chloe had come to beg for his assistance, was quickly replaced by the realization that this voice was higher in pitch. His second thought was that it made perfect sense forTrixieSampson to be the one shaking his whole house. Chloe wasn’t the sort of person who asked for help. She wasn’t the sort of person who asked for anything. She reminded Jasper so much of himself at that age that it sometimes hurt to watch her.

“What’s going on?” he grumbled as he pulled open the door. Sure enough, the younger Sampson sister stood there with those soulfully big eyes and spattered freckles like something out of an L. M. Montgomery novel. He suspected he’d have been able to hold out longer against the family if not for how alike they all looked. Their similarities were damnably charming, if only because not one of them gave it a second thought. They were forever tied by the bonds of blood and affection, and it never once occurred to them how valuable—and rare—that was.

“Finally,” Theo said as he pushed his way past both his sister and Jasper into the house. He moved in a hurricane of long limbs and prepubescent body odor, but stopped short once he reached the interior. “Why do you have so many plants? Are you growing herbs in here? Vegetables?Poison?”

This last one seemed to fill him with a sense of excitement that vibrated so strong it rattled Jasper’s bones by proximity.

“Theo, you can’t just barge into someone’s house without asking,”Trixie said. Then she turned her eyes on Jasper, and he realized he was done for. “You’ll let us in, right? You don’t mind? Since you’re already taking care of Noodle and everything?”

Jasper, who had long ago closed his heart off to anything but the simple act oflub-dub, lub-dub, swung the door open with a sigh. “Fine. You can come inside, but I’m not feeding you. And don’t touch anything.” He glanced quickly out after her. “Where’s Noodle?”

A grimace flashed across Trixie’s face. “He didn’t want to come. He’s…visiting.”