Page 6 of The Library of Borrowed Hearts

“Whichlibrary book?” he asked.

I was so startled that I answered without hesitating. “It’s calledTropic of Cancer. It’s old, and it’s not in great shape, but there are collectors out there who’ll pay a pretty penny to get their hands on it.”

“Tropic…of Cancer?” he echoed, his hand coming up to clutch at the doorframe. I was afraid that maybe the wordcancerwas the cause, but he shook his head as if clearing it. “Are you sure about that?”

“About its title or about how much it’s worth?” I returned. Without waiting for an answer, I added, “Yes to both. I may have only finished half my library science degree, but I’m not without my uses. I can both read and accurately assess the value of historic documents.”

He grunted. It was such a judgmental sound that I was suddenly worried about the crime I’d just confessed to.

“And before you go tattling to the library, I found the book abandoned in the basement, so it’s not like anyone is going to miss it. Someone had taken pains to hide it decades ago—probably along with copies ofTo Kill a MockingbirdandThe Color Purple. You know how uptight a town like this can get.”

By this time, I’d decided that (a) I’d already said more than was good for me, and (b) there was no way I was going to get my hands on that Frisbee. I gave Jasper Holmes two more seconds to do the right thing. When all he did was continue staring at me like I’d just pulled my bleeding heart out of my chest and offered it to him as a snack, I gave up the fight.

With a sigh, I turned around and went back the way I came. The yellow-billed bird gave a rattling cackle as I walked by, not unlike the sound my car made on cold mornings when it wanted to get going about as much as I did.

“I know, buddy,” I said as I trailed my fingers playfully in his bathwater. “But what else can we do? This is technically his property. As long as we keep coming back, he’s free to treat us however he wants.”

3

CHLOE

If I were an intelligent woman, I’d have followed the age-old advice for new parents everywhere and gone to bed when the kids did.

Trixie, Noodle, and Theo were long past the napping age, but they had a tendency to hit their mattresses hard when they went down for the night. I liked to think it was because they lived each day to the fullest, their bodies and minds wearied by the fun they managed to pack inside each twenty-four rotation, but the truth was that we all lived in a state of perpetual exhaustion.

In the general way of things, I strove to keep my anxieties to a minimum—about the bills and the fact that Theo had come perilously close to mixing ammonia and bleachjust to see what the fuss is about, about Noodle repeating the sixth grade because his teachers refused to accept that intelligence was more than filling in bubbles on a Scantron. Most days, I managed to do a decent job of it, but the kids must have noticed something off about me when I’d returned empty-handed from Jasper’s house. Again.

Theo had begun wordlessly setting the table. Trixie had grabbed a bag of mixed vegetables from the freezer to make a stir-fry. And Noodlehad coaxed Gummy Bear into a corner to work on sitting and staying—an activity that mostly involved Gummy Bear rolling onto his back in a bid for belly rubs.

So, yeah. After dinner, they’d all crashed and fallen into the deep sleep of the weary while I sat in the living room with my old college laptop propped on my legs, a drooling bulldog andTropic of Cancersitting next to me.

“Let’s see,” I said aloud as I started typing. “One very old, very used copy, battered and torn, defaced with writing on several pages…Ugh. Who am I kidding? No one is going to jump at the chance to get their hands on that.”

I quickly erased what I’d written.

“Think, Gummy Bear,” I said as I ran my hands over the soft flaps of his ears. He groaned and let me, but I could tell that even he wasn’t impressed by my copywriting skills. Or by me. Since I was the Sampson who forced him to go through the rigorous demands of a daily walk to the mailbox and back again, I’d never been his favorite member of the family. “We need to add panache. How about…One-of-a-kind annotated bootleg copy?A hidden trove of scandal and intrigue just waiting for you to take it home?”

As good as the words sounded, they weren’t exactly truthful. The annotations I’d read had sounded more like a couple of teenagers passing notes in study hall than a deep literary analysis. Setting my laptop aside, I flipped through the book until I found another of the notes scrawled in the margins.

“‘To have her here in bed with me, breathing on me, her hair in my mouth—I count that something of a miracle,’” I read aloud. Next to the line in the book, I could see that same scrawled, almost indecipherable hand from before:Say what you will about the main character’s morals, it sounds as if he really loved his wife. I can respect that.

And, once again, the elegant lines underneath it.

It’s not love if you write about the lice crawling over her hair in the very next paragraph. See?

I look at her again, closely. Her hair is alive. I pull back the sheet—more of them. They are swarming over the pillow.

True love doesn’t care about lice.

You’re just saying that to be contrary.

I’d love you no matter what kind of bugs you carried. I’d give anything to have you breathing on me, your hair in my mouth, your lice lying down to sleep with mine.

The conversation stopped there. Despite myself, I felt a certain kinship with the author of the neat, tidy hand. I liked how matter-of-fact she was, how she didn’t hesitate to call out her lover for being contrary. Hedidsound contrary. He also sounded kind of sweet, if I was being honest. The whole point ofTropic of Cancerwas that the filthy, slovenly animal lust of being a human meant something. Not necessarily somethinggood, but something. And the guy with the scratchy hand seemed to sense it.

Hooked now, I flipped faster, my eyes scanning for more messages between the two. After a few chapters, I found them—and I found myself sitting up straighter as I read through.

She’ll want to look for a studio with a garden attached—and a bathtub to be sure. She wants to be poor in a romantic way. I know her. But I’m prepared for her this time.