Page 75 of The Library of Borrowed Hearts

Anytime someone says that, they’re going to ask you the question no matter what. But Zach’s my friend, so I say, “Sure.”

“Why did you bring the book to me instead of Chloe?”

This is a good question—an excellent one, in fact, and I like that Zach knows to ask it.

“Because this will give you a good reason to take her bowling again. You don’t have to bring us this time if you don’t want to. Theo only gets in the way. Most days, he’s a really good brother to have around, but not when you want to be alone.” I pause, eyeing him just as much as he’s eyeing me. “And you want to be alone with Chloe, don’t you?”

At first, I’m afraid he’s annoyed I asked, but he eventually shakes his head. “No, I won’t do it,” he says.

“Do what?”

“Get upset with you for saying the thing we’re all thinking. You and Chloe have that in common, too. You cut straight to the heart of the thing. As a man who spends a lot of time avoiding the unnecessary busyness of the world, you have no idea how much I appreciate that quality.”

I can tell he’s telling the truth, so I set my pile of knots aside and fish the book out of my backpack. I read a little of it when I first brought it home, but I don’t think it’s for me. Everyone seems to talk in really long sentences, and it takes them forever to get anywhere.

As soon as I put the book in Zach’s hands, he breathes out long and slow. His hands move over the cover almost like he’s petting Gummy Bear.

“This is really real,” he says, but in a voice so low that I’m not sure whether or not I’m supposed to hear it. “So everything Jasper said is true.”

I return to the tangled knots, pretending I don’t see as he flips open the cover and his eyes start moving over the pages. Even though I don’t like the book, I did manage to make it through the first chapter, so I know what he sees when he reaches the first section with the writing.

I know, by instinct, his reserve springs from an aversion to showy displays of feeling, to manifestations of mutual kindliness. He’ll love and hate, equally under cover, and esteem it a species of impertinence to be loved or hated again.

If you read nothing else of these pages, please read this,the pretty handwriting says.I know you think you’re the Heathcliff to my Catherine, and that the only path left to you is a dark and gloomy grave, but it isn’t true. Please let yourself be loved again. Please find love again. The best thing you can give me now is a promise that your life will be as full and rich as you deserve.

I don’t know much about the books or the writing or what happenedto make Jasper such a sad old man, but I do know that this message is meant for him. Also that it didn’t come true.

I used to be afraid of Jasper and what he might do when I accidentally threw Gummy Bear’s Frisbees over the fence, but he showed me the closet where he keeps them all so I’m not afraid any more. He apologized and said I could take back as many of them as I wanted, but I’ll probably leave them there. I think he likes having all those colorful stacks of plastic in his house.

It’s kinda like holding on to that old copy ofWuthering Heightsfor years and years but never actually reading it. He likes knowing how close he is to the things that make life brighter, and he likes being a few steps away from happiness. He also likes not ever actually getting there. It’s okay, because I understand. I understand a lot more than anyone thinks.

Because what happens if you reach the thing and you still aren’t happy? What happens if you try to do better, but no matter how much of yourself you put in, you’ll never be what the teachers and bosses and people in the grocery store want?

“He didn’t read this, did he?” Zach asks. There’s something in his voice that feels heavy. “He didn’t live the full and rich life she tried to give him.”

“No, he didn’t,” I agree. I find another tricky knot and start in on it. Then I say the thing that brought me all the way up here in the first place—the thing I’m hoping Zach can help me with. “But I think maybe, if we try very hard, we can still get him there.”

26

1960

In the end, Catherine couldn’t do it.

She tried to give William McBride what remained of her heart, she really did. She accepted the ring he offered her, a tight band of gold that she had to wear on her pinkie finger thanks to the swelling that seemed to be taking over her body. She planned a discreet wedding with her mother, the two of them poring over magazines to find the best silhouette for hiding a rounded and rapidly growing belly.

She also got to know her betrothed in the time-honored way of overprotected girls everywhere: she sat and chatted politely with him in her parents’ living room. The pair of them were always seated in opposite wingback chairs, her mother and father out of sight in the kitchen. She and William couldn’tseethem making cocoa and anxiously stirring their spoons back and forth, but they could hear them just fine.

In fact, she suspected that if her parents had owned one of those old Victorian courting chairs where the couple sat next to each other but was restricted by a wooden barrier that kept decorum at front and center, she and William would have been tied to it.

The whole thing was hilarious, when you thought about it. Whatdid they expect would happen if the two of them were left alone together? That she’d getmorepregnant?

“Your father found me a great post in Moriarty,” William said as he sat with his own cup of cocoa. A dab of it sat on his lower lip, a blob of sugary-sweet chocolate like a mole that was slowly creeping down his chin. Catherine was trying not to stare, but she couldn’t help herself.

Couldn’t he feel it? Couldn’t he feelanything?

He grinned, and the blob continued on its downward path. “It’s not the most glamorous location, and your mother is afraid the heat of New Mexico might be unbearable as you reach your time, but we’ll be able to start fresh, just the two of us. Or three, I guess I should say.”

He said this as though he was genuinely happy about the whole thing—a shotgun wedding where he’d fired no bullets, the prospect of raising a child that wasn’t his own.