Page 78 of The Library of Borrowed Hearts

Her mother’s hand jerked in hers. “Catherine, you don’t mean that!”

But she did—with all her heart, she did. The idea was cruel and catastrophic and final. It was also the only way she could think of to save him.

“I know him, and I know what kind of books he reads, so you have to believe me when I say this. If I don’t marry William McBride, death is the only other ending Jasper will heed.”

She drew a determined breath and prepared to lay out her plans. Hemingway said it best, but he didn’t say it first and he certainly wouldn’t say it last.

Life isn’t hard to manage when you’ve nothing to lose.

27

NOODLE

“I can’t believe this is really real.”

Chloe sits on the front steps of the library, her skirt tucked around her legs as she flips through the pages ofWuthering Heights. Even though her voice sounds as calm as usual, her eyes are wide and her hands shake as she makes her way through.

She glances up at me—well, probably at Zach, but since we’re standing next to each other, it’s basically the same thing.

“There’s writing on almost every page,” she says. She stabs her finger at a line in the second half. “Look. This is the part where Heathcliff and Catherine are sitting up in a tree together. ‘He wanted all to lie in an ecstasy of peace; I wanted all to sparkle, and dance in a glorious jubilee. I said his heaven would be only half-alive, and he said mine would be drunk; I said I should fall asleep in his, and he said he could not breathe in mine.’”

Next to me, Zach doesn’t move. He’s been acting kind of funny ever since I showed him the book, but not in a way that makes sense to me. He’s not mad—that much I know for sure—but I don’t think he’s happy, either. In fact, the more I think about it, the more he seems like Chloe around Christmastime. She’s really good at helping us make decorationsfor the tree and baking cookies and stuff, but I know she feels bad about how many presents there are. Or aren’t.

“What does she have to say about that?” he asks. “Our Catherine?”

I don’t think Chloe has noticed how weird Zach is yet. We pulled her out of work on her lunch break, so she’s probably busy thinking about book catalogs and story time.

“She says,‘Isn’t it funny how unoriginal we are as human beings? A hundred and seventy-five years later, and here we are, living the same lives and making the same mistakes. You’re up in the tree, watching the clouds and breathing the air, and all I want is to run away to the next field over. At the very least, I could have been the Heathcliff in our relationship. That would have been a fun switch.’” Chloe lifts the book so we can see.

“I don’t understand any of it,” she says before we can read it for ourselves. “Catherine obviously wrote in this book as a kind of farewell to Jasper. She meant for him to read it after she was gone. But why did she leave? And why does Jasper think she died?”

I’m happy to have at least one of those answers. It’s not very often that I know something Chloe doesn’t.

“Jasper said they were going to have a baby together. He was so upset when she wouldn’t marry him that he hit a guy.” I pause, remembering his words, and add, “He also said violence is never the answer, and that it’s not okay to hurt other people just because you hurt, too.”

Chloe’s head swivels toward Zach. I get the feeling she didn’t really hear that second part.

“Is that true?” she asks. “He proposed and Catherine said no? She waspregnant? And you didn’t tell me?”

Zach looks as uncomfortable as I feel whenever I have to be polite to grown-ups I don’t like.

“In my defense, I meant to,” he says. “I was going to tell you the next time we hung out, but you’ve been so busy with your mom that I haven’t had a chance.”

Instead of saying something soothing, like she usually does, Chloe narrows her eyes. “You couldn’t text?”

“And say what? That Jasper laid his deepest, darkest secret at my feet?”

“Well, yeah, actually. You know how invested I am in this.”

Zach’s voice gets quiet. “You’ve got a lot on your plate right now. I didn’t want to overload it.”

That’s when Chloe does a thing I’ve never seen her do before. She gets mad. Like,reallymad—the kind that makes your skin turn red and your face get ugly, though I don’t think Chloe could ever be that. She also jumps to her feet so fast that her bag spills all over the steps.

“You think Jasper’s illegitimate love child is the thing that’s going to break me?” she says, and in a voice that’s so loud it counts as yelling. “Of all the things I’ve done in my life—the jobs I’ve slogged through, the plans I’ve given up, the mother currently sitting in my living room acting as though she isn’t responsible for every last bit of it—you think finally solving the riddle to this book saga is one thing I can’t handle?”

Zach doesn’t even flinch. He starts picking up Chloe’s spilled notebooks and ChapStick instead. “I said I was sorry.”

“Don’t do that,” Chloe says as she snatches the purse away from him. She shovels the rest of her stuff in. “I’ll clean up the mess. It’s the one thing I’m halfway good at.”