Page 82 of The Library of Borrowed Hearts

“They use the manufactured hardship of the wilderness as an excuse for avoiding reality,” she continued. “Think about it—we live in a glorious time of human existence. If I pull out my phone, I can instantly access every piece of documented history. We’ve passed no fewer than fifteen different restaurants since we got on this road, and we can pay for anything we want to eat with a small piece of plastic we carry in our pockets. And that’s not even counting the fact that we’re sitting comfortably inside a hunk of metal designed to fly over roads using the decayed remains of marine plants and animals that lived millions of years ago. Yet these men pretend that the only thing keeping us alive as a species is their ability to sleep in a tent and skin a squirrel in under a minute.”

“You tell him, Auntie,” Pepper cheered.

I could hear the amusement in my grandmother’s voice over the roar of the engine. She leaned forward and tapped my shoulder. “Back me up, Zach. How often does Bates leave your poor mother all alone in that big house so he can go out and ‘commune with nature’?”

“Three or four times a year,” I said, understanding my role. Still, I felt compelled to defend my dad. My parents’ marriage might have been odd, but it had always been a happy one. “You know she doesn’t mind, though. She always ends up painting like six or seven new pieces while he’s gone.”

My grandmother waved me off. “That’s not the point. The point is—”

“Wait,” Pepper interrupted. “Your son’s name is Bates? Like the butler fromDownton Abbey?”

I shook my head. Explaining my father’s love of the wilderness was nothing compared to explaining the origin of his name.

“Not that Bates,” my grandmother said. “The one fromPsycho. Norman.”

“You named your son after the psychotic killer in a horror movie?” Pepper demanded, incredulous.

My grandmother was quick to correct her, which she did with a gentle cough. “No, I named him after the psychotic killer in one of the greatestnovelsof all time.”

I couldn’t help but add my own mite. “Yeah. The one who lives in an unhealthily codependent relationship with his mother after his biological father leaves them.” I laughed at the sudden silence in the back seat. “Grandma has always had a dark sense of humor.”

“Bates is a good strong name, and I’ve never once regretted choosing it,” my grandmother said sternly, but then she ruined it by dissolving into giggles. “You should have seen my poor parents when I told them. I think they took the news of my pregnancy better. My mother actually cried.”

Pepper breathed out long and slow. “Damn, Auntie. You’re next-level badass. Chloe is going toloveyou.”

At the sound of that name, my own breath came in a sharp inhalation. When we’d first spoken on the phone, I hadn’t said anything to my grandmother about my feelings for Chloe, but her name had naturally arisen—and Grandma had always had an uncanny ability to see beyond the surface of things. I imagine that was what drew her to a man like Jasper Holmes all those years ago. The rest of the world looked at him and saw a confirmed grouch with the social skills of a bear awakening from hibernation; she looked at him and thought,Huh. He seems sweet.

“Ah, yes,” my grandmother said, careful to keep her tone neutral. “The girl who found the book. The one Jasper has been antagonizing for the past few years.”

“I never said he wasantagonizingher,” I protested. “He’s been stealing her family’s Frisbees, that’s all.”

I might as well have not been in the car for all the attention the other two paid me.

“Which just goes to prove what I was saying before,” she said. “I gave that man the gift of a lifetime. Walking away from him was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but I knew it was the only way he’d have a chance at a life of his own. And what did he do with it?”

I had my own answer to this question, but it wasn’t the one my grandmother wanted to hear. I’d seen too much of Jasper Holmes and read too many of the lines in those books to believe that his life after her had been anything but a long, lonely slog.

“He wasted it, that’s what,” she said as if clinching an argument. “He sat in that town and let decades pass without making the least push to improve himself. It’s exactly as I said—he’s selfish.”

I was about to protest again, but Pepper beat me to it. “But Auntie, what if he didn’t see your death as a gift? What if his heart was broken and he couldn’t find a way to fix it?”

My grandmother grew unnaturally silent. For the longest time, I thought she was going to finally admit that she may have been wrong—that she was, in large part, responsible for the man Jasper turned out to be—but she didn’t. At this point, I wasn’t sure that shecould.

“Everyone’s heart breaks at least once in a lifetime,” she said, determined, as ever, to go her own way. “It’s as inevitable as falling in love. The real challenge is deciding what you plan to do about it.”

30

CATHERINE

My grandson was no fool.

Instead of trying to put me up in a tent out in the woods or booking me into one of the budget hotels that litter the highway, he had the sense to get me an Airbnb in one of the older, statelier homes not far from the white house I once lived in with my parents. I hated to sound pretentious, but I’d been on this planet for over eighty years. In that time, I’d lived in tenement-style building blocks, moldy basement apartments, and a small studio in the heart of New York City, just to name a few. I could rough it with the best of them, but since I was no longer in a position where sleeping in a loft with exactly six inches between my head and the ceiling was necessary, I wasn’t going to do it.

Growing old was no picnic, but it had its perks.

“I’ve checked all the doors and windows, and it looks like everything locks from the inside,” Zach said as he prowled about the living room, fidgeting and poking at everything that was even remotely movable. “And I can’t see any hidden cameras, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t here. Don’t walk around naked unless you’re willing to risk someone recording you from their underground lair.”

I laughed and grabbed his cheeks, pulling him down for a quick kiss. “Bless you, child. Anyone who wants to secretly record me in the nude is welcome to it. They’ll be feeling the pain of exposure a lot more than I will.”