Nevermore Bookstore: Chapter 16

Rage was a seriously underrated motivational agent.

Not even nine a.m., and already, Cady had emptied the dishwasher, done her laundry, put away all the boxes outside of Aunt Fern’s office, and was halfway through cleaning out the much-dreaded walk-in closet.

She might have been all the way through, were it not for the Sally Fields The whole time? sound bite loop playing endlessly in her head, and questions being shot at her from Gemma, Vivian, and Myrtle.

Having responded to her All Hands on Deck text to Gemma, they were seated at strategic points around Aunt Fern’s room, wrangling the particulars of the whole Fox/Bob imbroglio like a panel of Harvard scholars.

“All I’m saying is, that’s some next-level catfishing.” Gemma set her needles aside to accept a stack of books Cady handed out to her with a quiet “keep.”

“I thought catfishing is pretending to be someone else,” Myrtle said, nudging the brimming box out of the way with the toe of a sturdy work boot. “Not pretending not to be someone who you are.”

“But Bob wasn’t pretending not to be Fox.” Vivian set her teacup down on the saucer and picked up the permanent marker to label another empty box before sliding it back in the “keep” spot. “You’ll recall that Gemma was the one who provided him with a handy nickname. He simply didn’t disclose his true identity.”

“It’s the not disclosing part that’s the problem,” Gemma pointed out. “Here he was, lurking around her shop, knowing all this intimate shit about her and not saying a damn thing. It’s fucking creepy, if you ask me.”

No one had, but this never seemed to be a source of demotivation for Cady’s best friend.

“This is where you and I part ways, Gemma,” Vivian said. “Were Mr. Fox pretending to be someone else to gain Cady’s trust for the purposes of sexual gratification, I may be inclined to agree with your assessment. But he went to great lengths to make himself sexually undesirable.”

“For, like, five minutes,” Gemma said, her knitting needles clicking furiously. “Then it’s shave and a haircut”—she stomped her chunky heel on the wood floor in time with the old earworm—“fuck me.”

“But they didn’t have relations until after he had revealed himself as Fox,” Vivian pointed out.

“Revealed by accident,” Gemma argued. “Before he unintentionally outed himself, we have no idea what his plans were.”

Cady had an idea. Many ideas, in fact.

All of them getting darker the higher the sun rose.

The whole time.

When he’d showed up to haul her broken bookshelf away. When his finger had brushed hers as she handed off a half-eaten burrito. When he’d stacked books and listen to her prattle on about her penchant for bad taxidermy. When he’d made a paperclip monocle for her raven. When he’d been naked in her shower and sat across the table eating curry. When he’d fixed her roof and broken her heart.

He’d been Fox—her Fox—the whole time.

“Accident or no, it’s his exit that chaps my saddlebags. What the shit does leave my loneliness unbroken mean, anyway?” Myrtle squinted at the scrap of paper they’d all taken turns examining, as the sunlight streamed through her wispy white hair above a retina-frying neon-pink headband.

Cady blew hair out of her sweaty face as she dumped an armload of old magazines into the box Vivian had labeled charity shop. “It’s a quote from ‘The Raven.’”

A quote from “The Raven” that she’d discovered on the pillow next to hers when she woke in the gray light of predawn to find Fox long gone. So long gone, his side of the bed held no trace of warmth.

Somehow, that had made it all worse. That she’d been alone for much longer than she knew.

“Still, you have to give him points for working on a theme.” Myrtle set the paper aside and took up her plastic cup of swamp-water-colored sludge that she called her go-go juice for reasons Cady didn’t need to guess. “I once had a man break up with me on the check from a Denny’s.”

“Get the fuck outta here,” Gemma said, lowering her wrath scarf to her lap.

“True story,” Myrtle said. “Five months we’re dating. I excuse myself to powder my nose. I come back and all that’s left of him are two one-dollar bills and it’s not working out on the back of our brunch ticket. This from a man who ordered the Moons over My Hammy and didn’t even take his socks off during coitus. Is it any wonder I had my bisexual awakening at sixty-five?”

They all agreed that it was not.

“Maybe that’s what I’m doing wrong,” Cady muttered, turning her attention to a shelf of vintage Johanna Lindsey hardbacks with their dust covers still in mint condition. Reverently, she pulled Love Only Once from the shelf.

Her gateway drug. Snuck from Aunt Fern’s personal collection the summer of her seventeenth year, when words were the only thing that could distract her from the pain. She carefully opened the front cover as she had all those years ago, and was already searching for the looping autograph when a tri-folded paper fluttered to her feet.

Cady stooped to pick it up, wincing at the dull but not entirely unpleasant ache of her inner thighs.

“Your back?” Gemma asked.

Cady felt her cheeks flood with heat. “Uh…yeah.” She unfolded the paper, her pulse beginning to pound at the words To Fern Bloomquist.

Cady’s eyes sped down the page, chewing up the words in giant bites. I hereby deed the Townsend Building… until such a time as my will can be updated… shall serve as legal notice… a token of my love…

Ethan Townsend III.

A high-pitched buzzing invaded Cady’s ears as she folded back the book’s dust jacket to reveal more of the same angular, masculine script.

My love, my heart is yours, as is the place where you first stole it. Nevermore will we be separated.

-E

“Holy shit,” Gemma murmured over her shoulder. “Is that what I think it is?”

Cady turned mechanically, took three robotic steps out of the closet, and sat down hard. “Uh-huh.”

“But I thought Aunt Fern bought the building from the Townsends.”

“So did I,” she said, her brain spitting out thoughts at warp speed.

Aunt Fern and Ethan’s father? But…how? When? For how long? Glancing back down at the deed, she found one part, at least, was confirmed. It was dated July of three years ago.

“But this is good, right?” Gemma asked brightly, crouching down next to the chair. “With this, and your being Aunt Fern’s legal next of kin—”

“May I see?” Vivian’s signature lemony-floral scent wafted over Cady as the older woman sat down on the arm of the chair. Her eyes were wary when she glanced up from the paper. “Helpful to have, perhaps, but not proof sufficient for a probate court, I’m afraid.”

“A philanthropist and a philanderer,” Myrtle said. “He sure did like spreading it around.”

Cady could feel her heartbeat in her eyelids. Her lips. Her fingers.

“Motherfucker,” she said, launching out of her chair.

“Daddy Townsend?” Gemma asked.

“Fox,” she bit out as she stomped back into the closet.

“I’m glad I’m not the only one who’s having trouble following this,” Myrtle said.

“I want answers.” Cady jumped for the black nylon handle of Aunt Fern’s old hiking pack, but missed. “About his identity, what he found out while he was here, all of it.” She closed her fingers over the strap, bringing down an avalanche of sweaters and a hatbox as it slid off the shelf.

Gemma filled the doorway, arms folded across her breasts. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“I’m going to go find him.”

“Where?” she demanded. “In the goddamn wilds?”

Cady marched past her into the bedroom, grabbed her pills off the nightstand, and slammed them into one of the pockets. “Yep.”

“But you don’t even know where to look,” Gemma protested.

“Cy might.”

Gemma shot Myrtle a dirty look.

“Cy the Tree Guy?” Cady asked.

“Yes indeedy. I ran into him on the way over this morning,” Myrtle reported, picking up the hatbox. “Big branch came down on the Uptown stairs. Said it was lucky the big, scruffy fella he’d seen hunkered down there a time or two had moved off or he’d have been wearing his brains like a bib. Said he saw the fellow near the clearing on the edge of the national forest land by his family’s lake.”

Ice water ran down Cady’s spine.

Anyone at the base of that oak would have a straight eyeline to the Townsend Building.

And to her room.

“How far of a hike from the lookout point is the clearing?”

Myrtle chewed the inside of her papery cheek. “That’s gotta be two miles at least.”

“Two miles,” Cady repeated. “I can do two miles.”

“Around the coastal trail, maybe,” Gemma said, following her into the kitchen. “But we’re talking about a hike. Like, up a mountain and stuff.”

Cady opened the pantry and began adding components to her pack. Water, trail mix, granola bars, emotional support Oreos. “The way I’m feeling right now, I could cartwheel up that mountain and kick his ass when I get there. Twice.”

“You say that now, but—”

Cady turned to look at her friend, reading the clear concern in her glass-green eyes. In that moment, their entire friendship elapsed in a ten-second highlight reel. All the crazy shit they had done together. The terrible ideas. The unintentional adventures. The individual triumphs. The shared defeats. Their friendship was the longest relationship either of them had ever been in, and the platform from which she felt comfortable enough to make this kind of leap.

The crease between Gemma’s dark brows smoothed out and the corners of her siren-red lips curled.

“Take these,” Gemma said, reaching in her pocket to produce the same extendable knitting needles she’d brandished the first time Cady went to give “Bob” her burrito in the alley. “In case you run across any Bobcats.”

Cady surged forward and wrapped her friend in a hug. “Thank you, Gem.”

Myrtle wandered in with her cell phone pressed against her bony sternum, the bejeweled case winking like a disco ball. “You want Cy to take you up to the ridge?” she asked. “He says he’s free from now until two. Should give you plenty of time before it gets dark.”

“That would be great,” Cady said. “Tell him I’ll meet him down front in fifteen minutes.”

“Roger that,” Myrtle said with a wobbly little salute.

Vivian hung back in the doorway, a strange little smile on her serene face. She winked at Cady over Gemma’s shoulder, mouthing a familiar sentence.

Go get your man.

If Cy Forrester had one unforgivable flaw, it was his annoyingly calm, ridiculously soothing presence.

Cady had hopped into the arborist’s old truck hoping for conversation to distract her from the many doubts beginning to creep into her subconscious. But what she received instead was a spa-like atmosphere inside a circa 1980s Dodge extended cab. Ambient new-age music. A faceted crystal dangling from the rearview mirror. And was that eucalyptus and sandalwood she smelled?

His profile looked as indestructible as the russet desert rocks. His arms steady as the steel cables that held the Bridge of the Gods aloft. His powerful thighs like roots anchored to the bench seat, his boots gentle on both the gas and brake.

He greeted her warmly, ensured that the cabin was a comfortable temperature for her, then gave her entirely too much time to think. All the way out of town, he steered them along roads curtained by trees on either side. The thick forest itself held a silence for her thoughts to fill.

And fill it they did.

Flashbacks of Fox’s eyes burning into hers through the glass door. The feeling of his feverish lips, his silky tongue, his hands, his cock. The wicked, worshipful words he had mumbled into her ear as he joined their bodies and drove into her right there on the credenza by the phone that had become a talisman to the only joy she’d known in the last several months.

The truck’s substandard shocks were no help whatsoever, mimicking a very particular hip-jiggling rhythm that made her develop a second pulse against his blanket-covered bench seat. Fox’s touch haunted her entire body. The discreet twinge of the bruises his hipbones had left on her inner thighs. Her over sensitized nipples hardening against her bra with every bounce and sway.

“It’s a pretty straight shot up the trail,” Cy said, his voice as soothing as the leafy climes where he spent his summer days.

“Oh, uh-huh.” Fox’s mouth, plying her apart. His clever tongue splitting her—

“About half a mile up, you’ll run into a scramble, but that’s the only one. The handholds are pretty clearly marked.”

The only scramble she wanted to run into at this particular moment would include at least two animal products and a side of something that hot sauce would improve. “That’s good to know.”

“The rangers keep it pretty well maintained overall, but with those shoes you’ll need to be careful on rocks especially.”

Cady glanced down at her canvas Chuck Taylors. She didn’t own a pair of hiking boots, but to her credit, she’d grabbed the newest pair with the best traction.

Traction being a relative term for the brand.

The truck’s engine whined as Cy geared down and they rounded a turn that made Cady’s stomach drop toward her ill-suited shoes.

She tried to summon the rage that had gotten her this far and quailed until she remembered what Myrtle had tucked into the front pocket of her pack. She unzipped it, her fingers brushing the paper. The grooves of her fingerprints sensed the minute depression of the pen’s ink under Fox’s heavy hand.

Leave my loneliness unbroken.

Like fuck she would.

He’d better hope she left his stupid, beautiful, craggy, kindly face unbroken by the time she was done.

“Here we are.” Cy pulled the truck over into the scenic lookout area, and the tires crunched and popped on the gravel. “You want me to come back in a couple hours?”

“That’s okay,” she said, unbuckling her seatbelt. “I appreciate the lift, though.”

“Tell you what,” he said, leaning a forearm on the well-worn steering wheel. “I can come back with Rowan and leave a Gator for you. That way, you can come down when you’re ready.”

“That would be great,” Cady said, somewhat relieved. She had absolutely no idea how this was going to go.

“Gotcha covered,” he said, reaching across her lap to open her door. “You be careful out there. Those rocks get wicked slippery.”

“Will do.” Cady slid down from the seat and waved as his truck pulled away. The trees seem to have grown thicker, the rise steeper, the rock…rockier, purely out of spite.

Pulling in a lungful of air tinged with rain and pine, she yanked her hood over her ears and set off in search of a ghost.