Morty shifted on the bed, and his gaze drifted toward the window. “Thanks for keeping an eye out, kiddo. And thanks for the change of clothes. The gown was a bit breezy, if you know what I mean.”
Emma slid off the bed and went to the window so she could open the blinds more, and she exhaled slowly. “Better?” she asked. “Seems a shame to block out so much of the light. Bobby used to hate it when the nurses closed his blinds on a sunny day, saying he needed to rest. He always argued that he could rest while still admiring the sunlight. If he couldn’t be out in it, then he wanted to at least see it.” She walked back toward the bed and sat near his feet, tucking one leg beneath her. “You’re welcome for the clothes, and there wasn’t a lot to keep an eye out for at the library.” Unless you’re referring to a lying or possibly fictional man.
Morty cleared his throat. Weariness rolled his shoulders forward as he exhaled in rhythm with the machine. Seeing him wearing a T-shirt with a college football team’s logo and a pair of wrinkled slacks, rather than in his usual neat attire, seemed to intensify his tiredness. He stared down at his hands when he asked, “How is everything at the library?”
Emma had come to see Morty with full intentions of blasting him with a dozen questions as soon as she opened the door. But once she’d seen Morty lying in the hospital bed, and seen the weary look in his eyes, the anger had rushed out of her like the insides of a squashed grape.
But the questions felt like burning coals in her stomach. She couldn’t keep them inside for long. She sighed, convincing herself that she could speak to him about it without letting her emotions take control. Emma decided not to mention using the inkpad or the books she’d stamped earlier. She wanted to hear his version of the truth.
“Morty, I need you to be honest with me about something. I’m not a little girl anymore, and I don’t want to be lied to.”
Morty’s brows pushed together. “You’re always going to be a little girl to me.”
“But I’m not,” she said, more sharply than she intended. Then she inhaled slowly to try and calm her nerves. “Tell me what’s going on. Tell me about this guy who’s calling himself James. Tell me about the others who were with you in the archives the other night. Who are they?”
Morty looked away as though he were thinking. He rubbed over the spot on the top of his hand where the IV was placed. “The other night…I think it was Darcy, right? And Belle and the prince and James. It’s a little hazy at this point, but I know James was there. He was there for you.”
Emma folded her hands together in her lap. “I don’t understand. The others are gone, but that guy—James—was still there today. He told me his name is James Grey, a man who happens to have the same name as the soldier in my favorite biography. Except this guy acts like he is James Grey. He says he’s been coming to the library for years.”
Emma repeated everything James had told her, from his years watching her and Bobby grow up to the magic ink and stamp in the bottom drawer to the way the fictional people could be invisible or visible to people, depending on what they wanted. She left out the part about how much she wanted to believe James’ explanation was true, about how much she felt drawn to him—how even now she wondered what he was doing. In the back of her mind she heard a clock ticking, counting down the minutes she had with him. Two days, and a handful of hours that are slipping away.
“Morty,” Emma finally said after finishing her story and watching Morty stare at his hands without speaking. “What is going on?”
Morty leaned back on the bed and stretched his legs, causing his ankles to pop. “Go get a cup of coffee, Em, and let’s dig into that bag of goodies you brought.”
Ten minutes later, Emma and Morty sat up on his bed. She wedged a Styrofoam cup of coffee in the spot behind her knee while balancing a plate of two muffins on her leg. Emma picked at one of the muffins, causing it to crumble onto her plate.
Morty popped half of a muffin into his mouth, chewed, and swallowed. “I’m not the first head librarian to know about the magic in the library. This knowledge has been passed down for years. But it’s important that the knowledge stays within the library. I’ve always looked at it like a perk, a chance to meet characters I’ve loved or been curious about.
“In the simplest of explanations, there’s a box full of sparkling sand in the archives. It only takes a little pinch to add to the inkpad. Once someone checks out a book and you think you’d like to meet a character from the story, you stamp the book with the special ink, speak the character’s name, and that character will show up in the library.”
Emma snorted. “Sparkling sand? From where, Neverland?”
Morty thinned his lips the way he always did when she was being disrespectful, and Emma glanced away. A nagging feeling of unease tugged at her. After stamping the library cards, she’d spoken the names of two characters, which should have caused something to happen. But no characters had appeared, so how could Morty’s story be true?
“Save your disdain for when my story is done, if you don’t mind,” Morty said. “The story goes that a group of gypsies passed through Mystic Water and gave some of their sand to a woman who created a man from dough—”
Emma laughed, and the blinds quivered, knocking against the windowpanes. “A dough boy?”
Morty eyed her again, and she pressed her lips together.
Emma pushed the crumbs on her plate into the shape of an anthill. Then she lifted out a blueberry and popped it into her mouth. “It is funny, though, right? A Frankenstein dough boy?” she asked.
“Regardless if that story is true or not, some of the sand ended up with the head librarian at the time. One of the traveling women told her how to use it, and from then on, the library has seen many characters brought to life. It does make time in the library more interesting.”
Emma lifted the muffin and took a bite. After she swallowed, she said, “Let’s say I believe in this sparkly sand inkpad, what was it like when the head librarian told you?”
“I thought she’d gone a little cuckoo. But I was willing to try it out, just to prove she’d lost it. But she was telling the truth. Using the inkpad was disorienting for me the first time I tried it. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I was very deliberate about choosing the most interesting characters I could think of. When the characters show up here, they have knowledge of where they’re from—of their own stories—but they’re also aware that they are with you in a special place. They interact with one another, and, let me tell you, they don’t always get along with one another. Captain Ahab is a challenging man with a singular focus, and Elizabeth Bennett couldn’t stand him at all. His arrogance nearly undid her good manners on multiple occasions. That was probably the most complicated two weeks I’ve ever had with a group of characters.
“After that, I decided that I would bring no more than four here at a time. Much more than that, and they’re difficult to control. But I’ve also brought out only one at a time, depending on who it is and how much one-on-one time I want.
“Once I realized Bobby loved the story about James Grey so much, I’ve been bringing James back once a year ever since we started holding the Mystic Water Veteran’s Festival at the library and on the grounds. You can only bring characters out once a year, by the way. Anyway, I figured James would get a kick out of the commemoration ceremony when we remember Mystic Water’s military roots.
“From the first time he arrived here, James was taken with you two immediately. I thought, in time, I would share the truth with both you and Bobby, and Bobby could meet his hero. And I guess I always felt you had a fondness for James as more than a war hero, but also as a…as a girl might care about a boy. You were too young for any of that nonsense for years, but I had a sense about the future—that as you grew, you might one day be ready to meet him for yourself.”
Emma shifted her plate to the bed and lifted her cup of coffee. Then she leaned forward and rested her elbows on her leg. She stared at Morty’s face. When she spoke, her voice w
as a whisper, “Are you talking about real magic? About pulling characters from books and, honest to God, bringing them to life?” Was James Grey, the soldier in the library, really the man she’d spent half her life daydreaming about? That’s impossible.
But was it?
Morty’s features softened for a moment and he nodded.
“How am I supposed to believe that?” Emma asked, leaning back and pressing one hand against the bed. “How could any of that be possible?”
Morty shrugged and reached for the rest of his muffin. “The world is full of the impossible, Emma. You know what Roald Dahl said, ‘Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.’”
Emma glanced out the window at the long stretch of asphalt rippling in the summer heat. Her heart squeezed with want. After a couple of years of heartache and loss, she wanted to believe the world might hold a little bit of magic. But just as she felt her heart creaking open, she slammed it shut and frowned. After all, she’d stamped the books using the ink and nothing had changed, not even the whisper of a character.
“This is absurd. Why would anyone believe this story? I could just as easily believe that you’ve been overmedicated at the hospital and you’re spouting gibberish. And that man in the library is just playing along because you feel sorry for me and you think I need someone. If it is the truth, you’ve waited more than twenty years to tell me. You are one of the last people on this earth that I have trusted completely, and now…”
Holding her half-empty cup, Emma slid off the edge of the bed and grabbed her plate, scattering crumbs in her frustration. She opened the brown sack and dropped in her uneaten muffin. Then she threw her coffee cup and plate into the trash.
“Hey, kiddo,” he said. “I know it’s a lot to take in, and I’m sorry I haven’t been honest with you about all of this, but I wasn’t sure you were ready for it yet. Not after everything.”
Emma’s scowl deepened. “You don’t have to baby me forever. I’m not some fragile, weak thing.”
Morty’s back straightened. “I never said that.”
“You might as well have.” Emma grabbed her purse and walked toward the door. “I’ll be at work if you need anything, unless it’s someone to confide in, then I might be too broken up to handle it.”
“Emma—”
She opened the door and walked out, stomping down the hallway toward the elevators. She clenched her jaw the entire ride down to the ground floor, and she continued her angry march toward her car, feeling the searing heat rising from the pavement and causing her to sweat within seconds.
On the drive to the library, Emma’s emotions ping-ponged between irrational anger at Morty’s inability to trust her and his need to treat her like a breakable child and the guilt she felt for being disrespectful to him.
Her usual space was occupied by a shiny, gold convertible, and Emma nearly combusted in her car as she parked at the back of the lot. She flung open her car door, and she had half a mind to slam it shut, just to release the ire swelling inside of her, but she hesitated. Squeals erupted from the lawn area just off to the side of the library’s back steps.
A group of young women danced in a lopsided circle with unbridled excitement. Their giggles and high-pitched voices bounced toward Emma and blew her hair back from her face.
A man wearing a top hat and riding attire stood on the back steps of the library, looking pleased with the surrounding women. The sunlight beamed off his handsome face, casting light in every direction. His baritone rumbled, and the young women seemed hypnotized by his words.
Emma’s skin tingled, and she had the horrible feeling that she was denying the obvious. What if Morty weren’t lying to her about the magic, whether it worked for her or not? Is that Darcy? Outside the library? Emma’s brain and legs kicked into gear as she sprinted across the parking lot like an Olympian athlete.
8
The time had come for Emma to choose: either she believed Morty’s story about the library and its secrets or she didn’t. She had trusted Morty for as long as she could remember. Based on the way her heart was lodged in her throat and that she could feel her pounding pulse in her temples, she felt her best option would be to trust what her emotions were revealing to her. Morty wasn’t lying.
Just before Emma reached the steps, she was certain the man was Darcy—where had he come from?—and he had his groupies mesmerized with his dashing smile and British accent. She wheezed as she leaped onto the stairs and gripped his arm.
Darcy released an oomph as she nearly slammed into him, jerking his arm toward the library doors.
“I beg your pardon,” he said as he snatched his arm out of her grip. His tall shadow stretched across the library doors, casting an imposing silhouette. “That is no way for a lady to act.” He straightened his coat and nodded his head toward the women watching him from the lawn.
Emma glared at him as she struggled to catch her breath. “What do you think you’re doing outside of the library? Get back inside, Darcy.”
He tilted his head and studied her. “I don’t recall being asked to obey the whims of a young woman. And if you can’t see it for yourself, I have a group of guests assembled here. It would be rude to leave them when they have specifically asked for my attendance.”
Emma glanced at the women on the grass. More than half of them cradled books and notepads in their arms. The Jane Austen Readers. “Perfect timing,” she grumbled as she recognized the women who enjoyed meeting every other Friday to discuss their love and devotion to all things Jane Austen.
“Emma,” Carrie Ford said, stepping forward from the group. “I can’t believe you and Morty came up with this idea.”
Emma blinked at her a few times. “What idea?”
Carrie pointed at Darcy. Is she blushing? Carrie’s eyes had gone all dewy, and her dilated pupils pulled sunlight toward her face. Carrie sighed audibly as she twirled a lock of her long, blonde hair around her finger.
Darcy straightened his shoulders. “The pleasure is all mine, I assure you,” he said.
Emma narrowed her eyes. “Turn it off for a second, will you, Darcy?” Emma looked at Carrie, creating a handful of possible and plausible explanations as quickly she could, and then settled on the most believable. “You mean the lookalike?”
Carrie and the rest of the group nodded like bobblehead dolls. “He’s superb. And it was such a fun surprise for us this morning, even though he didn’t show up until the end of our meeting—just as we decided to go to the coffee shop. Then poof he was there, saying he’d love to go with us.”
“Oh, no, you don’t,” Emma said, shaking her head and grabbing Darcy’s arm again. “That’s not going to happen, Carrie. I’m sorry for the disappointment, but Darcy has to stay here with me. He has other plans.”
Darcy turned to look at Emma, and she squeezed her fingers tighter on his arm. When she spoke, her voice was a whispered warning. “Darcy, get back inside the library or I am going to lose it.”
“Going to?” he asked with a raised eyebrow. “I think you’ve already gone round that bend, my dear.”
Emma clenched her jaw, and Darcy relented. He removed his hat and bowed gracefully to the women.
“I do hope you’ll accept my sincerest apologies, but it appears I have a previous engagement that I cannot miss. Please come and see me again. I have enjoyed your company immensely.”
The women swooned like dandelions bending in the breeze, and Emma groaned. For a cynical moment she thought, Get a life. But then she remembered what it felt like to feel weak in the knees at seeing a man’s smile—a feeling she’d just fought off that morning. She exhaled.
“Thanks for understanding, Carrie. We really appreciate y’all coming in to see us. Next time we’ll make sure Darcy shows up on time for your meeting.”
The smiles on the women’s faces reminded Emma of a dental commercial. Words swirled around their feet, surfing over the blades of grass. Next time. Dreams do come true. Single.
As Emma dragged Darcy
back into the library, Carrie called out, “Thanks, Emma! We’ll see you both next time. We can’t wait!” The door clicked closed and shut out the rest of Carrie’s excited, hopeful words.
Emma pulled Darcy down a deserted aisle before she released her grip on him. “What are you doing, Darcy? Are you trying to get us all thrown into the loony bin? You can’t just walk around Mystic Water. You don’t exactly blend in with the townsfolk.”
Darcy’s cheek dimpled. “The women are drawn to my accent. I could have read them the alphabet, and they would have listened. Did you see how taken they were with me? It was uplifting.” Darcy closed his eyes and inhaled. He gripped the breast of his coat.
“Darcy,” Emma said, snapping her fingers in his face, “are you hearing what I’m saying? You cannot leave the library. Those are Morty’s rules.”
“Morty isn’t here, Emma,” Darcy said.
“You will respect the rules of the library,” Emma demanded, sounding like an old schoolmarm who was on the verge of a soapbox lecture.
“Well, aren’t you turning out to be a real disciplinarian?” he said, smiling at her, nearly winning her over with his charm.
Emma clenched her fingers into fists and exhaled heavily through her nose.
“Have it your way,” he said, “even though my way is significantly more interesting.” He turned around and walked away from her, disappearing like a ghost before he reached the end of the aisle.
Emma gaped at the empty space, feeling her breath catch and then release. She turned away and walked to the circulation desk in a state of dreamlike disbelief until she noticed Vicki looked frantic. She shoved papers around and opened and closed drawers at random. She whirled around when she heard Emma’s footsteps.
“Oh, Emma, finally. I can’t do this without you,” Vicki said, running straight at her. Her dark eyes were wide and full of anxiety.
The Legend of James Grey Page 8
