by Megan Hart
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Megan Hart
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MEGAN HART
To my trusted crit partners, you know who you are.
To my family, for your support and love.
To my readers—without you, I'd have no success. Thank
you.
I don't write books without music. My thanks to the artists
and musicians who make it possible for me to sit at my
computer day after day and make worlds and the people
who populate them. Please support their work through
legal sources.
Don McLean, "Empty Chairs"; Joaquin Phoenix and
Reese Witherspoon, "It Ain't Me, Babe"; Joshua Radin,
"Closer"; Justin King, "Same Mistakes"; Lifehouse,
"Whatever It Takes"; Meredith Brooks, "What Would
Happen"; Rufus Wainwright, "Halelujah"; Sarah Bareiles,
"Gravity"; Schuyler Fisk, "Lying to You"; She Wants Revenge, "These Things"; Tim Curry, "S.O.S."
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Author's Note
Chapter 01
Chapter 02
Chapter 03
Chapter 04
Chapter 05
Chapter 06
Chapter 07
Chapter 08
Chapter 09
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 01
Sometimes, you look back.
He was coming out. I was going in. We moved by each
other, ships passing without fanfare the way hundreds of
strangers pass every day. The moment didn't last longer
than it took to see a bush of dark, messy hair and a flash
of dark eyes. I registered his clothes first, the khaki cargo
pants and a long-sleeved black T-shirt. Then his height and
the breadth of his shoulders. I became aware of him in the
span of a few seconds the way men and women have of
noticing each other, and I swiveled on the pointed toe of
my kitten-heel pumps and folowed him with my gaze until
the door of the Speckled Toad closed behind me.
"Want me to wait?"
"Huh?" I looked at Kira, who'd gone ahead of me. "For what?"
"For you to go back after the dude who just gave you
whiplash." She smirked and gestured, but I couldn't see
him anymore, not even through the glass.
I'd known Kira since tenth grade, when we bonded over
our mutual love for a senior boy named Todd Browning.
We'd had a lot in common back then. Bad hair, miserable
taste in clothes and a fondness for too much black
eyeliner. We'd been friends back then, but I wasn't sure
what to cal her now.
I turned toward the center of the shop. "Shut up. I barely
noticed him."
"If you say so." Kira tended to drift, and now she
wandered toward a shelf of knickknacks that were nothing
like anything I'd ever buy. She lifted one, a stuffed frog
holding a heart in its feet. The heart had MOM
embroidered on it in sparkly letters. "What about this?"
"Nice bling. But no, on so many levels. I do have half a
mind to get her one of these, though." I turned to a shelf of
porcelain clowns.
"Jesus. She'd hate one of those. I dare you to buy it." Kira snorted laughter.
I laughed, too. I was trying to find a birthday present for
my father's wife. The woman wouldn't own her real age
and insisted every birthday be celebrated as her "twenty-
and insisted every birthday be celebrated as her "twenty-
ninth" along with the appropriate coy smirks, but she sure
didn't mind raking in the loot. Nothing I bought would
impress her, and yet I was unrelentingly determined to buy
her something perfect.
"If they weren't so expensive, I might think about it. She
colects that Limoges stuff. Who knows? She might realy
dig a ceramic clown." I touched the umbrela of one
tightrope-balancing monstrosity.
Kira had met Stela a handful of times and neither had
been impressed with the other. "Yeah, right. I'm going to
check out the magazines."
I murmured a reply and kept up my search. Miriam Levy,
the owner of the Speckled Toad, stocks an array of
decora tive items, but that wasn't realy why I was there. I
could have gone anyplace to find Stela a present. Hel,
she'd have loved a gift card to Neiman Marcus, even if
she'd have sniffed at the amount I could afford. I didn't
come to Miriam's shop for the porcelain clowns, or even
because it was a convenient half a block from Riverview
Manor, where I lived.
No. I came to Miriam's shop for the paper.
No. I came to Miriam's shop for the paper.
Parchment, hand-cut greeting cards, notebooks, pads of
exquisite, delicate paper thin as tissue, stationery meant for
fountain pens and thick, sturdy cardboard capable of
enduring any torture. Paper in al colors and sizes, each
individualy perfect and unique, just right for writing love
notes and breakup letters and condolences and poetry,
with not a single box of plain white computer printer paper
to be found. Miriam won't stock anything so plebian.
I have a bit of a stationery fetish. I colect paper, pens,
note cards. Set me loose in an office-supply store and I
can spend more hours and money than most women can
drop on shoes. I love the way good ink smels on
expensive paper. I love the way a heavy, linen note card
feels in my fingers. Most of al, I love the way a blank
sheet of paper looks when it's waiting to be written on.
Anything can happen in those moments before you put pen
to paper.
The best part about the Speckled Toad is that Miriam sels
her paper by the sheet as wel as by the package and the
ream. My colection of papers includes some of creamy
linen with watermarks, some handmade from flower pulp,
some note cards scissored into scherenschnitte scenes. I
some note cards scissored into scherenschnitte scenes. I
have pens of every color and weight, most of them
inexpensive but with something—the ink or the color—that
appealed to me. I've colected my paper and my pens for
years from antique shops, close-out bins, thrift shops.
Discovering the Speckled Toad was like finding my own
personal nirvana.
I always intend to use what I buy for something important.
Worth
while. Love letters written with a pen that curves
into my palm just so and tied with crimson ribbon, sealed
with scarlet wax. I buy them, I love them, but I hardly ever
write on them. Even anonymous love letters need a
recipient…and I didn't have a lover.
Then again, who writes anymore? Cel phones, instant
messaging and the Internet have made letter writing
obsolete, or nearly so. There's something powerful,
though, about a handwritten note. Something personal and
aching to be profound. Something more than a half-
scribbled grocery list or a scrawled signature on a
premade greeting card. Something I would probably never
write, I thought as I ran my fingers over the silken edge of
a pad of Victorian-embossed writing paper.
"Hey, Paige. How's it going?" Miriam's grandson Ari
"Hey, Paige. How's it going?" Miriam's grandson Ari
shifted the packages in his arms to the floor behind the
counter, then disappeared and popped back up like a
jack-in-the-box.
"Ari, dear. I have another delivery for you." Miriam
appeared from the curtained doorway behind the front
counter and looked over her half-glasses at him. "Right
away. Don't take two hours like you did the last time."
He roled his eyes but took the envelope from her and
kissed her cheek. "Yes, Bubbe."
"Good boy. Now, Paige. What can I do for you today?"
Miriam watched him go with a fond smile before turning to
me. She was impeccably made up as usual, not a hair out
of place or a smudge to her lipstick. Miriam is a true
grande dame, at least seventy, and with a style few women
can pul off at any age.
"I need a gift for my father's wife."
"Ah." Miriam inclined her head delicately to the left. "I'm sure you'l find the perfect gift. But if you need any help, let
me know."
"Thanks." I'd been in often enough for her to know I liked to wander and browse.
After twenty minutes in which I'd caressed and perused
the new shipment of fine writing papers and expensive
pens I couldn't afford no matter how much I desperately
wanted one, Kira found me in the back room.
"Okay, Indiana Jones, what are you looking for? The Lost
Ark?"
"I'l know it when I see it." I gave her a look.
Kira roled her eyes. "Oh, let's just go to the mal. You
know Stela won't care what you give her."
"But I care." I couldn't explain how important it was to…
wel, not impress Stela. I could never impress her. To not
disappoint her. To not prove her right about me. That was
al I wanted to do. To not prove her right.
"You're so stubborn sometimes."
"It's caled determination," I murmured as I looked one last time at the shelf in front of me.
"It's caled stubborn as hel and refusing to admit it. I'l be
outside."
I barely glanced up as she left. I'd known Kira's attention
span wouldn't make her the best companion for this trip,
but I'd put off buying Stela's gift for too long. I hadn't seen
much of Kira since I'd moved away from our hometown to
Harrisburg. Actualy, I hadn't seen much of her even
before that. When she'd caled to see if I wanted to get
together I hadn't been able to think of a reason to say no
that wouldn't make me sound like a total douche. She'd be
content outside smoking a cigarette or two, so I turned my
attention back to the search, determined to find just the
right thing.
Over the years I'd discovered it wasn't necessarily the gift
itself that won Stela's approval, but something even less
tangible than the price. My father gave her everything she
wanted, and what she didn't get from him she bought for
herself, so buying her something she wanted or needed
was impossible. Gretchen and Steve, my dad's kids with
his first wife, Tara, took the lazy route of having their kids
make her something like a finger-painted card. Stela's
own two boys were stil young enough not to care. My half
siblings got off the gift-giving hook with their haphazard
siblings got off the gift-giving hook with their haphazard
efforts when I'd be held to a higher standard.
There is always something to be gained from being held to
the higher standard.
Now I looked, hard, thinking about what would be just
right. Don't get me wrong. She's not a bad person, my
father's wife. She never went out of her way to make me
part of their family the way she had with Gretchen and
Steven, and I surely didn't rank as high in her sight as her
sons Jeremy and Tyler. But my half siblings had al lived
with my dad. I never had.
Then I saw it. The perfect gift. I took the box from the
shelf and opened the top. Inside, nestled on deep blue
tissue paper, lay a package of pale blue note cards. In the
lower right corner of each glittered a stylized S surrounded by a design of subtly sparkling stars. The envelopes had
the same starry design, the paper woven with silver
threads to make it shine. A pen rested inside the box, too.
I took it out. It was too light and the tiny tassel at the end
made it too casual, but this wasn't for me. It was the
perfect pen for salon-manicured fingers writing thank- you
cards in which al the i's were dotted by tiny hearts. It was the perfect pen for Stela.
the perfect pen for Stela.
"Ah, so you found something." Miriam took the box from
me and carefuly peeled away the price sticker from
beneath. "Very nice choice. I'm sure she'l love it."
"I hope so." I thought she would, too, but didn't want to
jinx myself.
"You always know exactly what someone needs, don't
you?" Miriam smiled as she slipped the box into a pretty
bag and added a ribbon, no extra charge.
I laughed. "Oh, I don't know about that."
"You do," she said firmly. "I remember my customers, you know. I pay attention. There are many who come in here
looking for something and don't find it. You always do."
"That doesn't mean it's the right thing," I told her, paying for the cards with a pair of crisp bils fresh out of the
ATM.
Miriam gave me a look over her glasses. "Isn't it?"
I didn't answer. How does anyone know if they know
what they're doing is right? Until it's too late to change
what they're doing is right? Until it's too late to change
things, anyway.
"Sometimes, Paige, we think we know very wel what
someone wants, or needs. But then—" she sighed, holding
out a package of pretty stationery in a box with a clear
plastic lid "—we discover we are wrong. I'd put this aside
for one of my regular customers, but he didn't care for it,
after al."
"Too bad. I'm sure someone else wil." I wasn't surprised a man didn't want the paper. Embossed with gilt-edged
flowers, it seemed a little too feminine for a dude.
Miriam's gaze sharpened. "You, perhaps?"
I waved the flowered paper aside and shoved my hands in
my back pockets as I looked around the shop. "Not realy
my style."<
br />
She laughed and set the box aside. She'd painted her nails
scarlet to match her lipstick. I hoped when I was her age
I'd be half as stylish. Hel. I hoped to be half as stylish
tomorrow.
"Now, how about something for yourself? I have some
"Now, how about something for yourself? I have some
new notebooks right here. Suede finish. Gilt-edged pages.
Tied closed with a ribbon," she wheedled, pointing to the
end-cap display. "Come and see."
I groaned good-naturedly. "You're heartless, you know
that? You know al you have to do is show me…oh.
Ohhh."
"Pretty, yes?"
"Yes." I wasn't looking at notebooks, but at a red,
lacquered box with a ribbon-hinged lid. A purple-and-blue
dragonfly design etched the polished wood. "What's this?"
I stroked the smooth lid and opened it. Inside, nestled on
black satin, rested a smal clay dish, a smal container of
red ink and a set of wood-handled brushes.
"Oh, that's a caligraphy set." Miriam came around the
counter to look at it with me. "Chinese. But this one is
special. It comes with paper and a set of pens, not just
brushes and ink."
She showed me by lifting the box's bottom to reveal a
sheaf of paper crisscrossed with a crimson ribbon and a
set of brass-nibbed pens in a red satin bag with a
set of brass-nibbed pens in a red satin bag with a
drawstring.
"It's gorgeous." I took my hands away, though I wanted to
touch the pens, the ink, the paper.
"Just what you need, yes?" Miriam went around the
counter to sit on her stool. "Perfect for you."
I checked the price and closed the box's lid firmly. "Yes.
But not today."
"No?" Miriam tutted. "Why is it you know so wel what
everyone else needs, but not yourself? Such a shame,
Paige. You should buy it."
I could pay my cel phone bil for the price of that box. I
shook my head, then cocked it to look at her. "Why are
you so convinced I know what everyone else needs?
That's a pretty broad statement."
Miriam tore the wrapper off a package of mints and put
one into her mouth. She sucked gently for a moment
before answering. "You've been a good customer. I've
seen you buy gifts, and sometimes things for yourself. I like
to think I know people. What they need and like. Why do
you think I have such atrocities on my shelves? Because
people want them."
I folowed her gaze to the shelf holding more porcelain
