by J P Barnaby
Table of Contents
Blurb
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
About the Authors
By JP Barnaby
By Rowan Speedwell
Visit Dreamspinner Press
Copyright
A Pocketful of Stardust
By J.P. Barnaby and Rowan Speedwell
An Aster Story
Noah Hitchens loves the New York City life he worked hard to build. But when his father dies and leaves him a bankrupt bookstore in their sleepy Georgia hometown, Noah knows he has to save it. Unfortunately, he doesn’t know anything about business. He finds unlikely help in Henry, the man who owned Stardust Books before his 1966 murder, and Kyle St. James, a shy but kind-hearted out-of-towner with a past almost as mysterious as Henry’s.
Kyle came to Aster, Georgia, looking for redemption. On the run and out of hope, he’s just trying to get on with his life. Then he meets Noah, a ghost, and a big sloppy lab named Jake who redefine his idea of living. But his past is closing in, and when it finds him, they could lose everything.
Chapter One
NOAH SLID closer to the desk and added a digital rendering of the image upload screen before using a numbered list to outline the exact steps needed to perform that function. He painstakingly walked through each mouse click, each option selection, and each message the end user would see. The work was tedious, made more so because Production released the new software to Quality Assurance after deadline and QA released it to Noah’s team after deadline. But it paid pretty well, which kept him in New York. The apartment he shared with Yeira was just a few blocks from the office. A few blocks that included coffee, sandwiches, and books—the trifecta for a happy life.
“How you doin’, Noah? Are we going to make it?” Karen popped her head around the corner of his cube, naked panic clear on her face.
“I’ve just got the section on the last toolbar to go.” Noah glanced at the low right-hand corner of the laptop screen to check the time. “Yeah, we’ll make it. If….”
“If what?”
“If you order out lunch?” he asked with a hopeful grin.
“You got it. Pizza good, or something else?”
“After livin’ in Georgia all my life, I’ll never get enough New York pizza,” he said with a forced twang. He’d started to lose the accent at NYU, but seven years in the city had nearly obliterated it.
“Keep working. I’ll have Caleb order.”
He turned back to the keyboard and moved to the next item on the checklist. When he’d left Aster, Georgia, for New York and an English degree, he’d been thinking more Capote or Ginsberg than Gates. He thought he’d be sitting in a café with his laptop, observing life, and writing the great American novel. Only he liked to eat and live indoors. So like most great novelists, he got a real job writing tech manuals and perpetually tinkered with the novel that lurked in the back of his desk drawer.
Noah had just added the last line for that section and clicked Save when his phone rang—not his office phone but his cell phone. The number on the screen had a 678 west Georgia area code, but he didn’t recognize it. Glancing up to see Karen’s office door closed, he slid his finger across the screen.
“Hello?”
“Noah?” a deeply Southern voice asked.
“Yes, this is Noah Hitchens.”
“Noah, it’s Mrs. Mackey. From next door to your daddy?”
Noah sat back in his ergonomically correct chair and dropped his pen on the pad. He’d never spoken to Mrs. Mackey on the phone. He’d played in her yard, eaten her famous peach cobbler, he’d even cut her grass, but they didn’t really pick up the phone.
“Hi, Mrs. Mackey, of course I remember you. What’s—”
“Noah, honey, I don’t know how to tell you this, so I’m just gonna come right out and say it.” Her voice held tears, he could hear them, and the phone grew hot in his hand.
He remained silent, and she continued.
“I went to take your daddy a cobbler. You know how he loves a good cobbler. Anyway, when I got to the house, Jake was a-howlin’ like crazy an’ no one answered the door. I decided to leave the cobbler on the counter, so I went in through the back and—” She stopped like the burden had become too much.
It took a long moment for Noah to find his voice. “Ma’am, did something happen to my dad? Is he in the hospital?”
“Oh, honey. I called an ambulance, but there wasn’t anything they could do. They rushed him over to County, said it was a heart attack, but…. Noah, sweetheart, he didn’t make it.”
The world went cold.
“Noah?” Karen asked, and though he could feel the hand on his shoulder, everything felt very far away.
“Mrs. Mackey, you’re saying… you’re saying my dad died?”
“Noah, I’m so sorry. I asked Doc Simmons to let me call so you didn’t have to hear it from a stranger,” she said quietly, finality in her response.
“I—I don’t….” There was nothing he could say. His mind went blank in an instant with a soft, insistent buzzing—bees filling his brain.
“I know, honey. I’m gonna call the Garners. They took care of my Frank, and they’ll take good care of Charlie,” she told him, and he recognized that take-charge quality in her voice that old Southern women got in an emergency.
“Okay, I… I’ll be there as soon as I can.” He dropped the phone on his desk without waiting for a response.
It couldn’t be happening.
He told himself that as he left a note for his roommate, Yeira, then as he made his way into a cab and through LaGuardia. He told himself that as he rented a car at Hartsfield-Jackson. He told himself that until a quarter to eleven that evening, when he used his key to let himself into his father’s silent house. His father had never wanted the key back, and Noah had never offered.
It was the absence of giant loping paws across the hardwood floor that caused him to slide down the front door and land on the mat. Mrs. Mackey must have taken Jake to her place, which meant his father was really gone. He hated that the playful pup wasn’t there to dry the tears spilling down his face. Sobs rolled over him—terrible, frightening things that made it hard to breathe. His mother hadn’t wanted him, and now his dad was gone. He was alone in the world.
Noah sat with his back propped against the front door, unable to move farther into the living room. The mantel clock stared him down from its perch above the fireplace. He’d given the clock to his father almost a year ago. They’d spent a quiet Christmas Eve in front of the fire, with cocoa and gingerbread cookies that Mrs. Mackey had brought over. They’d headed over to her place t
he following day, but for that moment, it remained just the two of them. He’d loved those times.
The room blurred, distorting around his tears. He saw his face staring back at him from every corner of the room. He aged progressively through the photographs littering the small space. Years flipped by like pages of a book—Little League, prom, high school and college graduations. Noah saw himself with his father on fishing trips, at backyard barbecues, and birthday parties—his entire life chronicled by a proud father.
The picture closest to him sat on the mahogany side table next to an ancient wingback chair his grandmother had given them when Noah was just a boy. It had been her mother’s, passed down through the ages like a good peach pie recipe. In the photograph, he and his father were standing in the bookstore, near the electric fireplace that was unnecessary in the mild Georgia winters. Ol’ Charlie had loved the rustic, homey feel of it. He had read A Christmas Carol to Noah right there in the big chair by the fire after he’d closed up for the day. It was always his favorite. He was sitting in that chair in the picture, a five-year-old Noah on the ottoman beside him, and Noah noticed their resemblance for the first time. He’d gotten his black hair from his vixen mother, but his steel-gray eyes were all his father’s. They had the same stocky build, the same awkward gait—the same easy smile. Even their glasses were similar—Buddy Holly squares.
It took a long time for Noah to pick himself up off the hardwood floor and shuffle into the kitchen, where he found a cold Coors in the old fridge. He cracked it open, desperate to take the edge off the day.
For nearly ten minutes, Noah tried to decide if he was hungry. His brain had shut off somewhere during the cab ride to LaGuardia and hadn’t come back on. In the end, sleep won over food. Noah drained the last of his beer and tossed the empty toward the open garbage can near the back door. He snorted when it bounced off the edge and clattered to the floor. He could almost hear his father saying that Noah couldn’t even buy luck.
When he reached down to pick up the can, a flash caught his eye, and he glanced under the lip of the cabinet near the sink. Light reflected off something half-hidden in shadow. Noah tossed the can into the garbage and picked up a pair of glasses from the base of the cabinets.
He held his father’s glasses, one lens broken, turning them over in his hands. Then he stopped, his body cold.
It had happened right there. His father had died right there in the open space near the cabinets, right by the stove.
Noah dropped the glasses into the sink, and shards of plastic clattered across the stainless steel. He took the stairs two at a time as he tried to outrun the images of his father lying on the cold floor, the horror of Jake howling mournfully.
Noah slammed the door of his childhood bedroom and fished the Kleenex out of his pocket. He unwrapped the Xanax he’d taken from Yeira’s cabinet to deal with the shock of the day. She used them for her nightmares; maybe he could too. Not bothering with the bathroom across the hall, he swallowed it dry and crawled into the full-size bed, pulling the Star Wars comforter over his head.
He closed his eyes and prayed for the quiet oblivion the drug would bring.
Chapter Two
THE NEXT morning, the sun glared down at Noah through the half-open blinds under the watchful eye of The Boy Who Lived. Have you seen this wizard? It took a moment for him to remember that poster hung in his childhood bedroom, not in his New York apartment, and the previous day came rushing back like bad Chinese food. The room spun a bit as he lay there amid the childhood he’d spent in his father’s house. Well, probably his house now.
He didn’t want to get up. The drug lingered in his system, making him feel sleepy and stupid. He decided if he stayed in bed, his father wouldn’t have died because right then there was nothing to make it true. If he refused to come out from under the covers, his dad would come in and say good morning.
Unfortunately he had to pee, which meant either getting out of bed or being wet, icky, and uncomfortable. He crossed his legs and weighed his options. Harry kept staring down at him, and Noah wondered if there was a bladder-relieving spell. His stomach had started to cramp.
The pressure got to him and he sighed, throwing the covers back and rolling out of bed. When his feet hit the worn carpeting, he realized he still had his shoes on. Tears came again, but he pushed them away and started to strip as he headed for the bathroom. He was down to his briefs when he opened the bedroom door.
“Sweet fucking Jesus!” he screamed as he nearly collided with Mrs. Mackey, who stood on the other side of the door, her fist poised to knock.
“Noah Hitchens!” she cried sharply, a hand flying to her heaving chest.
“I’m sorry, ma’am. You scared me,” he said sheepishly, and then, remembering he was nearly naked, danced sideways and put the door between them. He peeked his head round to look at her.
“There’s still no cause for language like that!” she cried and touched the cross round her thin, turkey-wattle neck.
“I’m sorry,” he said again. “Uhm, can I help you?” His bladder screamed in response.
“Oh, sweet boy. I came to help you. I’m going to go downstairs and see what your… what’s in the kitchen for breakfast. I’ll have something made when you come down.” She glanced down at the doorknob, which was right in front of his junk on the other side of the door, and raised an eyebrow before heading back for the stairs.
He didn’t remember Mrs. Mackey letting herself into the house when he lived here. She and his father must have gotten closer after he left. Maybe his father was lonely. It hurt his heart to think about.
His bladder throbbed painfully at him, and he scurried across the hall.
Twenty minutes later Noah jogged downstairs in a pair of basketball shorts and a tight Aster High School band T-shirt. His father had never gotten around to cleaning out his room. Noah thought maybe, in his heart, the older man half wanted Noah to move back home. But the other half of his heart wanted Noah to be happy. When he walked into his father’s kitchen, he felt like that gawky teenager again, shambling around life without a clue. He’d been caught out in his underwear a few times then too, awkwardly explaining to Principal Merriweather that Matt Handley had stolen his clothes… again.
Those were the memories Noah had of Aster, Georgia—fear and embarrassment.
“How about some pancakes?” Mrs. Mackey asked from the stove as she expertly flipped a couple of hotcakes on a large griddle.
“That sounds great, Mrs. Mackey. Thank you.”
“Noah, you’re a grown man now. Why don’t you call me Edna?” She smiled, warm and indulgent. She had a kind face, older than when he’d last seen it at Christmas. When his mom took off, Mrs. Mackey—Edna—had adopted him and his dad, kind of like puppies. Her husband, Frank, had taught him how to fish. He loved this old lady.
“Yes, ma’am. Those pancakes smell awesome,” he said, and she ruffled his hair.
“We’ve got a long day ahead of us, and a good breakfast will help.”
The smile dropped from his face, and he couldn’t stop himself from glancing at the floor where he’d found his father’s glasses. She started to speak when something big crashed into the back door. Noah grinned as Jake came bounding through the doggie flap and jumped half in his lap. Even at ten, Jake was still as exuberant as the coal-colored puppy they’d brought home.
“Hey, buddy,” he said and rubbed the dog’s head and neck. Black fur flew into the air like coal dust. Jake licked his hands and his arms and his face. “There’s a good boy.” The big old dog couldn’t have been more excited to see him. He loved that about Jake. Then, almost as fast as he started, Jake stopped. He cocked his head like he’d just had some random thought or heard a noise. Then he took off up the stairs. Noah could hear his big paws clattering through the upstairs rooms.
Mrs. Mackey—Edna—set a plate of food in front of him, but he left it sitting while Jake raced back down the stairs and toured the living room. Then he came back into the kitchen. Slowe
r. Quieter. He sat at Noah’s feet and, with a look so somber it made Noah ache, asked a single question with his big brown eyes.
Where is he?
Noah abandoned his food and slid to the floor. Jake crawled into his lap, massive paws digging into his bare leg. He didn’t care. Jake’s head hit his shoulder and Noah wrapped trembling arms around the dog’s body, rubbing him and taking comfort in his unconditional love. A tear slid down into the dog’s fur.
“Honey, you need to eat. Jake’ll be okay,” Miss Edna said, her voice gentle. She set a plate of food at his father’s spot at the table for her. Noah rubbed Jake again and kissed the top of his big black head.
“It’s gonna be okay, boy, I promise,” he whispered, more to himself than to the dog. He refused to think about the future. Right then he could only handle one hour at a time. Tomorrow he would worry about one day at a time.
“Noah, I called the Garners yesterday. They own that place over on Magnolia. They want you to come by today with your father’s papers and make some decisions,” Miss Edna said gently, like he might come off the rails if she spoke louder.
“I’m sure whatever you decided is fine.” The sounds came out as one long, complete word. He shook his head slightly, trying to ward off the responsibilities that she wanted to foist onto him.
“Let’s just find your daddy’s papers first, okay? First things first,” she said, her voice firm.
“Yes, ma’am.” He nodded. Then he climbed back up into his seat like an adult and forced down a bite of the pancakes. They felt like sawdust in his mouth, but he was a good Southern boy. If someone put food in front of you, you ate it. Anything else would be an insult.
He finally got most of the pancakes down and declared that they were delicious, but he couldn’t eat another bite. And they were, but his stomach roiled like snakes were fighting one another for the syrup.
“Okay,” Miss Edna said, taking their plates to the sink. He noticed that she stepped around an area in the middle of the floor and didn’t think too hard about why. “Why don’t you start with the desk in the den?”
