Page 80 of Fated

I smile softly. Mila has finally scooted next to Gilbert. She strokes her hand gently over the gray fur on his head. He closes his eyes and tilts his chin, offering her the smooth fur underneath.

“You wanted to see me?”

“I always see you and Mila before business trips.”

That’s true. But this time it feels different.

Mila glances at me, triumphant as Gilbert begins a slow, rapturous purr. Her patience paid off.

“I’m here.” I look up as the bells on the door jingle and Max strides inside the hushed atmosphere of the bookshop. When he sees me, his brown eyes spark and he gives me a happy smile.

He’s in a light gray summer suit, his black hair wind-blown and messy. Clearly, he came here directly from work.

He takes in the scene—the paper-musty scent, the muffled quiet, Mila on the bench petting a boneless cat—and then he walks directly to my side and says in a soft voice, “You look beautiful.”

Mila turns to him, puts a pointer finger to her lips, and then nods at Gilbert. He’s rolled on his back and is kneading his paws against Mila’s legs.

Max nods and pretends to zip his lips.

I glance at him from the side and whisper, “Was that flirting?”

He gives me a flat look that causes a laugh to bubble in my chest. I keep it contained for fear of disturbing Gilbert’s ecstasy.

“Apparently not,” Max says, the grumpy tone back.

I grin at him, and his flat look vanishes into a smile of shared history and friendship.

Max turns his attention to Mila and kneels down to carefully stroke Gilbert behind the ears.

The bookseller walks next to me and says in a quiet voice, “We close in five minutes.”

I nod, ready to check out.

But then I have a thought.

Or ... I wonder.

Looking at the hundreds of books lining the shelves, the worlds waiting to be explored, I wonder, where does Amy get her books? Are they all tattered copies, read dozens of times, like the worn ones I’ve seen her holding? Do they come from neighbors? Or the yellow concrete one-room schoolhouse in Charlestown? She doesn’t have internet. She doesn’t have a bookstore. She doesn’t have any way of getting new books in the dream world she lives in.

I scan the bookshop, my eyes lingering on the sign that reads “Poetry.”

I can’t take a book to her. But what if I memorized a poem for her? And then another? One poem at a time.

“I have a question,” I ask the bookseller as he rings up Mila’s book. “If you wanted to buy a book for a fourteen-year-old girl who loves poetry, what would you get?”

He thinks for a moment, rubbing the tuft of gray hair on his head. “French, German, English?”

“English.”

He nods. “Emily Dickinson.” He stoops down to reach below the counter. When he stands he has a small leather-bound book in his hand. “This just came in.”

“She’ll like it?”

I’ve never read Emily Dickinson.

The man gives me his kind smile and flips quickly through the ivory pages, the words flying across them like birds, until he lands on the page he wants. He turns the book to me.

“Here. Read.”

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