Page 17 of The Hundred Loves of Juliet
Stars cloud my vision. The last thing I see before I fall unconscious is the terror in Amélie’s face as the men drag her out into the night.
When I wake, the moonlight hurts my eyes. They’ve beaten me to a pulp and left my body—thinking me dead—on the streets of Paris for the ravens and raccoons to pick at my bones. I slowly stagger to my feet.
The carriage has been battered to splinters. The footman and the coachman hang by nooses from the streetlamps, examples to the working men of Paris that there are sides in the coming war, and they’d better know where they belong.
And then there is Amélie…Beautiful, precious Amélie.
She is bludgeoned on the bank of her beloved Seine, face smashed in. The word “Liberté” is scrawled on the cobblestones in her blood.
I crumple and vomit on the street.
When I finally have the strength again, I rise. I scoop Amélie up from the ground, my arms shaking uncontrollably.
I hug her to my chest.
“I love you,” I whisper.
I’d promised that I would never allow us to be parted.
And then, with her body to mine, I lurch to the river and throw us in together.
I don’t die. I never do.
But every time, I wish I could.
HELENE
Is it possible to hatesomeone you don’t even know? I watch Sebastien leave. Withmybooks.
I hate him I hate him I hate him.
Real Sebastien is nothing like Story Sebastien. There isn’t a kind bone in that fisherman’s body. All he shares with my imagined soulmate is a face. Otherwise, he’s made of snips and snails and puppy dog tails. Or rotten king crab claws.
Ha!
It’s a stupid joke and it doesn’t rhyme, but somehow it makes me feel better. Sebastien belongs in the same category as Merrick (read: scum not worth even thinking about).
In a huff, I stomp back toward Shipyard Books. (Also, it’s arctic out here, and my coat is on a hook inside the store.) I can try to forget about Sebastien’s assholery, but that doesn’t change the fact that I still need a book about novel writing. That’s the reason I came to this remote town in Alaska in the first place—to finally figure out if there’s a way to string together the vignettes I’ve written over the years into a coherent novel. They were jotted downpiecemeal, but I feel like there’s a common thread in there somewhere, a theme or something. I just need to figure out what the through line is that makes it all one story.
I swear at myself for not buying a novel-writing book before I left L.A. But I’d had to leave Merrick quickly, before I lost my nerve. Before I let him talk me out of the divorce, before he convinced me, like he always did, thatIwas the one whose head was mixed up, that it wasn’t his fault. I didn’t want to be his doormat anymore.
A frigid wind kicks up, and I hurry up the steps of Shipyard Books, careful to hold on to the railing so I don’t slip on the ice. I practically hurl myself through the door.
Warmth from the fireplace embraces me, and I think I actually moan. The store owner laughs from behind the register.
“Sorry,” Angela says. “It’s just that your face went through the entire span of human emotions in about five seconds, from fear and pain to surprise, then relief, then gratefulness and adoration. I never knew someone could fall in love with a fireplace like that.”
I let out a snort of a laugh because she’s right. I am ridiculous, a Californian running after an imaginary man in the Alaskan winter, all without a coat.
Time to get my head on straight again.
“I was wondering if you happen to have another copy ofThe Craft of Novel Writing,maybe in the back?” This is a cute bookstore, but their selection on writing is slim. Meaning, there was literally only that one book on the shelf on the subject. (In contrast, there were plenty of books about woodworking and snowshoeing.)
Angela shakes her head. “I can order another copy for you. It’ll be here in three to four weeks. Sometimes sooner, but usually not.”
“Three to fourweeks?” I didn’t know anything took that long anymore.
She smiles apologetically. “It’s harder to get things up here than in the Lower 48. Especially with the on-and-off blizzard conditions this time of year. But I have to ask—what happened between you and Sebastien to make him storm out like that? He’s the most even-keeled person I know.”
