Page 63 of The Midnight Book Club
“These books, they’ve been here for a few months?”
“Oh, yes, I suppose they have.”
She’d planned to swap them once a month, just as Marigold had, but after discovering that the table could release each book’s characters, she couldn’t bring herself to do it.She liked everyone too much to change their books, and still worried that if she took away or added books to the table something might go wrong—so that she might not be able to see any characters at all.Besides, they were all looking forward to finding out whether the experiment with Vronsky’s sequel would work.
“She sometimes kept books out for a few months too,” Mark said, smiling.“I once asked her why and she said, ‘The characters feel like family.I couldn’t bear to put them back on the shelves.’I always thought that was rather fanciful for Marigold.It stuck with me.”
“I can see why.”
Aurelia smiled as yet another piece of evidence slipped into place to confirm that her aunt knew what the table could do, even if she’d never mentioned it.
“Although Marigold still has you beat.She hadThe Three Musketeerson the table for the longest time.I lost count after about two years.”
“Twoyears?Really?”
“Mm-hmm.She said it was a favorite, but one day it was gone.I asked her why, but she wouldn’t talk about it for the longest time.Eventually she told me, ‘It just doesn’t do to live in fiction.’She sounded so sad…” He trailed off, apparently lost in the memory.
Aurelia gaped at Mark.What could have happened?Had Marigold gotten into an argument with a character?
He was looking expectantly at her but the only thing she could think to say was, “That must have been before I started working here.”
“Oh, it was ages ago—not long after she took over the shop.After that she sometimes left books out for a few months, but never as long asThe Three Musketeers.”
Mark had given Aurelia a solid distraction from waiting for Oliver’s call, but it left her with questions she was afraid she’d never get answers to.She decided to ask Marmee or Sergeant Cuff about it that night since they’d both visited the shop during Marigold’s time and might know what had happened.But her preoccupation with Marigold and theMusketeersmystery was cut short when Oliver called just before she closed the shop at five o’clock that evening.
“You’ve got to show me this typewriter the next time I’m in the shop,” he said instead of ‘hello.’“I haven’t had an author submit typewritten pages to me since… well, I think ever.”
Aurelia was confused for a second before she realized it was Oliver on the line.
“Oh!So… you’ve read it?”
“I have.Should we meet to go over my notes?It might be better to do it in person.”
Better in person—like a breakup?Was he going to tell her it was unpublishable?
“Yes, okay.Um, should I come to your office?”
“No, I’ve been stuck here all day.Why don’t I come to you at the shop.Are you free now?”
She couldn’t tell him that she needed to nap so she could be alert at midnight to meet with a cast of characters, so she choked out a ‘yes’ and he promised to meet her in half an hour.
The minutes passed in an anxious silence as Aurelia paced around the shop, inventing various good and bad messages Oliver might be coming to deliver.
When he arrived, she noticed that he was more upbeat than she’d ever seen him.He stripped off his coat and dropped his messenger bag onto her desk.Aurelia eyed the bag warily, thinking her manuscript was likely inside.She offered him coffee or tea, but he said was ready to get right to it.
Aurelia cleared a space on her desk and watched as Oliver sat in Vronsky’s chair and then pulled her manuscript out of his bag.It was covered with flags, dog-ears, and red pen marks, and her jaw was ready to drop at the sight of it.
“I’ve read through it a few times, and I think it has promise.I’ve made some initial notes here and we can talk through those later,” he said, placing his hand on the manuscript.“But there are some bigger issues we should focus on at this stage.I’d like to see what you do with my notes—some authors think they want to be published until they realize they’ll have to edit their work.But if you’re open to making these changes—whichwillmake it a better piece—then I think we’ll be on the road to something worth publishing.”
There were compliments in there but her mind had filtered them out so that all she really heard was that, without his edits, her book would be unpublishable.She ground her teeth and bit down her ire.
“Okay.”Aurelia was preparing to add to this, but Oliver took it as an invitation to dive into his notes.
“Let’s not waste time on little things like moving paragraphs around or deleting them outright.I’ve noted those changes on the manuscript itself and you can work on those on your own.”
Aurelia’s eyes widened.
“I want to focus on the bigger picture.First, this is plodding.It takes you almost a hundred pages to get him to France and that’s where the real story is.”
