The sign above the door read Twice Told, a nod to Hawthorne’s collection of short stories originally published in 1837, approximately 140 years before my birth.
Coincidentally, the Hawthorne work was published exactly one century before Tolkien published his work about a diminutive fellow named Bilbo who was not at all unlike the barefoot proprietor of the shop.
I was momentarily transported to two different times and places, nearly at once. The first was to a time around 1980 sitting around the family dining table playing the card game “Authors”, which was essentially go fish but with each card depicting an author and their four most famous works. The second was 1993 when I had first read all about Middle-earth.
I was back in the shop momentarily, thinking about both The Lord of the Rings and The Last of the Mohicans and wondering what a novel that combined both ideas might look like. That’s the way it is with authors. You imagine the strangest things and very rarely do they make any sense at all.
While I very much enjoy my kindle and am constantly thrilled at the volume of books I can easily carry with me through airports to places like Aruba, I always bring along at least one real, honest-to-goodness hardcover novel.
In any case, I was hoping to find a girl to fall in love with within the pages of some great work, heretofore unknown to me. I wanted to find Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo for the first time again, but I’d read it once at eighteen at my father’s insistence and a second time a month after he died. Within ten minutes, I had Possession by A. S. Byatt in my hands, hoping it might be the one.
As I read the jacket, I was distracted by motion on the other side of the aisle. Peering between the top of the books and the bottom of the bookshelf above them, I caught a swish of dark brown hair as large, keen brown eyes turned my way, gazing back at me. I looked away first, slightly embarrassed to have been caught looking.
I moved further down the book aisle, feeling, rather than seeing, her shadow move with me. I glanced at her again and met her eyes. Had she been looking at me first? But then her eyes narrowed and I looked away.
I stared down at the book jacket, pretending to read it. Then I lifted the book and my eyes with it, so that there might be a perfectly good excuse for my eyes appearing to be looking beyond the books. But she had moved on, her shadow now ahead of me.
I stopped at the end of the aisle, trying to imagine how I might hold the book so as not to appear obviously enthralled with those almost familiar eyes.
I met her at the end of the aisle. My first thought was that she was exquisite. My second was that her eyes carried a challenge. But then they softened and widened.
“Annie!” I whispered, hoarsely.
“Oh, my God,” she said. “Ethan!”
“How are you?” I asked stupidly.
“I’m good. I’m good,” she said. “What are you doing here?”
I held up the book, as if it should explain everything.
She smiled crookedly, the way she always had, holding up her own book. It was The Count of Monte Cristo.
My mouth was working, but nothing came out.
And then she grabbed me in a big hug and I was not at all disappointed, despite feeling awkward about where my arms and hands ought to go, let alone my face. But Annie had never been awkward about these things. Hugging me was her thing. It had been that way since we were five years old.
She looked at my book for the first time. “Possession,” she said. “Oh, you’re going to love that!”
“Honestly never heard of it.”
“You’ll like it, trust me,” she said.
And I did. I did trust her.
“So what are you doing in town?” she asked.
“Book signing,” I shrugged.
“Really? Whose book? I might want to go.”
“It’s my novel,” I said.
“You’re published?” she said, her eyes going wide and then she smiled. “Of course you’re published.”
“Just a science fiction thriller,” I said.
“Cool,” she said. “When’s the signing? Tonight? Where? I definitely want to go!”
“At the University, from seven till nine.”
“I’ll be there,” she said, smiling.
We stood there looking at each other, saying nothing. It felt more awkward as the moments passed. I didn’t know what to say to her.
“Oh, hey, you got time for lunch? My treat,” she said. “You remember Dottie’s, right? Of course you do. Fancy some strawberry pie?”
“It’s almost like you know me,” I said. “Yeah, I’ve got time if you do. Want to walk?”
“Not in these shoes!” she said smiling. “But I’ll drive us.”
I noticed her legs when we got in the car. Heck, I noticed them long before that if I’m being honest.
I climbed out of the car and stood there looking at the restaurant from my youth. There were other restaurants in town, but this was the place it had always been. Except now it was owned by one of my best friends from high school. I felt a little shame that I had not been here in the decade that he had owned it.
“When’s the last time you were here?”
“The day after high school graduation,” I said. I looked at her, sheepishly.
“We’re going to have to talk about that,” she said.
I nodded my head. “Yep. We are.”
She stopped me just outside the door, placing her hand inside my elbow and pulling just slightly—just enough to give me pause.
“I’m—I”m sorry about Rachel,” she said.
And there it was. The pain. I clenched my jaw, feeling the ache return. I’d clenched it for years.
I shrugged and took a step.
But she pulled me back again, turning me.
“I’m sorry about Rachel,” she said. And she hugged me for a long time.
I’m pretty sure my eyes were damp when she released me.
“I’d rather not talk about it, if you don’t mind,” I said.
“Fair enough,” Annie said. She paused only a moment, and then her demeanor changed. Now she tugged me by the elbow. “I’m going to have a BLT and pie!”
I ordered a club sandwich, sans cheese.
“You still don’t like cheese? I never understood that. Thought you would have grown out of that by now.”
“I’m not sure I’ll ever grow out of disliking something that smells and tastes like dirty feet.”
She laughed out loud. “You’re a goof,” she said. “I’m glad to see that’s still true.”
“I guess I could have taken the cheese and given it to you.”
“Well, you used to be smarter,” she said, grinning at me.
She was as lovely as the first time I’d seen her, sitting on that piano stool, my mom teaching her the location of Middle C. I had liked Annie immediately. And I had never stopped liking her.
We were interrupted by a loud voice. “Well if it isn’t the famous author!”
David, the owner. I had known him since seventh grade. He slid into the booth next to me and across from Annie. I slid over to make room for him as he clapped me on the back.
“Hi, David,” I said. “How’s business?”
“Can’t complain.”
“How’s your wife?” I asked.
“She’s good. Has the grandbabies at the lake today.”
“How old are they?”
“Three and five,” he said. “She’ll be at your book signing tonight. I can’t make it, but she’s going to get two.”
“Looking forward to seeing her,” I said.
“Food okay?” he asked.
“As good as it ever was,” I said.
“I saved you two some pie when I saw you come in,” David said.
He stood, thumped me shoulder and then turned to go. But he stopped and turned back to us. “Makes me happy to see you two sitting here. Together.”
We sat in silence, drinking coffee. The remnants of our meals vanished and were replaced with two delectable pieces of the world famous Dottie’s strawberry pie.
Annie and I smiled at each other as we ate strawberry pie again, for the first time in ages. There had been a time when I would have reached across to wipe that whipped cream from her upper lip. I really wanted to, but I didn’t.
“So, where did you go?” she asked. “After high school.”
“As far away as I could stand it,” I said. “I went to Florida.”
“You left for Florida the day after high school graduation?”
“I did.”
“I was expecting to see you that summer. Hoping—” she cleared her throat. “I thought I would see you.”
“I mean we really hadn’t seen each other much after sixth grade,” I offered.
She looked down at her pie, playing with the strawberries as if her appetite were gone. “Sixth grade was a bad year,” she said.
I nodded, but said nothing. After a minute she prompted me again.
“I knew you were going to Florida for college, but I didn’t think you would go until the fall.”
“I had a job offer at the university. I had a scholarship for being salutatorian, but it didn’t pay for room and board, only tuition.”
“Thanks to me,” she smiled.
Here endearing, crooked smile. The one that always got me to do whatever crazy idea she had in mind.
“Less than half a point,” I said.
“It’s because I distracted you.”
“Yes. Yes you did.”
“Did you like it there?”
“Not especially,” I said. “I mean it’s nice if you like rain every day and half it comes horizontally under your umbrella.” I paused. “You went to Brown, right?”
“Yes,” she said. “It was mostly good. But not all good.”
“Why?”
“Just things that — well, you know — it goes back to sixth grade.”
“I’m not sure I know, Annie.” I said. “All I know is that you were by best friend from when we weren’t much older than toddlers. I saw you every weekend, even in the summers because of piano. And then we got to sixth grade and they split the class into two rooms. We didn’t have the same recess or lunch or gym. I never saw you. Or almost never. All I know is that you stopped being the happy girl I knew.”
“You really don’t know?”
“Honestly, I thought you stopped liking me,” I said. “I mean, you know how it was for me growing up.”
“That never mattered to me, Ethan. None of it did. What mattered was what happened.”
“What happened?”
“How do you not know? Everyone in class knew!”
“I’m sorry, I don’t know.”
“Someone hurt me,” she said.
“In what way?”
“In the way that—men hurt girls,” she whispered.
I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what to say. I looked down at my pie. The sweetness was gone; it tasted like nothing. The sounds of the restaurant faded as the world coalesced into just the two of us. Then I glanced back up at her.
“What?” I asked.
I blinked at her.
Her lip quivered.
Fury surged in me. My cheeks became hot. But what good would that do?
I clenched my jaw and reached across the table, taking her hand—the same hand I’d held thirty years ago—but everything about it felt heavier now.
Some things you don’t get over. Not even after three decades.
Stephen B. Anthony is the author of Transmigrant, an epic science fiction thriller, available on both Amazon and Audible. The first seven chapters are available on this website for free.
Good to see you're back!
I haven’t read it yet (I will this evening!) but I need you to know the amount of JOY I felt when I saw your name pop up!!!!!