“Mom?” Joshua says. “Is it time to go home?” He looks fearfully from his mother’s face to the knife the tall thief is holding.
“It’s okay, Josh,” Claire tells him, panic forcing her words to come out in breathy puffs. “Go back. It’s going to be okay. Go back and wait for me.” Josh takes a cautious step backward.
“No! You stay right there!” the tall boy shouts. Joshua blinks rapidly and hesitates just for a second, then dashes to the back of the store. The tall thief makes a move to run after him and Claire instantly begins to rush down the ladder when she feels it begin to shift beneath her feet.
The hinges on the ladder buckle at her quick movement and she loses her footing. It isn’t a long fall—she’s not really up all that high, five feet or so—and she tries to twist her body midair so she won’t fall flat on her back. When people described time slowing down in situations like these, she had always laughed, shrugged it off as a silly trick of the mind. But it’s true; during her short journey to the hardwood floor below, she notices an amazing number of details.
Midspin, she finds herself looking straight at the taller thief, who has decided Joshua isn’t worth chasing. “Come on,” the other boy calls out nervously. Except it comes out as “Cooommme oooonnnnn.” Slow and stretched out like taffy. He is scared; Claire can see it in his eyes. He can’t be more than fifteen, Claire thinks, and wonders if these boys’ mothers know what they are up to. “Let’s get out of here!” he cries in long, drawn-out syllables, and then they are heading for the door. They are leaving. Thank God. And everything speeds up, back to normal time.
Claire’s right shoulder hits first. An explosion of pain radiates through her arm, then her head hits the floor and a burst of warm yellow light explodes behinds her eyelids. From the doorway she can hear the taller boy shouting, “Hang it up! Hang up the phone!”
Then she hears his voice, small and hesitant. “They made my mom fall,” Joshua says into the phone, his voice shaky, scared. “They took the money,” Joshua adds in a rush.
“Run!” Claire tries to yell, but all her breath has been pressed from her lungs.
“Hang up the fucking phone!” the thief says between clenched teeth.
Claire begins to army-crawl across the bookstore floor toward Joshua, the pain in her shoulder and head secondary to reaching her son. “Run,” she gasps desperately.
Joshua releases the phone and it clatters to the ground and instead of running away he goes to his mother and drops to the floor next to her. She can hear a siren in the distance and, in her ear, Joshua’s frantic breathing. The thieves hear the sirens, too, and quickly rush from the store.
“It’s okay, Joshua!” Claire says to him weakly. “It’s okay, buddy.” He is sitting cross-legged next to her, his small hand wrapped tightly around her wrist as if he’s afraid that if he lets go she will float away. The pain that pulses through Claire’s shoulder and the throbbing in her head churn her stomach and bile creeps into her throat. She turns her face to the side, away from Joshua, and vomits. Claire hears his sobs and can feel the shudder of his body next to hers, but still he grasps her wrist, clutching even tighter. “Don’t cry, Joshua,” Claire whispers, her own tears sliding down her cheeks. “Please don’t cry.” Finally, Truman lumbers over to them, nudges Claire’s face with his wet nose, sits down, and the three of them wait for help to arrive.
It isn’t until the ambulance arrives and the EMTs convince Joshua that they are there to help that Joshua releases Claire from his grip, leaving five perfectly circular imprints of his fingers like a red wreath around her wrist. “It’s okay, Josh,” Claire tells him over and over.
“One of the police officers will stay with your son until your husband arrives,” the EMT promises Claire. “You took quite the tumble. We need to get some X-rays and have you checked over by a doctor. Are you in much pain?”
Claire nods. “Can’t he stay with me? I don’t want to leave him alone,” Claire says as she tries to lift her head to see Joshua, wincing at the movement. He is sitting on the reading sofa with Truman’s head on his lap. A young police officer approaches him, kneels down and says something to Joshua that makes the corners of his mouth rise in a reluctant smile.
“We really need to get you to the hospital, ma’am. The officer will stay and take care of him.”
“I feel like I’m going to throw up again,” Claire admits with embarrassment.
“It’s okay.” He nods at Claire. “I’m sure you got a doozy of a concussion. Vomit away.”
When Claire arrives at the hospital and is wheeled into the emergency room, Jonathan is already there, standing at the door, waiting anxiously.
“Claire?” he asks as the gurney comes to a stop. “Claire, are you okay?”
“Joshua,” she says. “Where’s Joshua?” She sits up quickly and pain shoots through her skull as she lifts her head to search for her son.
“He’s fine,” Jonathan assures her, tears welling in his eyes as he looks down at his wife. “An officer is bringing him here right now.” He runs a hand gently across her head. “How are you? What happened?”
Claire tries to describe the robbery as the EMT rolls her down the corridor, Jonathan holding her hand as they move, but her eyes are heavy and keep closing. All she wants to do is sleep but she fights the urge. “You should have seen Joshua,” she says, her voice filled with awe and pride. Claire glances down at her wrist, the one that Joshua had held so tightly while they waited for help. She feels a surge of panic when she sees that his fingerprints have faded from her wrist. For a moment she has the sense that Joshua is gone, torn from her forever. But then she hears the familiar cadence of Joshua’s steps coming near and then he is at her side.
“My brave boy,” Claire whispers, and reaches for him before finally surrendering to sleep.
Allison
At group meetings I’m trying to decide whether to speak up or not. We each have the opportunity to talk about relationships that may have played a role in our poor decision-making. I mull this over. I don’t think anyone in the history of Linden Falls has fallen as far and as fast as I have. I was the perfect daughter to perfect parents, but looking back, I don’t know. My parents fed and clothed us and made sure we had everything we needed academically, athletically, socially. We even went to church every Sunday, but something was missing. Between swim meets, volleyball tournaments, the SAT prep courses and church youth activities, there wasn’t much there. We didn’t really speak to one another or laugh together, and I can’t retrieve one memory that wasn’t scheduled into a one-hour time block and marked on the calendar that hung on the wall on our kitchen. So I could talk to the group about my parents and our lack of communication and how I didn’t feel like I could tell them that I was pregnant, certainly.
But really, the source of my very steep downfall was Christopher.
I met Christopher by chance, at St. Anne’s College. I was taking the SATs again, trying for an even better score. My goal was a perfect 2400. Only about three hundred students per year scored a 2400 and I was going to be one of them.
It was a Saturday afternoon and I walked out of the classroom into the bright sunshine after taking the test in a daze, my mind whirling with exam questions and answers. I was tired and hungry and sick with worry over how I had done. Now came the hardest part, the waiting. I had to wait a month to find out the results. My stomach flipped at the thought and I froze in place, just stood there. I must have looked lost or sick because the next thing I knew a boy was at my side, peering worriedly into my face. He was taller than I was—that was what I noticed first. Not very many boys are taller than I am. The second thing I noticed was that he was older. He had to be twenty-two or twenty-three. He had copper-brown hair that curled around his ears and sharply angled features that were only softened by his eyes, which were such a deep brown and so beautiful it hurt to look at them. He wore a Cubs jersey and I later learned he was a huge fan.
I was used to guys looking at me, boys from s
chool with their idiotic sexual comments that were for the benefit of their friends. I didn’t waste my time even thinking about them. Grown men even stopped to look at me—my father’s friends, the manager at the grocery store—though they were much more subtle about it. I was flattered. Don’t get me wrong, it’s nice to know that someone thinks you look good. I just didn’t have time for it.
Every waking minute of my day was spent studying, cramming as much knowledge into my head as possible. I was sort of like one of those binge eaters who sit in a closet, with their packages of doughnuts and bags of potato chips, and stuff food in their mouths, not understanding why, just needing to do it. That’s how I felt. I needed more and more information and I didn’t know why. Well, of course, there were obvious reasons—to get good grades so I could get into a good college so I could get a good job and make good money. But there was more to it. I studied once for a history test on the Revolutionary War for ten hours straight. I knew the material, but I had to keep reviewing it, memorizing meaningless names and dates and battles. Finally, my father, who always tiptoed about as if he were afraid to startle the air around me, came into my room and took the book from my hands and insisted that I come down and eat something. I tried to balance things out—I joined all the sports teams I could—but it was the same kind of endless circle. I had to run farther, run faster—not to beat some competitor. No, it was something else. I’m not sure what, but I know I was miserable.
“Are you okay?” the boy with brown eyes asked me. “You don’t look so good.”
I blushed and stared up at him, not knowing what to say.
“You just look like you’re in shock or something,” he explained. “You’re not going to pass out, are you?”
“No, no,” I assured him. “I’m fine.”
“Well, that’s good. I wouldn’t want you to die on me or something terrible like that.”
Well, I didn’t die, though a little more than nine months later I wished I would have. We walked to a nearby café, had coffee and talked and laughed. He was the one person who could distract me from myself and for the first time ever I was actually having fun. He told me he was a junior at St. Anne’s College, working on a business degree. We spent the next three weeks together, every spare moment. I really loved Christopher, but it was too much, too fast. I considered lying to him about my age, but although I may have been many things, a liar wasn’t one of them. At least, not at that time. Christopher raised his eyebrows at my age, but it didn’t stop him from taking my hand at the restaurant. I didn’t mean to keep him a secret, but I did. I didn’t introduce him to my parents or Brynn, didn’t even tell them about Christopher. I’m not sure why. He was twenty-two, way too old for a just-turned sixteen-year-old, and I knew my parents would have forbidden me from seeing him. Maybe deep down I knew it wasn’t going to last—that while there wasn’t anything wrong with a sixteen-year-old falling in love with a twenty-two-year-old, there was something definitely wrong with a grown man falling in love with a teenager. So I kept us a secret.
In the three weeks that I was with him, I didn’t crack open one book outside of school. I rushed through my homework before school and during study hall. My grades dipped. I went to volleyball practice, but my mind wasn’t on what the coach was saying. My mother asked me if I was feeling okay. Brynn looked at me suspiciously, but didn’t say anything. Neither did my teachers. I’m sure they were thinking, No one’s perfect, even Allison Glenn. I think they were secretly pleased to see me this way. As for me, I was gloriously happy.
That first week we met in ordinary places—the movies, restaurants, the park—but the next Saturday he took me to his house. We had met at the city park and then I climbed into his car and he drove us out of Linden Falls across the Druid River into the country. “You don’t live in town?” I asked him, surprised.
“No, just outside of Linden Falls,” he explained.
It was a sweet house, plain and small but clean.
He opened the refrigerator and pulled out a soda.
“Come on, I’ll show you my room.” I raised my eyebrows slyly at him. “Don’t you want to?” he asked, sliding his arms around my waist and pulling me to him.
“I want to,” I said as I kissed him.
He led me to his bedroom. It was a small, dark room with a plaid comforter and blank walls. “Not much for interior decorating, are you?” I teased.
“A man’s gotta travel light,” he responded, slipping his hands into the waistband of my jeans.
“Are you planning on going somewhere?” I asked, pulling his shirt over his head.
“Yeah, I am,” he said, grinning at me. “If you’ll let me.”
“Oh, I’m going to let you,” I whispered. And I did. I let him. And as he slid into me, I wasn’t scared or worried. It wasn’t painful. It was like coming home and all I could do was say his name over and over. “Christopher, Christopher, Christopher…”
Charm
The newspaper doesn’t reveal many details about the robbery at the bookstore, just that Claire Kelby and her five-year-old son were there and that Claire was taken by ambulance to the hospital. After reading the article, Charm rushes over to Bookends to check on Claire and Joshua.
Through the years, Gus had heard the gossip from his friends at the fire station. They shared the news they gathered about the little boy that was left at the firehouse and in turn Gus would come home and share the tidbits with Charm, who listened greedily, hungrily. He was healthy, was adopted by a nice couple, the mother owned a bookstore, the father was a carpenter, they named him Jacob or Jeffery or Joshua.
There were only four bookstores in town and it wasn’t difficult for Charm to find the one owned by a woman who had a husband who was a carpenter. Bookends. She liked the name. It sounded strong, sturdy, safe.
The first time Charm got the nerve up to go into Bookends, she was eighteen. She figured the store would be closed, maybe not even be there anymore. She slipped in unnoticed and went back to a spot in the self-help section. She only needed one look, she told herself, only needed to see his face, look into his eyes, then she could leave. A woman walked by a few minutes later, carrying a stack of books, a little boy toddling closely behind her. He was small and had blond hair the color of corn. She quickly dropped to a sitting position, making it even more difficult for anyone to see her among the stacks of books about how to get a lover, keep a lover and live without a lover. If she was discovered, she figured it would appear that she had settled in to look through the books that would somehow save her from herself. The squat little bulldog that roamed the store waddled up to her and she patted his head, hoping he wouldn’t give away her hiding spot. The woman passed by without a glance. But Charm saw the little boy’s face. His beautiful face that was his father’s. The same nose that turned delicately upward, the same ears that poked out a little too far from his head. His eyes were dark brown, the color of chocolate. She had found him.
Their eyes, mirrors of each other, latched on to one another. Was there a flicker of recognition? Charm wanted to think so, wanted him to wade back through the days, months, years that they had been separated and find a memory of her. But the moment was too short.
She thought that she would be able to just walk away once she saw him. That after she saw his face and knew that he had a family that cared for and loved him, she would be able to waltz right out without looking back. She was wrong. She couldn’t just leave. Who were these people who had ended up with him? Who were the Kelbys? No, she couldn’t walk away just yet. Maybe never.
After seeing Joshua that first time in the bookstore with Claire, it took her three weeks to gather enough nerve to return. She planted herself in the self-help section because it was located in a far corner of the store behind the cash register and gave her the best spot to secretly watch the front door to see who came and went. She pretended to read through a book about moving someone’s cheese that she actually found quite good and ended up buying.
She wanted
to get close enough to make sure he was okay, well taken care of. She wanted to say with a single look, You were a boy who was well loved. You were born on a cool summer night and when I held you in my arms for the first time I wasn’t a child anymore, but a mother—your mother, even if it was only for a short time. You were a baby who liked to have your bald head rubbed, loved to be sung to by a sick man and rocked to sleep by a young girl. You would cry until all the tears that could be were squeezed from your body. But then you’d look up at me like I was the only person in the world and it didn’t matter that I only got two hours of sleep the night before. The secret of you was too heavy. I wanted you to have an excruciatingly boring childhood with a mother and father. That’s what her look would have said.
And the boy’s look would have said, I know you. I’m not sure how, but I knew you once somewhere and that place was warm and good.
From behind a book about a man who thought his wife was a hat, Charm continued to wait. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a small boy in a white T-shirt dash into the children’s section. She moved slowly to get a better look. It was him, she was sure of it. He was smiling; he looked happy. The little boy was fine.
She now knows that Claire and Jonathan are the perfect parents for him. She doesn’t seek him out to mourn over him or to reassure herself that she did the right thing. She comes, she thinks, to watch. To learn. To witness what she never had as a child, to experience what her mother could never give her. That’s what a mother should be like, she thinks as she watches Claire bend to give Joshua a hug or wipe away a tear or whisper in his ear. I had a hand in this, Charm tells herself. He is safe.
Now, as she steps through the front entrance of Bookends, Charm finds Virginia working at the counter. “Hi,” she says breathlessly. “I heard about the break-in last night—is everyone okay?”