AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“It’s Theo’s story.”
“What?” Gus looked at the book in his hand. So…another bloody unauthorized biography. There’d already been a few: Killer Plot, The Tasmanian Devil, The Ripper’s Daughter. Poorly researched, sensationalist rubbish. When the first one came out, he’d been livid and devastated, determined to have the publication pulped. He’d failed. And after the third book, he’d learned to ignore it.
“What could this one possibly say that the others haven’t?”
Mac shook his head. “Not about her…her book.”
“Oh.” Gus bit his lip. “Are you saying this is about Canberra?”
“Not that one. The next one. She plotted it out on your kitchen table… You must have seen it.”
“Yes.” Gus’s brow furrowed as he struggled to remember the details. “Something about ghosts.”
Mac nodded. He told Gus about the idea Theo had explained to him, what they had discussed, the characters, the themes, what she’d hoped to say in that second manuscript. The brightness of her eyes, the exhilaration in her voice. The way she rocked onto her toes when she got really excited.
Gus listened silently until Mac had finished. The realization was sudden and acute. “Were you in love with my sister, mate?” he asked quietly.
Mac didn’t flinch. “Maybe. Probably. But that’s not the point. This book is her story.”
Gus exhaled. “Didn’t someone once say that every novel is a variation of the same story?”
“Yes. I expect it was some jerk who’d only read one book.”
Gus frowned, turning the volume over in his hands. He and Theo had never had a chance to talk about this book. But she had said she was writing a ghost story, and Mac was not likely to get worked up about nothing. “So what are you saying?”
“The police took Theo’s notes and journals. Did they return them to you?”
“Yes, but they were all lost in the fire.”
“So you can’t be sure they returned everything? And even if they did, it doesn’t mean her notebook couldn’t have been copied when it was at the station.”
“By whom? The police? You think someone in the Lawrence Police Department stole Theo’s manuscript and—what?” He turned to the back cover. “Gave it to a Chilean writer who doesn’t speak English?”
“How do you know P. S. Altamirano doesn’t speak English?”
“Because this book is a translation.”
“That doesn’t mean the author doesn’t speak English…just that he or she likes to write in Spanish. And what better way to hide the fact that you stole the original idea?” Mac walked into the kitchen to boil water for the tea Gus had gotten him used to drinking with pizza.
“Actually, give it back for a second,” he said, returning suddenly. He flicked through the pages he had first read only hours earlier and found the reference. “Look at this.”
Gus read. In the passage, the deceased protagonist was haunted by a surfer and his dog. The dog was called El Caballo. He looked at Mac blankly. It did sound like the kind of odd thing Theo would write, but he presumed she hadn’t been the only writer with a quirky style.
“Gus, el caballo is Spanish for the horse.”
Gus glanced at his dog, remembering how much Theo had loved the hound, how she babied Horse until he was spoiled rotten. When he’d finally returned home from the hospital, there’d been a large package waiting for him: a customized surfboard. At first it had given him hope, but investigations revealed that it had been ordered months before and delivered for Christmas. He stared at the passage for a while. “Let me read it,” he said in the end.
Mac nodded. “I’ll make some coffee.”
“You’re going to sit here and watch me read?”
“Yes.”
Gus let it go. He read. Like a lawyer at first, quickly, identifying points of interest, allocating pages into evidence for and against it being Theo’s story. And then more slowly, savoring sentences. There was a darkness to the novel that didn’t sound like Theo, but there were also references, characterizations that he recognized from their childhood. And then a devout matriarch who was preparing to survive all things, to cheat death.
“Angelica sounds like your mother,” he murmured.
Mac agreed. Despite making his book her current hobby horse, his mother had not noticed her own inclusion in its pages.
