AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“No!” he exclaimed. “OK, yeah, but I would have returned them to you eventually.”
“That’s a comfort,” I muttered. “Jane said Mr. Wainwright spent a lot of time looking for were-creatures and vampires, after he came back from World War II. She said he actually knows Sasquatch, who is Canadian, by the way.”
“That makes sense.”
I opened the first one I touched. The paper was dry and brittle, and tiny grains of sand actually shook out of the pages as I moved them. Here and there, pictures of a young Gilbert Wainwright in a pith helmet were tacked onto the pages. And the entries were carefully, meticulously written in—
“Are these hieroglyphics?” I asked, lifting an eyebrow.
“Your grandpa seemed to take learnin’ the local languages pretty damn seriously when he traveled.” He handed me journals, pointing out the language used in each. “Sanskrit, Chinese, Greek, and what I think is Old Norse. Other than looking at the photos and making a guess, I can’t tell where he was or what he wrote. He switches languages a few times in each journal. I’ve been through a dozen of them with different language guides, and I can’t make heads or tails of them.”
“Are you showing me these for a particular reason or just to give me fresh reasons not to trust you? Why didn’t you just turn these over to the Kerrigans?” I asked.
“If I just gave them the information, I couldn’t trust them to keep their word. I figured if I found the items first, I had a better shot.”
“Really nice people you’re dealing with,” I told him.
“What part of ‘desperate cursed man’ are you not getting? But I think you’re more likely to meet the terms of our agreement. And I want to help you, to show you how sorry I am about how things have worked out. I’m sorry, Nola,” he said. “I’m sorry I betrayed your trust. And I’m so sorry that I hurt you.”
“So what do you want from me now?”
“I don’t know, really. I just wanted to tell you how sorry I am. I don’t know if you can help me. I don’t even know if it’s right to ask, considering what I’ve done.”
“You really hurt me,” I whispered. “I don’t trust people very easily. And I thought you liked me.”
“I did. I do!” he exclaimed. “I didn’t expect you to be so sweet or so funny. I thought you’d be a crazy, wild-haired old chick with a million cats and a black muumuu. And you show up, and you’re no-nonsense and terrified of small mammals.”
“Marsupials.”
“Whatever.”
“I don’t know if I can ever trust you again.”
“I have no reason to lie now. You know everything,” he said. “And I have something to make you feel better.”
“What’s that?”
He opened the fridge and took out a large green mixing bowl, displaying it with a flourish. “Banana puddin’.”
“You think a little pudding is going to make me feel better?”
“You haven’t lived until you’ve had real homemade banana puddin’.”
“Church-lady harem again?”
He pursed his full lips and gave me the puppy-dog eyes again. “There’s something I need to tell you about that.”
I gave him an exasperated look. “Oh, come on.”
“I made all of the food,” he said, cringing.
“Palace of lies!” I exclaimed. “Why—why would you lie about that?”
“I didn’t know what you liked in a man, and I didn’t want to come across all domestic and feminine. I happen to be a very good cook. My mama insisted that all of the boys learn to take care of the house, so when we found nice girls to marry, we would stay married.”
“I never saw you bring home groceries or smelled cooking from your side of the house.”
“You have a pretty regimented schedule,” he said, shrugging. “It was easy to work around you.”
