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Zoey stood in Lizbeth’s dark bedroom doorway, adjusting her face mask and snapping her rubber gloves farther up her forearms. Enough boxes had been cleared in the living room that she thought she could safely enter the bedroom, which she was excited aboutdespite the unwashed smell that emanated strongly from it. This was obviously the place Lizbeth had spent most of her time, which meant it was also likely to be where she kept what was most important to her. Roscoe Avanger’s story? Evidence of her son, Oliver, having lived here? Whatever Lucy might be looking for? The possibilities were endless.
“Okay, I’m going in,” she said to Charlotte.
“Good luck. Send me a postcard,” Charlotte said, scrolling through the music on Zoey’s phone before she got started on the boxes along the far wall near the galley kitchen. When Charlotte had shown up again this morning looking ready to work in her shorts, red cowboy boots, and a T-shirt that readMALLOW ISLAND BREWERY: DRINK YOUR SWEETS, Zoey had resisted the urge to greet her with a hug. She got the impression that Charlotte didn’t like touching much. She was so guarded that Zoey would study her out of the corner of her eye so as not to spook her with too much interest. She wanted to know her story. She wished she could tell Charlotte her own story. But she’d only ever told her father about Pigeon, and he hadn’t believed her. It was an odd feeling, when she really thought about it, not having anyone in the world who knew everything about you and loved you anyway.
Pigeon gave an angry coo from outside.
Well, no one she could see, anyway.
Her bird was seriously displeased about this job, but Zoey didn’t care. She was still mad about Pigeon breaking her housewarming gift from Charlotte two days ago. She’d never before been given an actual, physical thing that said,I’m glad you’re here.Charlotte had given Zoey another witch ball yesterday afternoon after they’d finished for the day, this time inviting her over to choose from the dozens hanging from her bedroom ceiling, which was the most magicalthing Zoey had ever seen. She could have spent all night just lying on the floor, staring at them. She’d chosen a green one, which was now safely tucked in one of her dresser drawers because Pigeon had fixated on it when Zoey had taken it up to her studio. She obviously wanted to punish Zoey for as long as this job lasted.
Pigeon’s biggest issue seemed to be that there was no place for her to perch in Lizbeth’s place. The few times she’d tried, she’d brought down a veritable snowstorm of papers. So she spent her days on the patio, cooing with irritation and peevishly knocking over cleaning supplies, once causing Charlotte to say, “There’s a lot of wind out there.” The faster Zoey got done, the happier Pigeon would be. Pigeon had reacted the same way when Zoey had gotten her part-time job at Kello’s used bookstore. Pigeon knew Zoey didn’t need the money. Not that Kello, an old former academic turned Deadhead, paid her very much. More often than not, she’d come home with boxes of books instead of a paycheck. But that job, like this one, wasn’t about money. What exactly Pigeon expected her to do with her time when she wasn’t in school, especially after her best friend Ingrid moved away, had always been a mystery. Sometimes she seemed offended that Zoey didn’t think her invisible presence was enough.
Zoey would always be glad Pigeon had come into her life after her mother had died, one day just swooping into her bedroom like a dream. For a long time, Pigeon’s love was the only love Zoey had felt. At first she hadn’t realized that no one else could sense Pigeon, and she’d talked endlessly about her new pet bird to her father. She had wanted to spend all her time with him after her mother’s death, to hug him, to sit on his lap, to tell him stories about Pigeon. He would put up with it for a few minutes, then would push her away. He hadn’t wanted her there, but she’d had nowhere else to go. Finding her another place to live had never been an option. What his family thought of him had always been too important to him. They were a well-to-do clan of Oklahoma judges and politicians, and Alrick had been something of a black sheep all his life, with a long list of failed businesses to his name. He’d found some success later in life with an import-export company in Charleston, where he’d met Zoey’s mother at a gentleman’s club. A few years later, beaming with success, he’d sold the business for a lot of money and moved back to Tulsa with his very young, beautiful bride and new baby. But whatever approval he’d hoped he would finally get from his brothers and sisters never came. Not with volatile Paloma there, always stirring the pot.
Pigeon had been overbearing from the start, but it had always been a welcome balance to her father’s disinterest, and Zoey had never before wished for a separate existence from her. But something had shifted, just slightly, in her relationship with her bird since she’d arrived on Mallow Island. Coming here was the last break from the only world she’d ever known, and only Pigeon was left. She was a childhood relic like a stuffed animal or a security blanket, and Zoey didn’t want to say goodbye to her. Where would she go? Would she ever mean as much to someone else as she did to Zoey? But nor did Zoey know how to fit her into this life she had to forge on her own.
Listening to Pigeon continue to fuss outside that morning, Zoey reached inside Lizbeth’s bedroom and groped for a switch. When she found it, the dim overhead flicked on and illuminated the expected towers of boxes, but also a dirty nest of a bed, the sheets of which hadn’t been washed in so long they formed stiff peaks, like the crests of waves frozen in midcrash. There was also a rickety bamboo desk supporting a humming computer and an old monitor roughly the size of a compact car. A large freestanding bookcase had fallen over in the middle of the room and had spilled books everywhere.
“I finally found some furniture!” She stepped inside and picked up one of the books. It was a copy ofSweet Mallow.She looked at it, then at the massive overturned bookcase, and it suddenly occurred to her. “Charlotte, I think I found where it happened.”
“Where what happened?”
“Where Lizbeth died.”
Charlotte immediately appeared at her side at the same time Pigeon zoomed in, her wings making a frantic whooshing sound.
Zoey pointed. “Frasier said a bookcase landed on her.”
Charlotte paused for a few moments before taking action. “Right. We need to get all these books out first. Then we can scoot the bookcase to the living room for Frasier to deal with.” She stomped into the bedroom, kicking some books with her boots. “He should have at least cleaned this part up. He should havewarnedyou.”
The outburst startled Zoey. She realized Charlotte must think that this discovery had upset her. “Hey, Charlotte, I’m okay. Really.” Charlotte didn’t look convinced. “Areyouokay?”
“Yes. Yes, of course I am,” Charlotte said, not looking at her as she started gathering books.
Zoey joined her and soon discovered that it was all thesamebook—hundreds and hundreds of copies ofSweet Mallow.She recognized them from her time at Kello’s. Some had the original retro artwork cover, some had the cover of the movie poster, and others had the more modern cover that showed a photo of the back of a young African American man in a World War I army uniform, his head bowed, with an old man’s hand resting gently on his shoulder as if to comfort him. All the copies were worn and some were wavy like they’d been dropped in water, but every single one of them had the same four specific passages highlighted, like Lizbeth had wanted to make sure the words were all in the same place:
History is known for sugar-coating. Sometimes it’s the only thing that can make it palatable. So it can come as no surprise that even on Mallow Island, South Carolina, the past is not as sweet as the name suggests.
Second chances are not to be wasted. It is one of the most valuable lessons we can learn in life.
Stories aren’t fiction. Stories are fabric. They’re the white sheets we drape over our ghosts so we can see them.
How odd that pretending to be someone else has made me happier than I was when I was just being myself. It’s almost as if, once I got over the guilt of loving my future more than I loved my past, my old life dropped away and became make-believe, and my present life became my second birth.
A lot of the books that had come through Kello’s were marked the same way, and Zoey had always been fascinated by what spoke to other readers. Some customers didn’t like when books were marked, like it was a crime against literature. But Zoey thought it was a far greater crime to forget passages like this, so beautiful they made you breathless.
Out of everything so far, the books were the hardest things for her to throw out of Lizbeth’s condo. But they were all in such bad shape that they had to go into the recycling dumpster. Even Kello, with his questionable standards on what was sellable, wouldn’t have taken them. Zoey did save one, the most cared-for one, which had been signed by Roscoe Avanger himself:
To Elizabeth Lime, Best Wishes, Roscoe Avanger.
He’d misspelled her name, but Zoey decided to keep it for Oliver.
After their last trip to the dumpster with the books, Charlotte said, “I don’t mind tackling the bedroom if you want to stay out here in the living room.”
It was obviously the last thing Charlotte wanted to do, so Zoey said, “That’s okay. I’m curious. We keep all our best secrets in our bedrooms, don’t we?”
“That we do.” Charlotte sat down and opened another box. “Well, this is new,” she said, tilting the box so Zoey could see. “Used birthday party hats. Think Roscoe Avanger has something written on them?”
