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“Now?” I ask.
“Yeah, we have all day…or at least all evening,” she explains.
Right. I’m a host now to a guest stuck in my home.
“You’re not very good at this hosting thing, are you?” she asks.
“I didn’t ask for guests,” I grumble under my breath.
“Well, sorry for getting stuck in your home. I wish I was in my own home, but I’m here. And based on that snow, I don’t think I’m going anywhere,” she states, motioning toward the door outside.
I swallow. I’m being a prick. My mother would kill me for acting this way.
“I…” I choke over the words, clearing my throat because apologies aren’t something I’m accustomed to making. “You were in the library earlier. Do you want to see my collection?”
A smile lights up her face and she nods enthusiastically.
“Come on,” I say as I motion for her to go through the door I open.
She follows me, and when we get to the library doors, she pauses and runs a finger over the door. “These doors are beautiful.”
I smile at the memory of Dad finding them. I run my finger over the carvings, right alongside hers. Our fingers brush for a moment and neither of us pulls away.
“My father found these in an old manor house that was being renovated. The owner was changing the opening and was willing to sell them as they didn’t have a place for them any longer. So Dad had them shipped here and we redid this entire room,” I start. An unexpected laugh escapes me at the memory. “After he found these doors, he became super obsessed with finding reclaimed wood for the entire library. The shelves were from an old school in Scotland. The beams are from a church in France. The desks are from another school in Ireland. He spent that summer traveling as much as he could like he was on a quest or something.”
That beautiful smile graces Isa’s face again. “Your father sounds like a fun guy and I love that he went on a quest to find this library and put it all together here,” she says as she looks around the room with such a sense of awe that I follow her gaze. It’s like seeing it again for the first time.
“She loved cardinals,” I say quietly as I look at the set of three paintings my mother won at an art auction.
“Your mom?” Isa asks.
I nod. “Her grandmother collected them and she started to gift them to Mom. It became their thing. Her grandmother said something about coming back as a cardinal and so Mom always stopped and talked to them when we’d go for walks. I used to tease her about it. She’d just smile and sayyou’ll understand someday. Maybe I’ll come back as a cardinal.”
I pause, feeling the weight of that moment like a ton of bricks on my chest.
Isa’s reassuring hand reaches out and laces her fingers through mine again. “Your parents sound like amazing people.”
“They were, but they were busy people too. Charity events and galas. They had an empire to run, an empire they inherited, just as I inherited it. I guess I never really understood the albatross it was until it was strapped around my own neck,” I muse as I run a thumb along Isa’s smooth skin. She doesn’t pull away as if knowing her touch is providing me strength I didn’t even know I needed.
With her hand still tucked in mine, I walk us up the main staircase to the second floor and straight to the locked cabinets. These cabinets, while trimmed with mahogany, are fitted with fireproof glass and walls to protect the valuable books inside. Books passed down from my grandfather to my father and now to me.
I release Isa’s hand and press my thumb to the lock. It looks old, but it’s quite modern. The locks click and I open the door. I pull out a small drawer with special gloves inside and put on a pair while handing another pair to Isa who obliges. Then I pull out a first-edition copy ofPride of Prejudiceand lay it out on a small tabletop that I pull out from its place tucked into the shelf.
Isa’s fingers hesitate over the antique pages.
“You can touch it,” I urge.
Her gloved finger runs over the words on the page. “It’s amazing.”
She looks at all the other books.Moby Dick.Oliver Twist.Frankenstein. And so many more.
“How did your grandfather end up with this collection?” she asks.
I give a sad smile. “His wife, my grandmother, loved books. When she got sick, he wanted to make her happy, so he began adding to the small collection she had started. And soon, there were twenty-eight priceless first editions of some of the most-read classics ever written. After she passed away, he would buy a single one each year on her birthday and leave it on the shelf with a red bow around it.”
I know when Isa finds them. There are six of them, one for each year he lived past her death, and they still are wrapped with red satin bows.
A tear trails down Isa’s cheek and I can’t help myself. I reach out and wipe it away.
