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Mr. Webber shook his head, sighing. He turned his head to gaze to the street. And then he looked back at Cassie. There was another debate within him, Cassie saw; he was being pulled in different directions. Then he nodded, a decision made.
“My apartment isn’t far from here,” he said, then he caught himself. “But you know that, don’t you, my dear?”
Cassie nodded through her tears.
“I have a spare room. You are welcome to sleep there until you make sense of your situation. You cannot stay long, but perhaps until you work out what to do. A day, two at the most. Will that help?”
Cassie blinked and wiped away her tears. “You mean it?” she asked.
“I am not sure I do,” Mr. Webber admitted. “But it would be wrong to leave you in such distress. I have the means. But only for a night or two, this is a stopgap measure. Understand?”
“I promise,” Cassie said, even though she had no idea how her situation would be any better in two days’ time.
Mr. Webber finished his coffee, and together they walked in silence out of the bookstore.
The Passing of Days
Over those first two days, Cassie didn’t really settle in Mr. Webber’s apartment. She felt as if he would eject her at any moment. She tried to be helpful, offering to make drinks, to go to the store, to help him tidy. Sometimes he took her up on her offer, but she could see that it made him uncomfortable, as if perhaps he was worried that she was trying to make herself so helpful that he wouldn’t throw her out. And over those two days he asked her to tell her story again, and he would quiz her on details, inquire about facts he didn’t understand. He never seemed entirely satisfied by what she said, but Cassie couldn’t work out if it was because he didn’t believe the tale, or because he was failing to pick holes in it.
On the evening of the second night following that meeting in Kellner Books, Mr. Webber came out of his bedroom after a nap to find Cassie running her fingers along one of the bookshelves.
“I love your collection of books,” she said. “I always wanted a library like this, a place I could just sit by myself and read.”
Mr. Webber sat in his chair and let his eyes wander over his books. “Yes,” he said. “So did I. And now I have it.”
He smiled at her, like he had detected a kindred spirit. And then they spent the evening discussing books, the books they had read and wanted to read, the books they liked and disliked. Cassie made themboth tea and then, a little later, a sandwich each, and they kept talking. Mr. Webber liked talking about books; it was how they had first connected when Cassie had started work at Kellner Books all those years later.
On the third day Mr. Webber didn’t ask her to leave. He didn’t tell her that she could stay, but he didn’t ask her to leave. Instead, over breakfast, he asked her, “How can I help you get home?”
She looked at him with unbelieving eyes, and he responded with a dismissive wave. “I am not saying I believe. But I am happy to play along. What can I do to help you get home?”
So she recounted the thoughts she’d had on that first, wretched night alone in New York. She told him about trying to track down Drummond Fox, but how impossible that would be.
“Because he’s hiding now,” Mr. Webber said. “From this lady who wants the books.”
“Correct,” Cassie said. “That’s why I came to you. Because you give me the Book of Doors.”
“Which I don’t have,” he said.
“No,” she said, poking miserably at her breakfast yogurt with a spoon.
“Well then, that is what we will do,” Mr. Webber said. “We will search for your Book of Doors. Perhaps that is how I come to have it in the first place? Because you make me look for it?”
Cassie thought about that, feeling hope dawning. “Yes,” she said, warming to the idea. “Yes, maybe you’re right! That would make sense!”
She thought about Drummond telling her about time travel when they had been waiting in the diner—about how you can’t change the past, you can only make things happen.
“Maybe thisishow you get the book!” she agreed.
So they started searching for the Book of Doors together, and days became weeks and weeks became months.
Over those first few months with Mr. Webber, when she wasn’t looking for the Book of Doors, Cassie kept to a comfortable routine. She would wake up first and have a light breakfast and then she would walk the city in the morning, either looking for leads or just stretchingher legs. She lost weight and gained conditioning, becoming fitter than she ever had. Then she would return home for lunch, out of the heat in the warmest part of the year, and she and Mr. Webber would share coffee and pastries, or a sandwich, sitting in the window surrounded by his books. They would discuss strategies for locating the book, rare bookshops to check, libraries to visit, and Cassie would update him on what she had found. Most days Mr. Webber would head out in the afternoon—“for my constitutional, my dear, I must keep my old limbs moving or I’ll waste away”—and Cassie would clean the apartment, read books while sitting in the window, or watch television. Sometimes she would lounge on the sofa and dream about the Fox Library, that wonderful, peaceful place that was so comforting in her memories. And she would think about Drummond Fox, the man who was handsome when he smiled, and she wondered what he was doing in the future. She hoped he was safe. She hoped she would see him again.
In the evenings she and Mr. Webber would eat dinner together and then read in a companionable silence or discuss books. If the weather was pleasant, they would walk together to a nearby restaurant or coffee shop. Sometimes they would take a cab to Central Park and spend the evening in the golden sunlight. Months rolled by and Cassie found herself celebrating Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Year’s, just the two of them, a simple, improvised family.
During this time, Mr. Webber was incredible company. He asked for nothing from Cassie except companionship. He would listen whenever she wanted to speak, usually offering wise advice, and he wouldn’t impose upon her with his own conversation when she wasn’t in the mood for it. She learned all about him, about his lonely childhood with an overbearing mother; about musical gifts that had been recognized at a young age—“I was a prodigy, don’t you know? Not precocious, but definitely prodigious!”—and then his career as a concert pianist and composer. She learned that he had made his fortune not from playing piano around the world, but from composing theme tunes for a handful of popular television series in the 1990s.
“It was so ridiculously well paid,” he told her one day, as they strolled around SoHo. “Especially when the shows were syndicated. And theshow that paid me the most, it was the most ridiculously simple tune. Just four notes, like a ringtone, something recognizable. Those four notes earned me more money than all the other music I composed combined and bought me that apartment and many of my books.”
