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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781683225515 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Barbour Publishing, Incorporated |
| Publication date: | 05/01/2018 |
| Series: | No Less Days |
| Edition description: | Large Print |
| Pages: | 320 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.50(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.00(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
His books were burning.
He let the glass door slam behind him and charged into the shop. The smell of smoke wafted around him. Where was the fire? He turned a circle at the bookcases in the front. The new books, not burning. In the back then — old books there. Irreplaceable books. He barreled up the two steps to the main landing and darted down the nearest aisle, sci-fi on one side and Westerns on the other. Save them all, hundreds of them, open a window and pitch them outside if necessary, and it would be necessary. Fire didn't hesitate, didn't sate itself, didn't tire. His scalp prickled.
The smell was fainter back here. He headed along the back wall, boots tracking rain over the old green carpet. No flames. No visible smoke.
"I hope that's you, David." The voice drifted from the children's shelves.
"Tiana." He detoured toward her, and the smell almost disappeared. No, he had to find it first. Strongest at the front. He went that way and called back to her. "Something's burning."
"Um, no?"
"Yes."
"I promise, there's not ..." Tiana poked her head into the main aisle and then followed him. "Are you talking about my incense?"
David halted halfway to the front. "Your ... what?"
"Behind the counter."
He stepped over to the checkout counter and then behind it, and the aroma assaulted him, infiltrated his skin as well as his senses. The burner was a small glazed ceramic kiln the color of a robin's egg. Smoke drifted up through holes in the tooled copper lid. David backed into the counter.
"Get rid of that thing."
"It's perfectly safe."
"Tiana, get it out of my store right now."
"Okay." She shuffled around him, and he edged over to give her room. "I know that tone."
She grabbed a blue pot holder she must have brought from home and carried the burner outside. David trudged to the closest chair, a wobbly old wooden thing made for a child's height. He folded down into it, knees poking up, and let his chin hit his chest. He could lecture himself for his overreaction or he could move on and hope someday he'd believe incense wasn't dangerous. Candles weren't dangerous. Fire didn't have to be followed by explosion and sizzling skin, where skin was left at all.
A third option did exist. He could admit that a century of overreacting to fire was a strong indication he always would.
However, he wasn't a third-option sort of man.
The bell chimed over the door, and David stood. An apology might be in order. She had to think him neurotic.
Tiana set the burner behind the counter, lid off, cleaned out, smokeless. She leaned one hip against the counter and tugged her plaid work shirt. "You stick your finger in some incense as a kid, or what?"
"Exactly that."
Her head tilt said she didn't believe him. Good for her.
"And what tone did I use a minute ago?"
"You know. The David-Galloway-is-not-happy tone. You don't use it much, but when you do, it thunders off the walls."
"I don't want fire in a store full of books."
"There was no actual fire in the burner."
"Smoke isn't good for them either."
A long look, and then she shrugged. "Jayde wanted to come by after classes tomorrow and start training, if you're good with that."
"Of course."
"She's like you about books. She'll want to touch all the first editions and have a moment of communing with literary history."
A laugh filled his chest. "Appropriate for a lit major. Is her track American?"
"Yeah. Mid-nineteenth century is her area of interest."
"Civil War?"
"The whole thing. Popular fiction of the time, slave narratives, Underground Railroad, Reconstruction. Apparently people made time to read even in conflict like that."
David leaned against the shelf behind him and crossed his arms. "It's only recently that people don't make time to read."
"Oh, here we go." She smirked.
"Digital distribution cheapens everything," he said. And reclaiming esteem for the written word would require something universal. A blackout, perhaps. Some days David enjoyed the possibility — the death of digital, the forced return to reading paper, no more screens.
"And while you rail against it, some of my friends who would never read a physical book are addicted to their Kindles."
That was always her argument. And she wasn't wrong. Still, he wished people valued books — paper, ink, effort, art, knowledge — the way they used to.
He pushed away from the bookcase. "So you want to give me another of your Sunday afternoons?"
"No other plans." Tiana shrugged. "Show me the haul."
He stepped outside and held the door for her, and she let him. She pointed to a patch of dirt to one side of the entrance, smudged with a dark-gray stain.
"Look at that. The big bad pile of ashes already got rained away."
David sighed. Tiana walked around the building to the rear parking lot where he kept his work van. He opened the doors, and she clasped her hands in front of her. Boxes of books filled the van all the way to the front seats. He'd long since removed the back ones.
"How many trips will you need?"
"This is the whole lot."
"It's a lot of a lot."
"And a steal of a lot. Five dollars per box."
They both leaned into the van, reached for a box at the same time. Their arms could have brushed but didn't. He'd never know if she was deliberate about things like that. The way he was.
They kept the boxes shut and hunched over them to protect the books, but the rain had slowed to a light mist. They each made over a dozen trips from the van to the store and back again, quiet while they worked until David brought in the last box. Tiana had already opened several.
"Aw, look at all the children's books. Can I read some?"
"It's Sunday."
"But you're paying me."
"And I owe you two years of breaks."
She sat cross-legged on the floor and pulled one of the boxes to her side. "Make Way for Ducklings. Do you know this one?"
"It's a classic."
She didn't bother to throw sarcasm at him. The illustrations had already captivated her.
The afternoon passed like a few heartbeats. They unpacked and inventoried like treasure hunters, which they were, and the pleasure of discovery filled the air around them. Then Tiana glared over David's shoulder at the regulator clock on the wall, ticking all this time beneath their voices.
"I hate that it's already after five," she said.
Could it be? He turned. 5:37p.m. David rose and stretched. "Should I have been keeping track?"
"Of time? You? Right."
Tiana slid a nearly new illustrated children's edition of The Red Pony back into a beaten cardboard slipcase. A 1945 edition unless he missed his guess. Not a rarity, but not a common find either. David blinked. Right. Emerge from the books, give her his focus, try not to prove her crooked smile was justified.
"I do have to go," Tiana said, "but while I'm thinking about it, are you going on vacation next month?"
Caution settled on his shoulders. "Why do you ask?"
"Seems to be your habit."
"Two consecutive years doesn't make a habit."
"Three pretty much does." She pushed to her feet. "I noticed while I was looking at the inventory logs from three years back. You didn't acquire or sell anything the first two weeks of October."
He'd hired her for her attention to detail. He couldn't scowl at it now. He went to the coatrack behind the long counter and shrugged into his trench coat, dug his keys from a pocket. Time to lock up, eat, head home.
"I'd just like to know if I'll be off work a few weeks."
"I know," he said. "And yes, I'll probably be away next month, but I can't give you a date yet."
"September's almost over."
He forced a smile. "Call me spontaneous."
Tiana grabbed her purple peacoat and followed him outside, watched as he locked the store. The rain had stopped, but the clouds overhead guaranteed this was only a temporary reprieve.
She looked up at him, coat buttoned to her throat, breeze riffling her hair. "So you'll do what you did last year. No planning, just call me the day you leave and the day you're back."
"Most likely, yes."
"You're very frustrating sometimes."
No arguing that.
"And I'll see you tomorrow."
She rambled across the parking lot, crunching fallen leaves, zigzagging her stride to step on as many as possible. Her legs were long, lean muscle defined by the slim-fit jeans above her cowboy boots. Her two-inch-long hair flared out from her head in black coils. Her skin was deep umber and smooth. Two years of knowing her, and the sight of her only grew dearer to him. It could be a problem, if he were the kind of man to let it.
She saluted him before ducking inside her little khaki-colored Ford. He returned the gesture.
Then he walked. The wind still tasted like a storm, and the gray clouds overhead weren't empty yet, but his coat was resistant. Only two miles home, and he'd walked to the store early this morning. The damp promise of rain had blown through his hair and filled his nostrils, his mouth as he drank the air with his head back. He did it again now, his lungs glad for each deep breath. Satisfied. However long he lived in Michigan — ten years or less, of course — he'd enjoy each change of season.
Another block, and he stopped at the family-owned sandwich shop on the corner. He stepped in and scuffed puddles from the soles of his boots.
Bobby, the owner's youngest son, grinned at him from behind the counter. "The usual?" "To go."
David had tasted every sandwich on their menu before settling into his rut. He waited only minutes for Bobby to hand over a white paper bag with the receipt stapled over the fold.
"North Atlantic cod on grilled ciabatta and cream of asparagus soup."
"Thanks, Bobby."
"Have a good night, Mr. Galloway."
The sky began to spit again, speckling the restaurant bag, as he traversed the last mile home. A few hundred feet from his door, the clouds gave in altogether. He tramped through the downpour, drew up his collar around his neck. He unlocked the door and squinted up at the heavens, let the drops fall through his hair, into his mouth and the creases around his eyes. He blinked the rain away. Water, one thing that was always older than he was.
He went inside and shut the door, shed his coat, had dinner sitting at the desk in his library. Shivered a few times, but he couldn't begrudge the rain when he'd chosen to walk in it.
He should catch up on news. He opened his computer and settled into his overstuffed chair, feet propped on the leather ottoman. At his favored news site, he clicked headlines. World. Local. National. He read the stories. Heaviness fell on his shoulders. Accidents and crimes. Terror and war. Suffering.
Nothing changed. Or rather, nothing improved.
He closed his eyes and leaned his head back.
One story of kindness. One, and he'd stop reading. He opened his eyes and searched.
Breaking story. Happened today around noon. DAREDEVIL ATTEMPTS TO CROSS GRAND CANYON, FALLS TO DEATH.
Don't go there. Don't.
He clicked the link.
A man's grinning face filled the top of the screen — white guy, blond, keen blue eyes, no older than thirty. Zachary Wilson. The article called him "popular," but David had never heard of him.
Then again, David ignored entertainment news.
A daring stunt. No net, no harness. Unexpected winds. The body hadn't been recovered yet.
David set the laptop aside and surged to his feet. He tried to work his jaw, but his teeth were locked. He stopped at his cherry-wood bookcase and braced his hands on a low shelf, let his shoulders cave under the weight of everything he'd just read, absorbed it, every life that had been ended today. He straightened and pressed his palm to the spines of his books. Ran a thumb over his first editions of Vanity Fair and War and Peace.
He scrubbed one hand through black hair that gave no sign of thinning or graying, over a face he'd worn for two lifetimes — strong cheekbones, straight nose, no wrinkles. He sank back into his chair, using muscles and bones and joints that refused to wear out.
That man, Zachary Wilson. Such a long fall ... it would be a kind of soaring, if he'd closed his eyes. No way to live through it, so nothing to dread really. Only open space and gravity, molecules of air rushing past faster than lungs could breathe them in. Maybe he had tucked his limbs in and rolled; maybe he held his arms tight against his body and dove as if he'd meant to do this thing. Or he'd flailed and screamed as if those actions would slow his descent.
David should go there. Should dive into the wind. Find a place with no witnesses, of course, but ... he'd never fallen as far as this man had today. Why not discover how it felt?
He shook his head. Recovery wouldn't be worth it.
He stared at his books and tried not to let his imagination burn pictures into his brain. What his own body would look like after a crash like that. What Zachary Wilson's corpse looked like right now. He kneaded his jaw and sat forward, elbows on his knees.
Stupid, stupid children, believing they would never die.
He couldn't simmer here in his chair all night. A man had sacrificed himself in search of a rush. Men died worse deaths, though few for more pointless reasons. David stood and left his books behind. He stepped into the backyard barefoot. No point in soaking his shoes.
He'd sleep out here in the tent tonight, free of walls and processed air. Few things calmed him as well as rain pattering on canvas. He sat on the back steps, concrete chilling his thighs, and peered through the drizzling dusk toward the two-foot pen he'd built against the side of the house, a hexagon of stacked two-by-fours.
The smell of wet soil filled his senses, and drops pattered in his hair, on his shoulders. Inside the pen, dandelions, hostas, ferns, and strawberry plants bobbed in the soft impact of the rain. Nothing else moved.
"Fine, don't come out. Wait until the rain stops, though you've much sturdier protection than I."
He knew better than to believe in any attachment on the turtle's part. Half the time she never poked her head from where she hid. Tonight she eased into the open from under an old log he'd set in her pen years ago. She lumbered like a small dinosaur, craning her neck, blinking in the rain. David leaned forward.
"Good evening then."
She pushed up from all four legs, lifting her carapace off the ground, and lurched across the grass away from him. She spotted a surfaced earthworm, and her mouth gaped open and clamped down, ferocious and not in a bit of a hurry.
"Protein first," David said. "Now don't forget a strawberry. Dessert."
She clawed at the worm, swallowed it, and then sat there. The rain had nearly stopped, leaving a shine on her shell.
"Shall we delve into philosophy tonight? Why we're here, what we should be doing with our time? Or would you rather enjoy the rain?" For an hour or more, he watched her. She prowled the pen for a while, found a strawberry to nibble, and then wandered into the concealment of the hostas.
"You're no help," he said to her retreating tail. "I don't know your purpose either, to be frank."
He stayed outside until the dark was thick around him, until the rain had moved on and his bare feet had mostly dried, bits of grass sticking to them. Until he could sleep through the night and wake up in the morning trusting higher ways than his own.
Then he went inside for his sleeping bag and pillow. He hung his slicker in the closet, changed into pajamas, and padded out into the yard still barefoot. Wet grass tickled between his toes. He unzipped the tent door and ducked inside. It had been pitched so long in the middle of the yard the grass beneath it was dying. That didn't matter on nights like this, when rain and restlessness converged and would have kept him shut up inside, were the grass too wet to sleep on.
He laid out his thermal bag and pillow and crawled inside. The flannel lining was soft against his feet, his arms. Exponentially nicer than the heavy coarseness of a bedroll. He closed his eyes.
The last week of September. He might not get many more nights like this before winter, if most of October was lost to him again.
He folded his hands on his chest, the old ceremonial melancholy tugging at him. He would die in October, more than likely. No way of knowing if it would be this one or the hundredth from this one. Maybe he'd know when it was happening. If he did, if this was the year for it, he'd call Tiana and tell her about the turtle. Tiana would find a home for the old girl, maybe even keep her. The thought pulled another smile out of him — Tiana with a pet older than she was.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "No Less Days"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Amanda G. Stevens.
Excerpted by permission of Barbour Publishing, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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