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MEGAN HART
To my trusted crit partners, you know who you are.
To my family, for your support and love.
To my readers—without you, I'd have no success. Thank
you.
I don't write books without music. My thanks to the artists
and musicians who make it possible for me to sit at my
computer day after day and make worlds and the people
who populate them. Please support their work through
legal sources.
Don McLean, "Empty Chairs"; Joaquin Phoenix and
Reese Witherspoon, "It Ain't Me, Babe"; Joshua Radin,
"Closer"; Justin King, "Same Mistakes"; Lifehouse,
"Whatever It Takes"; Meredith Brooks, "What Would
Happen"; Rufus Wainwright, "Halelujah"; Sarah Bareiles,
"Gravity"; Schuyler Fisk, "Lying to You"; She Wants Revenge, "These Things"; Tim Curry, "S.O.S."
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Author's Note
Chapter 01
Chapter 02
Chapter 03
Chapter 04
Chapter 05
Chapter 06
Chapter 07
Chapter 08
Chapter 09
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 01
Sometimes, you look back.
He was coming out. I was going in. We moved by each
other, ships passing without fanfare the way hundreds of
strangers pass every day. The moment didn't last longer
than it took to see a bush of dark, messy hair and a flash
of dark eyes. I registered his clothes first, the khaki cargo
pants and a long-sleeved black T-shirt. Then his height and
the breadth of his shoulders. I became aware of him in the
span of a few seconds the way men and women have of
noticing each other, and I swiveled on the pointed toe of
my kitten-heel pumps and folowed him with my gaze until
the door of the Speckled Toad closed behind me.
"Want me to wait?"
"Huh?" I looked at Kira, who'd gone ahead of me. "For what?"
"For you to go back after the dude who just gave you
whiplash." She smirked and gestured, but I couldn't see
him anymore, not even through the glass.
I'd known Kira since tenth grade, when we bonded over
our mutual love for a senior boy named Todd Browning.
We'd had a lot in common back then. Bad hair, miserable
taste in clothes and a fondness for too much black
eyeliner. We'd been friends back then, but I wasn't sure
what to cal her now.
I turned toward the center of the shop. "Shut up. I barely
noticed him."
"If you say so." Kira tended to drift, and now she
wandered toward a shelf of knickknacks that were nothing
like anything I'd ever buy. She lifted one, a stuffed frog
holding a heart in its feet. The heart had MOM
embroidered on it in sparkly letters. "What about this?"
"Nice bling. But no, on so many levels. I do have half a
mind to get her one of these, though." I turned to a shelf of
porcelain clowns.
"Jesus. She'd hate one of those. I dare you to buy it." Kira snorted laughter.
I laughed, too. I was trying to find a birthday present for
my father's wife. The woman wouldn't own her real age
and insisted every birthday be celebrated as her "twenty-
and insisted every birthday be celebrated as her "twenty-
ninth" along with the appropriate coy smirks, but she sure
didn't mind raking in the loot. Nothing I bought would
impress her, and yet I was unrelentingly determined to buy
her something perfect.
"If they weren't so expensive, I might think about it. She
colects that Limoges stuff. Who knows? She might realy
dig a ceramic clown." I touched the umbrela of one
tightrope-balancing monstrosity.
Kira had met Stela a handful of times and neither had
been impressed with the other. "Yeah, right. I'm going to
check out the magazines."
I murmured a reply and kept up my search. Miriam Levy,
the owner of the Speckled Toad, stocks an array of
decora tive items, but that wasn't realy why I was there. I
could have gone anyplace to find Stela a present. Hel,
she'd have loved a gift card to Neiman Marcus, even if
she'd have sniffed at the amount I could afford. I didn't
come to Miriam's shop for the porcelain clowns, or even
because it was a convenient half a block from Riverview
Manor, where I lived.
No. I came to Miriam's shop for the paper.
No. I came to Miriam's shop for the paper.
Parchment, hand-cut greeting cards, notebooks, pads of
exquisite, delicate paper thin as tissue, stationery meant for
fountain pens and thick, sturdy cardboard capable of
enduring any torture. Paper in al colors and sizes, each
individualy perfect and unique, just right for writing love
notes and breakup letters and condolences and poetry,
with not a single box of plain white computer printer paper
to be found. Miriam won't stock anything so plebian.
I have a bit of a stationery fetish. I colect paper, pens,
note cards. Set me loose in an office-supply store and I
can spend more hours and money than most women can
drop on shoes. I love the way good ink smels on
expensive paper. I love the way a heavy, linen note card
feels in my fingers. Most of al, I love the way a blank
sheet of paper looks when it's waiting to be written on.
Anything can happen in those moments before you put pen
to paper.
The best part about the Speckled Toad is that Miriam sels
her paper by the sheet as wel as by the package and the
ream. My colection of papers includes some of creamy
linen with watermarks, some handmade from flower pulp,
some note cards scissored into scherenschnitte scenes. I
some note cards scissored into scherenschnitte scenes. I
have pens of every color and weight, most of them
inexpensive but with something—the ink or the color—that
appealed to me. I've colected my paper and my pens for
years from antique shops, close-out bins, thrift shops.
Discovering the Speckled Toad was like finding my own
personal nirvana.
I always intend to use what I buy for something important.
Worthwhile. Love letters written with a pen that curves
into my palm just so and tied with crimson ribbon, sealed
with scarlet wax. I buy them, I love them, but I hardly ever
write on them. Even anonymous love letters need a
recipient…and I didn't have a lover.
Then again, who writes anymore? Cel phones, instant
messaging and the Internet have made letter writing
obsolete, or nearly so. There's something powerful,
though, about a handwritten note. Something personal and
aching to be profound. Something more than a half-
scribbled grocery list or a scrawled signature on a
premade greeting card. Something I would probably never
write, I thought as I ran my fingers over the silken edge of
a pad of Victorian-embossed writing paper.
"Hey, Paige. How's it going?" Miriam's grandson Ari
"Hey, Paige. How's it going?" Miriam's grandson Ari
shifted the packages in his arms to the floor behind the
counter, then disappeared and popped back up like a
jack-in-the-box.