The Noel Letters (The Noel Collection Book 4) Read online

  CHAPTER thirty–three

  Half my life is an act of revision.

  —John Irving

  MONDAY, NOVEMBER 30

  Monday was a Monday. Our first customer of the day was a return. She was a thickset woman with thick glasses and a shrill voice. She set the book on the counter, then announced, “I need to return this book.”

  “Is something wrong with it?” I asked.

  “Just look at it. It’s not… right.”

  “What’s not right?”

  “The pages. They’re cut wrong. They’re uneven.”

  I looked at the book’s edge. “Oh. You mean the deckled edge. It’s a decorative feature.”

  “Decorative?”

  “Yes, the publisher had the pages trimmed like that on purpose. It gives it the appearance of an old-fashioned handcrafted book.”

  “Why would a publisher purposely ruin a book?”

  “Like I said, it’s decorative. People like it. It’s antiquarian.”

  “Well, I’m not into astrology. I just want the book with normal, smooth edges.”

  “I’m sorry, but the publisher doesn’t make it that way.”

  “Then I’d like a discount for a damaged book.”

  * * *

  The rest of the day seemed to follow the same flow. I was glad when Grace came in, but even she seemed a little quiet. The book she bought was below her usual standards. “It’s not for me,” she said, as if embarrassed to be seen with the book. “It’s a gift.”

  As I rang her up, she abruptly asked, “When did your relationship with your father sour?”

  “How did you know it soured?”

  “Your father and I were close,” she reminded me.

  “I suppose when I was old enough to know the truth.”

  “What truth?”

  “That my father wasn’t who I thought he was.”

  She let my words sit for a moment, then replied, “I think that’s still true.”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “I don’t know. Curious, perhaps.” She took her book and walked out of the store.

  CHAPTER thirty–four

  The Agee woman told us for three quarters of an hour how she came to write her beastly book, when a simple apology was all that was required.

  —P. G. Wodehouse

  TUESDAY, DECEMBER 1

  It was a little before ten o’clock and I’d just finished ringing up a customer when my phone rang. I looked down to check the number. It was a New York area code.

  “Hello.”

  “Noel. It’s Natasha. I hope I didn’t wake you.”

  I don’t know what surprised me more, hearing her voice or her voice’s pleasant lilt.

  “No, I’m at work.”

  “You’ve already got a job?”

  “I’ve got a bookstore. And yes, I got my things, if that’s why you’re calling.”

  “Not why I called,” she said. “It turns out that I shouldn’t have been so efficient in cleaning your office. I have good news. I’m calling to offer you your job back.”

  Now this really wasn’t making sense. “You’re rehiring me?”

  “You know, I never felt good about letting you go. So I talked to HR, and saner heads prevailed. If you’re amenable to coming back, we’ll just keep your arrangement as is and consider your absence paid leave.”

  Now we were entering the Twilight Zone. “What about my authors?”

  “There will probably be a few changes, but we’ll sort that out once you’re back. When will you be back in New York?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. My mind was still reeling. “Why are you really calling?”

  Natasha hesitated. “It’s just what I said. I called to offer you your job back.”

  “Five weeks ago you tossed me like a bad query letter. I know this world. Everything happens for a reason, and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t because you missed me. So what really happened?”

  Natasha groaned. “I always said you were smart. I’m sure you’ll eventually find out, so here’s the deal. Ms. Bradley didn’t like the editor we gave her. In fact, she didn’t want to work with any editor but you. She informed us that she would either work with you at our imprint or find another publishing house to hire you and she’d publish with them.”

  “Jerica said that?”

  “Word for word. And you know Jerica. It’s her way or the highway.”

  I shook my head. “So the Tin Woman has a heart.”

  “I wouldn’t go that far,” Natasha said. “So, when can we expect you back?”

  “I’m not sure I’m coming back.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m thinking of staying in Utah.”

  Long pause. “You can’t be serious.”

  “I need to think this over. But considering the circumstance, I’d say a raise is a good place to start.”

  “I can make that happen.”

  “All right, I’ll let you know.”

  “You let me know,” she repeated. “The sooner the better. Jerica wants an answer yesterday.”

  “Like I said, I’ll let you know.”

  “Thank you,” Natasha said. “And Noel, Jerica aside, I’m glad you’re coming back. You really are a good editor.”

  “Thank you.” I hung up the phone. Never saw that coming.

  Dear Noel,

  There are real dangers in this life, far too many to enumerate. Fortunately for all of us, we were blessed with the gift of fear. Fear acknowledged is a gift. It sharpens our senses, heightens our awareness, and strengthens our muscles. It is the warning bell before the crash.

  Fear-mindedness is a curse. The greatest shackles in our lives have always been those forged by our own fears.

  Courage is not the opposite of fear, as courage cannot exist without it. Courage is the decision to proceed in spite of fear. You have shown great courage in your life. But sometimes the things we fear most are not demons, but angels. Know the difference. Do not fear to love because of the chance of loss. This life consists of loss. It must be. We can bemoan what we have lost, or we can be grateful to have been blessed with something to mourn. The choice is yours. To avoid love because of the possibility of losing it is like poisoning ourselves to avoid being murdered.

  Tabula Rasa

  CHAPTER thirty–five

  Good prose is like a windowpane.

  —George Orwell

  THURSDAY, DECEMBER 3

  Dylan had two employees out with the flu, leaving him working extra shifts. I missed him, but, as he said, “I’m lucky to be miserably overworked.”

  I was surprised when I got a call from him Thursday night after work.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Trying to decide what to eat for dinner,” I said.

  “Want to go ice skating?”

  “Tonight?”

  “Yes.”

  “Just us?”

  “And Alex.”

  “That’s spontaneous.”

  “I was feeling spontaneous. And I was missing you.”

  “When?”

  “I was thinking of leaving in ten minutes.”

  “Have you had dinner?”

  “Just mac and cheese. I told Alex we’d get a treat after.”

  “I’ll be ready.”

  “Then we’ll be right over. Dress warm.”

  “Darn, I was going to wear a bikini.”

  “Don’t let me dissuade you.”

  “Bye.”

  I made myself some coffee and English crumpets, which I spread with butter and some homemade apricot jam I found in one of the cupboards. Dylan pulled up about twenty minutes later. Before he could get out, I ran out to his truck and hopped in. I leaned over and we kissed.

  “Hi, Miss Noel,” Alexis said. She was buckled in the back seat.

  “Hi, Alex.”

  “We’re going ice-skating.”

  “I know. Have you been skating before?”

  “Yes. I take classes. I’m pretty good.�
�

  “I’m not.” I turned to Dylan. “What prompted this little outing?”

  “I told you, Alex and I were missing you.” He turned to me. “Mostly me.”

  I kissed him on the cheek. “I was missing you too.”

  We drove downtown to the Gallivan Center. The Gallivan ice-skating rink was outdoors and seasonal, opening shortly before Thanksgiving and staying open until February. It reminded me a little of the Rockefeller Center ice rink, sans the gilded statue of Prometheus and the massive Christmas tree. That’s not to say it wasn’t decorated for the season. The rink was surrounded by a small forest of bedecked evergreen trees with more than a quarter million Christmas lights.

  When we arrived the rink was surrounded by displaced skaters while the Zamboni resurfaced the ice, but by the time we had rented and donned our skates, the rink was open again. The ice was flooded by a changing array of colors from spotlights hanging above it.

  Dylan and I were at about the same skating skill level—somewhere between dangerous and embarrassing—and we clumsily skated counterclockwise around the perimeter of the rink with Alex between us, each of us holding one of her mittened hands.

  We didn’t last long. It was a cold night, the temperature falling into the upper twenties. We skated for less than an hour, then turned in our skates.

  “I have a surprise,” Dylan said as we walked to his truck.

  “Yes?”

  “You’ll see.” We drove up the Avenues and pulled into the parking lot of a small brown-bricked building near the hospital.

  “Have you ever been here?” he asked, turning off his truck.

  “I have no idea where ‘here’ is,” I said.

  “Hatch Family Chocolates. About six years ago they had a TV series on TLC. It was called Little Chocolatiers.”

  “Wait, they’re little people. Did I say that right?”

  Dylan nodded. “Steve and Kate.”

  “I watched a few episodes of that. How did I not know that was in Utah?”

  The chocolate shop had at least a dozen tables inside, and almost all of them were taken, crowded with families and groups of young people. A line wrapped around the long glass display cases of handmade chocolates, truffles, caramels, fudge, and ice cream.

  “Dad, can I have an ice cream cone?”

  “Do you want a cone or a hot chocolate?” Dylan asked.

  “Yes.”

  Dylan laughed. “All right, for Christmas’s sake.”

  Dylan ordered three cups of their famous hot cocoa with melted bars of milk chocolate. He also bought me a small box of chocolate mint truffles to take home.

  “You know the way to a woman’s heart,” I said.

  “At least yours,” he said. “I hope.”

  As we walked back to the truck Alexis looked up at me. “Noel?”

  “Yes, honey?”

  “Will you be my mommy?”

  The question hung in the frozen air. Dylan said, “Alex, Noel’s our good friend.”

  All I could think to say was “Thank you for asking.”

  I thought about her question all the way home. I wondered if Dylan was doing the same, because neither of us talked as Alex fell asleep in the back seat. We stopped at my house, and Dylan walked me to the door. “I’m sorry about that,” he said.

  “It’s okay. She doesn’t have a mother. I understand.”

  He looked at me gratefully. “Thank you for understanding.”

  “Thank you for tonight.” I lifted my bag of truffles. “And the chocolates. I’m glad you called. You thwarted yet another lonely night.”

  “Maybe I can thwart another one,” he said. “One of my clients works for Ballet West. He offered me tickets to the Nutcracker a week from Sunday.”

  “I haven’t been to the Nutcracker since I danced in it.”

  “You danced in it?”

  “Just one year. I was a mouse. I’d love to go.”

  “Splendid. The show starts at seven, so why don’t I pick you up at five and we’ll have dinner at my parents’. Charlotte’s cooking.”

  “I’m not going to pass that up. Thank you.”

  He leaned forward and we kissed. It felt so good. He felt good. “Things are too busy these days,” he said. “For both of us. It will be better after the season when things slow down. Right? As long as you don’t go anywhere.”

  I didn’t know what to say. I still hadn’t told him about Natasha’s call. “You’re right. Everything will be better.”

  CHAPTER thirty–six

  FRIDAY, DECEMBER 4

  Dear Noel,

  As you sail your way through the sea of humanity, you will discover that most people don’t want truth. They want confirmation. Truth has always been frightening to those clinging to shaky ladders of belief. The more indefensible the belief, the tighter their grip. Let them be. Truth does not require confirmation nor consensus to endure. Truth is patient. It can afford to be. In the end it will have its way.

  To walk in truth is to have the humility to listen to what you don’t want to hear and say what others don’t want to know. Humility is the power to admit that you may be wrong.

  Admitting to false beliefs is not weakness, it is the first step on the path to truth. And make no mistake, there is no such thing as individual truth, only individual perception. Perception is subjective, but truth isn’t. Hold your hand over a candle and you’ll understand.

  Tabula Rasa

  CHAPTER thirty–seven

  Don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.

  —Anne Rice

  MONDAY, DECEMBER 7

  Monday afternoon Grace came in at her usual time. She dropped her chosen book on the counter—a massive nine-hundred-page tome—then handed me her credit card. I scanned the book.

  “I have news,” I said.

  She smiled. “Good news, I hope.”

  “I’m not sure.” I glanced around. “I haven’t told anyone yet, but my publisher offered me my job back.”

  She looked pleased. “That is definitely good news. So they finally realized they can’t live without you?”

  “It’s a little more complicated than that. They only did it because one of my big authors, Jerica Bradley, said she’d only work with me.”

  “That is a little more complicated,” she said. She looked into my face. “Is that what you want? To be an editor for the rest of your life?”

  “It’s what I went to school for.”

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  I was still getting used to Grace’s directness. “I don’t know.”

  “Let me ask you this. If you knew that whatever you did you would be a great success at it, what would you do?”

  “I’d be a writer.”

  “There you have it. You have the connections to agents and publishing houses, and your father put you in a situation where you could have the time to write.”

  I handed back her credit card. “My father wanted to be a writer.”

  “Your father was a writer,” she said. “He completed two novels, had two more in progress, and wrote a children’s book. They were all exceptional. Have you read any of them?”

  “I only knew of one. And I never read it.”

  “Pity,” she said. “I think you would have taken it to your publisher if you had. They’re among the few I have kept.” She lifted the book she’d just purchased. “Unlike this one. I have a feeling that”—she looked at the cover—“City on Fire might end up on fire, if you know what I mean.”

  “Then why are you buying it?”

  “The New York Times called the author’s talent as thick as the book, USA Today called it epic, and the New York Post called it, and I quote, ‘a steaming pile of literary dung.’ I love books with mixed reviews. I thought I’d give the author a chance.” She winked. “Who knows? Every now and then an author will surprise you.” She put the book into her tote. “Good luck with your decision.” She turned and walke
d out of the store.

  CHAPTER thirty–eight

  You should write because you love the shape of stories.

  —Annie Proulx

  TUESDAY, DECEMBER 8

  It had been a month, a week, and a day since I started at the bookstore. It had been rough at first, but there had been steady progress made in my and Wendy’s relationship.

  I destroyed it all in just five minutes.

  “I’m thinking of changing the bookstore’s name,” I said as Wendy and I sorted through some returns.

  Wendy looked at me as if I’d just blasphemed. “To what?”

  “It Was a Dark and Stormy Bookstore.”

  Like everyone else, she looked at me blankly.

  “It’s a reference to—”

  “I know what it’s a reference to,” she said. “It’s the opening line of Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s 1830 novel Paul Clifford, though today most people know it from Snoopy typing on top of his doghouse.”

  “Then you don’t approve… ?”

  “As your father used to say, ‘Don’t fix what ain’t broken.’ ” She stood to go, then added, “By the way, Lytton also created a few other notable phrases, such as ‘The pen is mightier than the sword’ and ‘The almighty dollar.’ In case you’re obsessed with the man.” She walked away.

  “Not as obsessed as you are with my father,” I said to myself.

  She didn’t speak to me the rest of the day. That afternoon she left my letter on the front counter.

  Dear Noel,

  Be grateful. To live each day in gratitude is to live in power. Gratitude is the opposite of despair. Gratitude is power and the root of all happiness. It is the power to find happiness. Show me ingratitude and I will show you misery. Like love, gratitude is also a choice. There are none so impoverished as those who don’t acknowledge the abundance of their lives.

  Tabula Rasa

  CHAPTER thirty–nine