I did not sleep that night. At five in the morning I sat in the sunroom with my reading glasses on their beaded chain and made a list on the back of an envelope. Darnell had told me the buyer was flying in on Monday to see two things, the book and me. I could not make sense of the second thing. Why would a stranger from New York want to see a seventy six year old widow? I called Darnell at seven. He had copied the name from the note Brett left behind at the shop. Julian Ashe, a rare book dealer on East Fifty Seventh Street. I asked Darnell to drive me to the Grove Park Inn.
On Monday at ten we sat in the great lobby, beside a fireplace big enough to roast a hog. Brett was already there in his good jacket, holding the pillowcase on his knees like a man with a sleeping baby. Renee sat beside him with her arms crossed. Neither of them had expected me. Julian Ashe turned out to be a small, gentle man in a gray scarf. He stood and took my hand in both of his. “Mrs. Marsh,” he said, “I have waited eleven years to meet you. Your husband wrote to me before he passed. I was told to deal with you and no one else.”
Brett went the color of old newspaper. “Evelyn, this is a family matter,” he said. “I was only trying to protect the book.” Mr. Ashe opened his leather case and laid a single page on the coffee table. It was in the handwriting of my husband, dated March of 2021, and it said in plain words that the Wolfe book belonged to me alone, that Walter wished it sold only by my own hand, and that if anyone else came forward as the seller, Mr. Ashe was to bring me the book and this letter. Renee read it over his shoulder. Her mouth trembled.
A signed book wrapped in a pillowcase gave one mother the Monday to bring her daughter back to her senses in Asheville.
I gave my terms in a voice I did not know I owned. “Brett, you will hand Mr. Ashe that pillowcase. Renee, you will listen to me for ten minutes without one word.” Nobody argued. I told them about the bookstore. I told them I had sold the building on Lexington Avenue for two million, four hundred fifty thousand dollars, and that I had not done it to be robbed in my own sunroom. I said the home gym could be built with honest money, and the Peloton could live in the garage, but the study of my husband would stay as he left it, books and all.
Renee put both hands over her face. “Mom, I knew,” she whispered. “Brett owes a man in Charlotte thirty one thousand dollars from some trading scheme. He swore the book was the only way out. I told myself you would never miss an old paperback in a pillowcase. I told myself so many things. I am so ashamed.” I had not heard my daughter cry like that since she was nine and lost her kitten. Brett stared at the carpet and said nothing at all, which was the most honest thing he had done in a year.
Then Brett grabbed the pillowcase off the cushion and bolted for the revolving door. He did not get far. Darnell, who had been sitting quietly behind a potted fern all morning at my request, stepped into the doorway with his arms folded. “Son,” he said, “the only way out of this lobby is through me, and I shelved books for twenty six years. I am stronger than I look.” Brett stood there breathing hard. After a long moment he held the pillowcase out, and Darnell took it as gently as if it were a sleeping child.
Renee came and knelt in front of my chair like she used to. I held her face and told her I was not finished being her mother. I told her what I wanted. Brett would move out for six months and see a counselor about his gambling with money that was not his. Renee would stay, and the two of us would clear the study together, box by box, and decide what stayed. She nodded through her tears. Mr. Ashe looked politely at the fireplace. Walter used to say a bookstore is a place where strangers learn to forgive each other.
The money consequences were simple. Mr. Ashe paid ninety four thousand dollars for the Wolfe book, fair and square, with the letter of Walter folded into the file. I paid the thirty one thousand directly to the man in Charlotte, with my lawyer on Patton Avenue watching, and Brett signed a note to repay me two hundred dollars a month. I kept none of the rest for myself. Renee took a part time job at the county library. The Peloton stayed in the garage. Nobody mentioned the home gym again, and nobody has brought up Goodwill in my presence since.
In the name of Walter, who passed in 2021, I started the Walter Marsh Fund. It pays for used book rooms and new shelving in school libraries in Buncombe, Madison and Yancey counties. In the first year we filled eleven rooms with more than nine thousand paperbacks. One boy in Yancey County held a worn Western in both hands and asked if he could really keep it. I told him that was the whole idea. He read it standing up, right there between the shelves, and did not look up for an hour.
At Thanksgiving the whole family ate in the sunroom. Brett came on time, sober of all schemes, and carved the turkey badly. Renee brought a library copy of Look Homeward, Angel and read the first page aloud while I listened with my glasses on their chain. Walter would have loved every word of it. The cat named Faulkner is long gone, but a gray stray sits on the porch rail most evenings now, and I like to think he approves. I still keep a pillowcase on the second shelf, and it holds nothing but a note that says, read me.