“Okay.” I gulped, then sucked in a big breath and let it go. Way to freak out for nothing, I thought, mentally smacking my forehead.
A moment later, Max’s bedroom door opened and he walked out into the hall. His hair was mussed, and I knew I was right about what he’d been doing.
“Hey, what’s going on?” he said when he saw me standing there.
“You have to see this.” I thrust the letter at him.
“What is it?” He walked past me into the living room, ruffling the pages as he dropped down onto the couch and rested his socks-clad feet on the coffee table. He stared at the paper for another few seconds, then gave me a sharp look. “Where’d this come from? I’ve never seen it before.”
“I know. I just found it inside the pages of the Beauty and the Beast. She glued it in between two pages.”
“She what?” He shook his head as though my words were all jumbled up in the wrong order. “This was inside the book?”
“Yes?”
“For how long?”
I chewed my lower lip and thought of how easily the rubber cement had given. Plus there were certain timely references in the letter. “It can’t be more than a few weeks old.”
Grimacing, he asked, “And you think it’s real?”
Hands on my hips, I stared at him. “Did you read it, Max?”
“The first few lines,” he grumbled. He looked a little sick to his stomach and I couldn’t blame him. The note had been written by a pathologically damaged woman.
“Read the whole thing,” I said, waving my hand at the letter. “It’s real and it explains a lot.”
“Yeah. That’s what I’m afraid of.” He shifted his feet off the table and stood up, taking a few stiff breaths as though gearing up for some sort of battle. And I guess he was in a way. He wandered the room, holding the papers steady as he read the rambling letter that, as twisted as it was, explained everything.
Feeling a chill, I folded my arms tightly across my chest. I couldn’t sit, couldn’t relax. I was reminded of another fateful love letter I recently had discovered in a book that belonged to a friend of my mother. Maybe I would start warning people not to leave their love letters inside of books. They only led to misery and sometimes murder.
Restless and unsure what to do, I wandered around the room, waiting for Max to finish reading.
Dear Max,
I know this letter will be a surprise-okay, a shock! I have so much to tell you and I’ll try to be brief, but you know me!
First, let me say I’m sorry. And second, I love you. I’ve always loved you and I always will.
I still blame myself for Solomon going crazy three years ago and trying to kill you. He wanted me to love him and only him, completely and forever. I tried. But he knew I was still in love with you and he wanted you dead. I still have nightmares knowing what you went through all those years ago. That is my curse.
But, Max, once you were thought dead, Solomon was much more stable. We were actually happy for a few years. But as you know, Solomon never could be truly happy. He had to pick and pick, and we would fight, then make up, then fight again. But we got through the worst of it and were relatively happy for almost three years.
Recently, though, you have become so popular again that the Art Institute decided to hold a retrospective of your life’s works. All the attention directed toward your art in the last few months has made Solomon angrier and more paranoid than ever. He keeps threatening to kill somebody, and I’m so afraid it’ll be me.
Then last month, the strangest coincidence occurred. I found your copy of Beauty and the Beast in a used bookstore! I guess your darling Emily didn’t want the book, so when I found it on the shelf, I bought it. Call me sentimental, but the book reminded me of you.
But when Solomon saw the inscription you’d written in the book, he thought you had written it to me. I was your Beauty and you were my Beast! If only that were true!
Solomon went crazy. He demanded to know why I’d kept the book all these years if I weren’t still in love with you. I told him I had just found it recently, but he didn’t believe me. He beat me, Max. I thought he was going to kill me. I tried to stop him, but it was like throwing myself in front of a runaway train. He was unstoppable and all I could do was get off the tracks.
So I confessed. After years of pretending, I finally admitted the truth to Solomon and to the world: I loved you, Max, and I always would.
But that’s not the worst of it. I was so beaten down that in a moment of weakness, I revealed to Solomon that you were probably still alive.
I’m so sorry, Max!!
Solomon’s jealousy has boiled over into madness. You know he’s part of that crazy church group, but lately he’s become more involved with their more fringe survivalist members, who collect guns and practice shooting all day. I’m worried that he’s become even more dangerous and unbalanced than he was three years ago when he harassed you so badly that you had to fake your own death to escape him.
Now I wonder if I will have to do the same.
I’ve decided that the only way to warn you is to put this book back on the market in just the right way that it will get to the right person. I’ve done my homework, but the rest is up to the fates.
The book will end up at Covington Library. When the curator sees the damage I’ve deliberately done to the book, I am confident that he will call in a book restoration expert. My research points to your old friend Brooklyn as the most likely person to restore the book. I’m counting on her being as single-minded and obstinate as she was years ago. She will find this letter and track you down. Fitting, isn’t it? Since she was the one who gave you the book in the first place. I love a circle!
So, if you are reading this letter, it means you’re still alive-thank God! Please, Max, be careful. Solomon wants you dead. For real this time. Don’t underestimate his reach. He will find you and kill you.
I’m frantic with worry. Things have spiraled out of control. You might still blame me for ruining your life, but I am innocent. Solomon ruined both our lives, Max. We have that much in common, at least.
If the world is fair, if the universe sees fit to reunite true lovers, you and I will be together someday. But if it isn’t meant to be, my one last wish for you, Max, is to be happy.
I love you. I love you. I love you!!
Your Angelica
“The woman thought of everything,” I muttered, kicking the bricks that lined the hearth. “Right down to the tattered, overly glued turn-ins.”
“Incredible,” he muttered.
“And you know she’s lying about finding the book in a used bookstore. She was the one who broke into Emily’s house and stole the book. She was a liar then and she still was when she wrote this letter.”
“She wants me to be happy? After everything she pulled?” Max crumpled up the note and threw it against the wall. “What a lying load of crap.” He spat out the words.
“She did her homework about me,” I said, feeling a little sick that I had played such a key role in her maneuverings. I picked up the letter he’d tossed, knowing the police would want it as evidence in Angelica’s death. Carrying it into the kitchen, I grabbed a Ziploc bag from the drawer and tucked the pages inside. “In order for you to get the letter, she had to have worked backward, starting with me.”
“Right,” he said. “If she could get the book to you, then you would be able to track me down.”
“But how did she know I gave you the book in the first place?”
“Damn it.” He slapped his forehead. “I made it easy for her.”
“How’d you do that?”
He leaned back against the sliding-glass door and closed his eyes. “Angelica kept calling me, even after Emily and I were engaged.”
