It’s the blows they dealt to my heart that left me broken. Shattered. I’m like a cartoon statue that’s been hammered. There’s a crack at the impact. The crack spreads into a thousand fractures, until I’m made of a million pieces. There’s a moment in the show when I’m frozen in air that way, and that’s how I’ve been living these past six months—the pieces suspended, waiting to fall. There’s no way to avoid it; the killing blow already happened.
For a moment he looks bereft. “Good,” he repeats.
It breaks my heart a little, that this handsome, virile, charming man would doubt himself. That I ever let him think I wanted Christopher instead of him. “You were enough for me, Sutton. You were enough for anyone.”
He gives a slight shake of his head as if waking from a dream. “It doesn’t matter. There’s nothing between us except the library now. Nothing holding us together anymore.”
It makes me wonder what had held us together before. Attraction? Chemistry? We’d had those in spades, but I remember the wry tone when he’d said, I’m the last person to judge you. It makes me wonder if it had been Christopher binding us together all along.
“There’s something I should tell you. The library…” My breath catches. “It’s more than a restoration. More than rebuilding the front wall. It’s in bad shape. I think the wrecking ball made the building weaker, in places we can’t even see.”
He studies me. “Are you saying you think I can’t save it?”
We aren’t only talking about the library. “I’m asking you to try.”
“And if it can’t be saved?”
The thought sucks the air out of my body, leaving me hollow and thin. There are only two things I’ve fought for—my mother’s life and the library. It’s only a matter of time before I lose the first one. I can’t bear to lose the other one, too. It would break me.
Some of my despair must show on my face, because Sutton’s jaw clenches. “How bad are we talking, Harper?”
“You aren’t my first stop. I asked every construction company in Tanglewood to look at the library. None of them would even bid on it. They said it has to be destroyed.”
I’m expecting a construction crew complete with cranes and drills and whatever else they use to fix old libraries. Instead it’s just Sutton driving a black Explorer, pulling up in the small parking lot between the library and the wasteland that is the west side of the city.
He tells me he has to take a look at the building before he can call a crew and give them information, so I wander through the shelves while he pokes around in the back rooms and climbs into the attic. He comes out smelling of dust and mothballs.
“So what do you think?” I know I must look too hopeful. I sound too hopeful, like someone who doesn’t see that the building is literally falling down around us. It might be asking for a miracle, but when you’re staring death in the face, that’s what you need.
He looks up at the broken stained-glass window. “Harper.”
“I mean I know it’s kind of a mess.” A strange little laugh escapes me. “It’s actually missing the whole front wall. And there’s all this rubble everywhere. I’m sure we can sweep that up.”
Blue eyes darken. “Harper.”
“And then there’s the whole foundation issues. I’m not saying it will be easy.”
“I need you to tell me why. Why do you want to do this?”
“Why don’t I want to do this, that should be the question. Because it will be amazing for the community. Did you notice all the buildings falling down around us? The crime rate around here is… well, you know, it’s bad. Books are the answer to that, Sutton.”
A long pause and then with exasperation he says, “Harper.”
“Okay.” I close my eyes tight. “Okay. I’ll tell you. But I don’t even fully understand it myself. I just know that there are only two things I care about—my mother and this library. I can’t lose both of them.” I already lost my father. I already lost Christopher and Sutton. People leave, but I can at least save the building. I can at least have smooth wood and concrete.
He looks away again, this time toward the wall. “Even if I agree to take on this project, even if I try to save the building, you understand there’s a chance it won’t work. Hell, we shouldn’t even be standing here without support beams and hard hats. This whole thing could come crashing down on our heads.”
I can’t help my squeal of delight. “So you’ll take the job!”
“I didn’t say that.”
That makes me hop around and clap. “You’re totally going to do it. Thank you, thank you, thank you. You don’t know how much this means to me.”
He looks grim. “I think I actually might.”
I stretch up on my toes and kiss his cheek. “I knew I could count on you. Everyone was like, no one would be crazy enough to take on this project.” I use my best asshole-contractor voice. “And I was like, you know who’d be crazy enough?”
“Sutton Mayfair.”
“That’s right, Sutton Mayfair.”
He turns serious. “How’s your mother?”
My stomach knots the way it always does when I think of her. “They say she has six months to live. I don’t understand how they calculate that. A hundred and eighty days.”
“Are you sure you wouldn’t rather spend the time with her? The library will be here when you’re ready to work on it. You don’t have to do this now.”
There’s a shudder, and then a rain of dusty concrete falls on us. Sutton pushes me under the circular library desk. The feel of his hands on something so innocuous as my arms, and suddenly I’m flashing back to the time he bent me over the desk. So much has changed since then. I thought I might be able to save my mother with impossible treatments.
I still had hope.
I’m not sure the library really would be here in six months, if we didn’t do this now. The building is dying. My mother is dying. There’s only one hundred and eighty days left.
“I’m not going to be the one drilling holes in the floors,” I say softly. “That will be you and whoever you’re working with. I only want to save the wall. If I can do that, if I can fix that terrible crack with my own two hands—”
I break off and stare at my hands, the nails cracked from the woodwork I’ve been testing out. My palms rough and calloused from years of painting. These are not delicate hands.
“I have to do something,” I whisper, and it’s like a confessional under that circular desk. “I have to fix something, and I think I might be the one running out of time.”
There’s an enigma among painters. Let’s say an artist studies and practices for twenty-five years of her life. Then she spends two hours painting a masterpiece. So did it take her two hours to create it? Or twenty-five years?
I don’t know the answer to that, but I do know that sculpting a wall three stories high would take my entire life. There are splinters in my palm, open cuts on my fingers, and a deep purple bruise on my thumb caused by a rogue mallet. The block of oak looks more like a child’s forgotten pile of Play-Doh than the angular bison I’m trying to re-create.