Total pages in book: 129
Estimated words: 125117 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 626(@200wpm)___ 500(@250wpm)___ 417(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 125117 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 626(@200wpm)___ 500(@250wpm)___ 417(@300wpm)
Truman loved blueberry pancakes, but at the moment, the idea of food made him feel ill.
“Maybe we should just go pick some wildflowers for the shop and forget this idea,” Truman offered.
“If you want. Sure.”
Ash leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes. He stroked Truman’s thigh but didn’t say anything more. It was one of the things Truman loved about him. He was patient and his patience never cost anything.
At the end of his first semester of college, Truman had returned to Metairie, relieved to be back in his own room. He loved Tulane and New Orleans, but he didn’t feel like he fit in. Within a day of being home, though, he remembered that he didn’t fit in there either. Remembered why he’d longed to distance himself from his family. That began one of the loneliest months of his life. During that time, he’d read the Dead of Zagørjič through twice. He’d finished the last chapter of book seven and gone right back to the first chapter of book one.
Maybe it hadn’t saved his life, but it had held him all the times he needed to be held and didn’t have any other way to be so. No matter what she thought of him, he had to look Agatha Tark in the face and tell her what her work had meant to him.
“Okay, let’s go,” he said finally. “I wanna do it. Don’t let me change my mind, okay?”
“We’ll go,” Ash said, squeezing Truman’s leg. “But you can always change your mind.”
Truman closed his eyes. Appreciation for Ash brought tears to his eyes.
“Okay.”
When they pulled up to the address Truman had been given, it looked so ordinary that his first thought was, This can’t be it. But that was ridiculous. What had he been expecting—an ice palace?
“Ohgodohgodohgodohgod,” Truman muttered as they walked up the steps. He wanted to hold Ash’s hand, but his were sweating so much he didn’t think he could. He pressed a shaking finger to the buzzer and stepped back. His heart fluttered like a jailed creature in his chest, and he felt light-headed. Then the door opened and he was looking at her.
At Agatha Tark.
He knew it was her somehow. In the opposite of how the house looked nothing like her, this person before him looked exactly how Agatha Tark had to look. She had broad shoulders, a severe short bob of thick, wavy gray hair, and eyes the color of the ice palace she should be living in.
“Yes?” she asked. Her voice was low and suspicious.
Truman’s mouth simply would not function for a moment. Then he managed to croak out, “Agatha Tark?”
The woman’s eyes narrowed, and she went to shut the door.
“No, please! I’m so sorry to bother you, but please wait just a minute.”
She leaned on the door so only half of her body was visible, waiting. “How the hell did you find me?”
She was definitely angry, but Truman thought he detected the slightest hint of grudging awe in her voice, and he clung to it like a lifeline.
“Well, okay, here’s what happened,” Truman said. “My boyfriend was cheating on me—well, cheating with me, but I didn’t know, so I had to get out of there, and I knew Maine was where you lived, so it was like fate, you know, when I switched houses with Greta, but then I got super drunk—wine, you know? And then when I fell off the bed, it was right there, the ship, in the floor. And I was like, no fucking way, this cannot be happening, but then I woke up the next morning sober and it was still there, and I just knew it was connected because in book six, when Clarion finds the Draggør sailing ship, it’s too specific. And I thought maybe it was just a Maine thing, but no one had heard of it, so I knew it had to have been what inspired you, and Ash’s mom knew you—Julia! You remember Julia Sundahl? So then I just tracked all the leads because you have to know your books basically saved my life so many times, and I had to tell you.”
Agatha Tark blinked those ice-blue eyes under thick brows, still dark brown, and said, “Good lord. I guess you better come in before you faint on my doorstep.”
Truman opened his mouth to say he wasn’t going to faint, but at just that moment, he realized he was breathing strangely and Ash was holding his elbow.
Then another part of him realized he was about to go into Agatha Tark’s house, and he wondered if he really was going to faint.
“Just don’t Misery me, okay?” she said. “I’d never hear the end of it.”
Her house was completely brown. Not ugly wood paneling brown but the rich, subtle browns of the woods. Of tree trunks and soil and shallow water and dying leaves. The wood floors shone and the walls were painted a color between brown and gold. Bits of driftwood, twisted metal, macramé wall hangings, and towers of crystal decorated the walls and shelves. It was minimal and earthy and made Truman feel like he was inside the trunk of a tree.