When Clyde and Lynda arrived at Troy and Pamela Sanders’s junk shop on Saturday morning, Clyde only hesitated a second before stepping aside to hold the door for her. “After you, Lyn.”
She paused as though surprised by the pungent scent of a stinkbug, then rolled her eyes. Just like Clyde knew she would.
Troy and Pam had purchased the store and all its contents with the intention of sprucing up the place and turning it into a used bookshop. More power to them. The building, which had once been a post office, still held rows of copper-plated mailboxes, as well as the USPS emblem on the side wall, but the nostalgia ended there. The previous business owners had filled the place with garage-sale trash and called it a flea market, when it was actually nothing more than a front for drug deals.
At least Troy and Pam had gotten it cheap.
“Felton!” Troy stood behind a cluttered counter, spreading his arms wide. “Welcome to the Trapp Door, our town’s first-ever used bookstore and secondhand novelty shop.”
“The Trapp Door?” Clyde stepped over a box filled with scented candles.
“Pam came up with the name.” Troy grinned with his mouth open slightly. “You know … all those PO boxes on the back wall … and all those tiny little doors. You get it?”
“I got it.” Clyde glanced at Lynda, worried she would feel out of place. Even though she had been friends with Troy and Pam for years, Clyde sensed they hadn’t done much socializing since Lynda left the church. However, he knew for a fact that Pam made a point to talk to Lynda at the diner.
Lynda picked up a Mr. Potato Head toy that had several empty holes where parts were missing. “I can’t believe you paid money for this stuff, Troy.”
“Aw, you know.” Troy’s grin was cemented on his face. “Gives Pam something to keep her busy. Now that Emily’s away at college, the wife gets awful lonely during the day when I’m at work.”
Lynda’s gaze slid from a stack of coffee mugs to a basket of potpourri. “Keep her busy so she won’t think about you risking your life every day?”
Clyde considered the fact that Lynda needed a spanking, but he looked over her head and made eye contact with Troy. More than once his friend had voiced his concern about his dangerous job, but he always tagged on a few excuses.
“Now, Lynda.” Troy came around the counter and cast puppy eyes down at her. “Wind techs make a good living, and Pam knows that.”
“Wind techs are crazy fools.” Her right eyebrow coiled like a leather whip intended to pop sense into Troy, but her gaze shifted to Clyde at the last second, just in time for him to feel the sting as well.
Troy slapped Clyde on the back and laughed loudly. “That goes without saying, don’t it?”
Lynda looked back and forth between the two men, but then she shook her head and smiled. “I’m not going to argue with you. I came here to work.”
“Alrighty, then! Clyde already has your assignment—should you choose to accept it—so if y’all don’t mind, I’ll leave you in charge of the place while I run to Home Depot in Lubbock. Pam wants more shelving.”
“You sure you trust us with your inventory?” Clyde reached for a gaudy piece of costume jewelry.
“If you steal anything, I’ll know where to find you.”
***
Fifteen minutes later, Clyde and Lynda were settled at a table in the back room, surrounded by boxes of books, and Clyde was trying to find the courage to ask Lynda out on a date. Or maybe not a date. That sounded all formal and stuffy, and Clyde didn’t really do formal and stuffy. But he knew in a strange way that she had become the missing link that connected the past to the future, and he felt it all the way down in his bones.
Lynda held an old book in her hands and slumped back in a metal folding chair. “I can’t believe you talked me into working in this dusty closet. Your ex-girlfriend is the one who donates her time to worthy causes, not that this shop rates as a charity cause.”
Suddenly Clyde was back in the cell block, with catcalls and taunts being hurled through the air like knives. He pulled another box toward him and picked through the titles. “Don’t call her that, Lyn.”
She flipped the book over and glanced at the back cover, and judging from the way her chin puckered, Clyde thought she might have been sorry she said it. She blew on the spine of the book, and a gray puff of dust floated away from her. She gave him a quizzical look. “So you’ve been helping Troy and Pam for a while now?”
“A couple Saturdays.”
She continued to study him, scrutinize him, frown.
Like a prison guard.
He shifted the remaining books in the box, picking them up one at a time, reading the titles, forcing his gaze away from her. Not really wanting to talk.
She sighed. “Okay, so the drill is to pick out the good books.” She made quote marks with her fingers. “Then vacuum them, wipe them, and sort them.” She raised her eyebrows. “That right?”
“Yep, that’s it.” She was deliberately being a toot, and he had no idea why. Women didn’t make a lick of sense to him.
Not that he had been around many in his lifetime.
He rested his forearms on his knees and reached for a roll of paper towels, swinging his hair out of his eyes.
“Why do you let your hair grow long? It used to be short all the time.”
She was full of questions today, and it made him wonder. “Because I can.”
“Could you give me more than three words? Please?”
He straightened and met her gaze, then shrugged one shoulder. “They kept my hair short in prison, but now I do what I want.” He didn’t mention that Trapp’s barber looked down on him, and the only other option was Sophie’s Style Station, an estrogen-infused hovel Clyde didn’t dare set foot in. He supposed he could go to the little barber shop in Snyder, but he’d probably scare that old man to death. “Besides, Lubbock’s too far anyway,” he added, figuring Lynda would understand the rest without his going to the trouble of speaking it.
“You know what I think?” She wiped a paper towel across a book cover. “I think they used to decide when you got your hair cut, and now you can’t figure it out on your own.”
“I like it long.” Okay, maybe he didn’t—he wasn’t sure—but he didn’t see the need to burden her with his problems. Truth was, she was dead on target. He had trouble making decisions, but Dodd Cunningham was helping him work through all that. Clyde enjoyed his early morning coffee meet-ups with the preacher, even though Lynda’s son-in-law seemed to think Clyde needed professional counseling.
“Whatever you say.” The corner of her mouth curled into that spunky smile of hers, and then she ducked her head. “I like it long, too, I guess.”
Her words sounded careless, as though they weren’t important, as though she hadn’t just tossed him a thread of hope to cling to. He grasped at the confidence it gave him, all the while hoping she wouldn’t cause his heart to unravel like his grandmother’s old crocheted afghan.
“That’s a good one.” He pointed to the book she was wiping.
“So …” She narrowed her eyes. “You read?”
“Sure.”
“Since when?”
“Prison.”
She leaned her elbows on the table and tilted her head. And stared.
A lot of people stared at him. Now that the rumor mill had spread the truth about him and Susan, things were different, but many citizens still treated him like he had the plague. Children pointed and women scurried away. Men crossed their arms and planted both feet on the ground, but he had gotten used to that.
Lynda’s stare felt different though, because her eyes didn’t scour him like the others’, and he didn’t have the urge to run away and hide. Instead, when Lynda looked at him, he wanted to look back at her. And hang around and listen to her talk.
“Have you read any of these?” Like a salesgirl, she swept her slender hand through the air above the stacks.
“I figure I have.”
“What does that mean?” She moved the Dustbuster so she could look through the paperbacks beneath it.
“The books in the prison library didn’t have covers.” He picked up a novel with a white stallion on the front. Swirling, dark clouds surrounded the horse, and red breath shot from its nostrils. The name didn’t sound familiar to Clyde, but he knew he would have remembered that picture if he had seen it before. He tossed the book onto the table. “I can remember the well-known titles, but the covers won’t look familiar.”
“So the books were all old or something?”
“Some were. Some weren’t.”
“Then why no covers?”
Clyde rubbed the side of his thumb against his shoulder, not sure what he should tell her, not sure he wanted her to know that much about him.
He let his gaze wander over the pile of paperbacks until he located one that clearly wouldn’t pass Pam’s morality code. He reached for it and tore off the front cover.
Lynda made a little sound but didn’t say anything. She watched silently as he folded the thick paper in half, then in half again. Moving quickly, he rolled the remaining shape into a cylinder and held it tight in his fist. A hard, sharp, pencil-like rod.
Her mouth fell open. “They used books as weapons?”
“They used everything as weapons.”
Her brown eyes looked sadly from the tip of the rod to his fist, and she shivered. “You’ve done that before.”
Clyde unrolled the paper, then tossed it in the trash can. “Twenty years, Lynda.” He hadn’t survived that long without learning a few tricks, but he should probably keep the rest to himself.
“The Clyde I remember from years ago was a gentle giant.” She snickered. “Unless you were on the football field, and then it was ‘Annie get your gun,’ but this … this is new. I’m trying to imagine you using a homemade knife, but my brain can’t get around the notion.”
Great. The last thing he wanted was for her to picture him defending himself in prison.
She hugged a stack of books to her chest and rose, placing them one at a time on the shelf behind her. “Sometimes I think we don’t even know each other anymore. Not really.”
“We’ve known each other since fifth grade.”
“But we had a twenty-year gap in our friendship. And things change.” She looked at him over her shoulder. “Sounds like you have a lot of secrets.”
“Making a shiv out of a piece of paper ain’t exactly a secret.” He reached for the minivacuum.
“But I bet you’ve got more.” She looked at him straight on then, crossing her arms.
He hated it when she challenged him, which was often. He hated when she pushed him for information about the past or the future or even the present. But more than anything, he hated the way he couldn’t open up to her, even though he wanted nothing more than for her to know him, really know him, inside and out.
Honestly, he didn’t have many secrets left, other than being a closet bookaholic. But still, fear swept across him like a searchlight, because he longed to ask her one simple question. A question that could make or break him for the rest of his life. Would you still like me if you knew my secrets? He couldn’t be sure how she would answer that question, but he could be sure of one thing. The feelings he had for Lynda Turner wouldn’t go away on their own.
He lifted his chin and shrugged. “Everybody has secrets, Lyn.” He flipped the switch on the Dustbuster and let its soft hum mask the ear-piercing beating of his heart.