Mama and Mirabel saw Nathan at the bar (until Mama kicked him out). Tom Kandinsky saw Nathan at Bourne’s Best (and Worst) Pizza. Zacharias Finkelburg saw Nathan at the grocery store where he was buying cottage cheese and sliced turkey and diet cola. Mab and Petra saw Nathan driving on Maple, and he waved to them from his shiny black car. They pretended they did not see him, but they did. Pastor Jeff saw Nathan at church and said he did not sing, but he did stay after for the part where there is juice and cookies, but he did not drink the juice or eat the cookies, but he did talk to a lot of people and shake their hands. Kyle R. said he saw Nathan buying clothes at the Fitwit, and Kyle M. said there was no way someone like Nathan would buy clothes at the Fitwit, and Kyle R. said there was nowhere else to buy clothes in Bourne and Nathan was not going to go around naked, especially not now that it is getting cold out, and Kyle M. said he probably had his old clothes sent from Boston, and that is possible because Lulu Isaacs saw Nathan at the post office.
But no one has seen Apple. It can be assumed that she must leave her house to buy food, water, clothes, shoes, and supplies, but no one has seen her do it. And even if she brought or had sent her old clothes from Boston like her husband might have, it can be assumed she did not bring food and water from Boston, and even if she did, it can be assumed she would have run out by now because food is perishable which means it does not stay good forever.
Unless she is dead.
She could be dead because she did not buy any new food and starved.
Or she could not need to buy any new food because she is dead. Dead people do not get hungry.
Both of these scenarios are possible explanations for why no one has seen Apple anywhere which is why it is a relief but also a shock when the doorbell rings and I open the door and Apple Templeton is standing on the front porch. And relief and shock are opposites.
“You are not dead,” I say.
She looks surprised, but I do not know why because she must have known all along she was alive.
“That’s true,” she eventually agrees.
Her family likes Truth or Dare and a Lie as much as ours. Maybe she is here to play. So I start. “Truth or dare?”
“Pardon?”
So I try again louder. “Truth or dare?”
“You’re inviting me to play Truth or Dare?”
“Truth!” I answer although that was an easy one.
“I…” she begins but then looks like she does not know what to say. “Um. Monday, right?”
“Truth!” She is making this too easy.
“Ah, yes, well.” She is winning, but she looks embarrassed anyway. “I wonder, Monday … I hear the library is run out of your home now. Isn’t that lovely?”
This is cheating because half of this statement is a truth and half is a lie. So I do not say anything.
“I understand you have some materials from my home. House. Uh, from the library. The old library. Not just books. Boxes. Files.”
“Truth.”
Bourne does not have a town hall or a courthouse or a department of records. The town council meets at Bourne’s Best (and Worst) Pizza. The mayoral mansion is a one-room office above the laundromat. It smells like dryer sheets and has a desk for Omar to sit behind while citizens sit in front and yell at him. It has only three filing cabinets with only five drawers apiece. So some of the town paperwork and files and documents used to be stored in the library, back when we had a library. Now they are stored with me.
“Wonderful,” Apple Templeton says, though I do not know why she thinks so. “Can you point me toward them?”
I turn away from her in the doorway and point at some of the places the boxes of files from the old library are: in the closet under the stairs, in the cabinet under the canned goods, in the living room behind my yellow chair. There are lots of places the boxes are, but it is easy to point to them all because our house is small.
“Ah, yes, thank you.” Apple Templeton’s eyes do not want to look at my eyes, and that is good because my eyes do not want to look at hers. “But I suppose what I meant was can I just look around a bit? You know, browse? Is that possible?”
“That is not possible, for you are living in the library.”
Her eyebrows rise up. “I see.”
“I have enough space for the lending of books, but, unlike you, I do not have enough space for the browsing of books.”
“Well”—even though I thought her eyebrows were already as high as they could go, they keep going up more—“I guess you better lend me a book then.”
So I let her in. She follows me through the kitchen into the living room. Her eyes look all around our house, and her face looks sadder and sadder.
“What a … full home,” she says.
I do not know what that means, and she looks like she does not know either, so I remember to be professional. “What kind of book are you looking for, Apple Templeton?”
“I don’t know,” she says. “Surprise me.”
“I do not like surprises,” I inform her.
“How about…” She keeps trailing off for long pauses like she cannot find her way out of her sentence. “I bet you have a good writing section.”
“Lie,” I pronounce.
“Oh. Or just … old composition textbooks maybe, editing tips, what have you.”
At last a question I can answer. “What I have is many books piled many places. If you tell me what book you think you need, I will find what book you actually do.”
“Ah. Yes. Well. I see.” A lot of words are coming out of her mouth, but she is not saying anything. “My son—well, you’ve met him—needs to start thinking about applying to college. Among other things. He needs tips. Say, for writing good admissions essays. I fear he’s losing focus, forgetting the plan for his future, settling in somewhere … unsettling.”
“Do not move or touch anything,” I say.
But when I come back four and a half minutes later, she has both moved and touched something. Many things. I can see some piles of books have been pushed and some have been displaced and some have been rearranged. She has moved to behind my yellow chair. She has touched a picture that sits between the children’s books about gnomes and the children’s books about owls. She has touched it by holding it. It is a photograph of my mother and father at their wedding.
“Your father was a handsome man.” She says “was” which means either she thinks my father is ugly now or she knows he is dead, and it can be assumed it is the latter because why would she think my father is ugly now?
I nod. She nods.
“Your mother was a lucky woman.”
“Lie,” I say.
Her eyes move quickly to look at mine then quickly move away again. She puts the picture back on the shelf and takes a deep breath. “You have my books?”
I hand over what I have chosen for her: a videotape of the movie Animal House, a paperback (old but reissued) of Love Story, and the copy of Charlotte’s Web I took back from Nellie when her reading group was finished with it.
Apple Templeton considers them.
“I don’t have a VCR,” she says.
“You can borrow one from a friend,” I suggest.
“No one has a VCR,” she says. Then adds, “And I don’t have any friends here.”
“Would you like a book on how to make a friend?”
She squints like she is having trouble seeing. “Love Story?”
“Love Story is a novel about two people who go to college in Boston”—it can be assumed, since he will not stay in Bourne, that River will return to Boston for college—“but then half of them die.”
“Uh-huh.” She is smiling a little bit now. “And Charlotte’s Web? What does Charlotte’s Web have to do with writing college applications?”
“I do not have a copy of The Elements of Style because The Elements of Style got sold when my library closed, but fifty percent of The Elements of Style authors wrote Charlotte’s Web.”
“I suppose, but—”
“In addition, Charlotte’s Web is about using writing to change your life and gain admission.”
“To the county fair.”
“Exactly.”
“The county fair is not an institution of higher learning.”
“Both have cotton candy,” I point out.
“I don’t think that’s quite right.”
“Then I have been misinformed,” I say.
“Truth!” She grins like she made a joke.
On Apple’s way hurrying down the driveway, she encounters Mab hurrying up the driveway. Even though it is sunny out, Mab is carrying a green folder I have never seen before. When she spies and identifies Apple Templeton, she tries to stuff the folder in her jacket. It is too big, but Apple does not notice anyway. They both look away when they pass each other as if they do not like it when people look in their eyes. Mrs. Radcliffe likes to pretend that it is only me who does not like looking in people’s eyes and the rest of their faces, but it is more accurate to say lots of people do not like it. I have just been not looking too hard to see that I am not the only one.