The Echo of Old Books

by Barbara Davis

It was a thing she had, a gift, like perfect pitch or a perfumer’s nose. The ability to read the echoes that attached themselves to certain inanimate objects—books, to be precise. She had no idea how it worked.

But the book’s stale masculine energy felt strangely at odds with its romantic title, proof that a book’s echoes had little to do with genre or subject matter. Rather, a book’s energy seemed to be a reflection of its owner.

There’s nothing more personal than a book, especially one that’s become an important part of someone’s life.”

“Books are feelings,” he replied simply. “They exist to make us feel. To connect us to what’s inside, sometimes to things we don’t even know are there. It only makes sense that some of what we feel when we’re reading would . . . rub off.”

Psychometry. The term had been coined in 1842 by physician Joseph Rodes Buchanan, and in 1863 a geologist named Denton had published a book entitled The Soul of Things. In short, she was a kind of empath, but for books.

You muddle me, madam, turning all my intentions to dust until I almost forget I’ve been invited for a reason and that were this not the case, our paths would never have crossed.

“None of it meant anything to you? All these weeks, all the afternoons? It was all for her? For Goldie? When you knew I loved you?”

Love. The word slices into me like a blade. Neither of us has ever said it before. Me least of all. Instead, I’ve lived with the knowledge that one day, quite suddenly, it would be our last day.

Now, suddenly, the truth hits me squarely, inescapably. I’ve loved you from the very first night, the very first look, the very first lie. I let myself believe I was in command of my emotions, that I could conquer them, starve them out of existence. Now I realize that was the biggest lie of all.

And in that moment, there can be no going back. I’m yours forever. Irrevocably. Indelibly.

But you have to put it in motion. And you won’t. Because when you weigh what you’d be giving up against what you’d be getting, the scales don’t balance. I come up short.”

Unable to resist, she picked up the book, breathing in, breathing out, breathing in again. Waiting. But the echoes refused to resolve, like a dissonant chord scraping along her nerves. Self-doubt. Inner turmoil. A man who’d lost his way and desperately wanted to find it again. A man searching for purpose, searching for himself. Ethan’s book. Ethan’s echoes.

Turning to the title page, she found what she was looking for. Ethan, Be brave and do the work. But do it your way. The world needs your voice. —Dad

Books are rib and spine, blood and ink, the stuff of dreams dreamed and lives lived. One page, one day, one journey at a time. —Ashlyn Greer, The Care & Feeding of Old Books

Eleven years on, and it still feels like yesterday, the wound still raw, still festering. The day you vanished from my life. Shall I tell you how it was? How it felt? Yes, I think I will. Because I shouldn’t be the only one to remember that day.

I’ve spent three days in a kind of twilight. Three days believing I’ve been hurt as deeply as it’s possible to be hurt. But I’m wrong. There’s more to come. Shall I tell you how it was? How it felt? It only seems fair.

I’ll begin with the story that appeared in the Review shortly after I left the States—a story, I might add, I learned about purely by chance, nearly two full years after it was published.

I gave you my word that day in my apartment—the last time I saw you, as it turns out—and I will not do so again. If you know me so little after all we shared, there’s no point in trying to absolve myself.

We develop a particular fondness for our favorite books, the way they feel and smell and sound, the memories they invoke, until they begin to exist for us as living, breathing things.

In the happiest times of my life, I have reached for my books. In the saddest times of my life, my books have reached back. —Ashlyn Greer, The Care & Feeding of Old Books

The number of lives we are capable of living is limited only by the number of books we choose to read. —Ashlyn Greer, The Care & Feeding of Old Books

Enemies exist in many forms, all of which may affect both longevity and well-being. One must at all times be vigilant against invaders, both seen and unseen. —Ashlyn Greer, The Care & Feeding of Old Books

Outer condition isn’t always indicative of what may lay inside. Perform a thorough assessment, and above all, know when to call in a professional. —Ashlyn Greer, The Care & Feeding of Old Books

Maintain a safe distance from known threats. —Ashlyn Greer, The Care & Feeding of Old Books

It had been years since she’d awakened in a bed that wasn’t hers, years since she had allowed herself to be touched, held, loved. Now the memory of Ethan’s lovemaking was seared into both her memory and her flesh. Like the echoes of a book, never to be erased.

I love an author the more for having been himself a lover of books. —Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“None of us can change the past,” she told Marian gently. “No matter how badly we wish we could. But we can forgive it. We just need to decide to.

“Whether you did or didn’t isn’t the point. Not anymore. Hell, maybe it never was. We were both ready to believe the worst about the other. That doesn’t say much for what we had, does it? Maybe we saved ourselves a lot of heartache.”

Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers. —Charles W. Eliot

I have always imagined that closing a book is like pausing a film midframe, the characters frozen in their halted worlds, breath held, waiting for the reader to return and bring it all back to life—like a prince’s kiss in a fairy tale. —Ashlyn Greer, The Care & Feeding of Old Books

Hemi pulls me into his arms, it doesn’t feel like closure. It feels like a beginning, and I’m suddenly reminded of another kiss, one that happened a lifetime ago, on a rainy day in a stable.

This is what it’s supposed to be like, I think as his mouth closes over mine. This. This. This.

She thought of the books, now shelved side by side in Marian’s office, and recalled the last time she’d run her hands over them. Hemi’s first, then Belle’s, then both books together. How they had hummed beneath her fingers with the same curious energy. Cool and quiet and gloriously aligned, like notes resonating in perfect harmony. They had changed their echoes.