LITMIR.BIZ

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to Miranda Brooks.’” Elijah handed me a set of keys. “The property includes the bookstore and an apartment on the second floor. I’ve had it prepared for you.”

      The keys were cold and smooth, their notches worn from use. I’d expected a map or one of Billy’s riddles, but the keys to Prospero Books? I was a middle-school history teacher. I didn’t know anything about running a business, let alone a business as specialized and important as a bookstore. But I couldn’t focus on those pragmatic concerns. Prospero Books. I could still remember its sweet and musty smell, its feeling of springtime throughout the year. After all these years, I would get to return to that smell, that feeling, again.

      I looked over at Mom, sitting erect beside me, alert as prey being stalked. Her eyes darted across the will, reading it upside down. She was so still that if I touched her she might have shattered into a thousand pieces.

      “Mom?”

      She shook her head. “It’s okay. Let’s keep going.”

      Elijah closed the file and opened the desk drawer beneath his computer. “In addition to the store, he also asked me to give you this.” He handed me a copy of Jane Eyre.

      The cover depicted Jane’s silhouette, her profile dark against the beige background. I ran my finger along the contour of her face. I’d read the novel in high school, again in college, had logged the love between Jane and Mr. Rochester as one of literature’s best, even if Mr. Rochester was by all modern accounts a bit of a creep. If it had been one of the Boxcar Children books, a copy of The Westing Game, it would have reminded me of the afternoons I’d spent in Prospero Books drinking hot cocoa from an oversize mug as Billy read over my shoulder, together trying to reason the clues Mr. Westing left for the tenants of Sunset Towers. But Jane Eyre? I’d never read it with Billy. I had no idea why he would have left it for me now.

      I angled the book toward Mom, and she leaned over to see the title. Her face remained stoic. I couldn’t tell if the title meant anything to her, either.

      The novel’s spine was split in several places, and the middle bulged awkwardly where an antique key was nestled between the pages. On the page behind the key, a few sentences were highlighted.

      One does not jump, and spring, and shout hurrah! at hearing one has got a fortune; one begins to consider responsibilities, and to ponder business; on a base of steady satisfaction rise certain grave cares, and we contain ourselves, and brood over our bliss with a solemn brow.

      Did Billy know I would feel bliss, that I would rush into excitement? Fortune. Responsibilities. Grave cares. A solemn brow. Was he reminding me that my new fortune arrived because of his death? I skimmed the text around the highlighted section and remembered: Jane did not jump and spring and shout hurrah! at hearing she’d inherited a fortune from her uncle, John Eyre. Her uncle! Her father’s brother whom Jane didn’t know. Instead, Jane expressed her dismay that she couldn’t have a fortune without her uncle’s death, that she’d dreamed of connecting with him and now never would. But Jane’s uncle had searched for her. He’d been unable to locate her before he died. Billy hadn’t gone looking for me until he was already dead. If he had, in the modern age of the internet and Facebook, he would have found me easily. If he’d thought of me, why hadn’t he come looking? Why did he wait until we no longer had a chance to reconnect?

      “Is that it?” Mom asked Elijah with the impatience of a student I’d held after class.

      “Well, there are several details about the store to discuss. If you’re in a rush, Miranda and I can set up another meeting.”

      “That would be great.” Mom motioned me out.

      “I’ll call you,” I told Elijah. As I stood, the cover of Jane Eyre fluttered open. I noticed something written inside the front cover. Cursive writing, nearly faded: Evelyn Weston. I could picture that name in all caps, carved into the gravestone beside Billy’s. So, Billy hadn’t been buried alone, after all. But who was Evelyn Weston?

      * * *

      On the I-10 West, Mom drove in the far left lane five miles below the speed limit. Cars passed us on the right, drivers honking their horns and raising their fists as they raced past.

      “You want me to drive?” I asked, knowing she wouldn’t let me.

      “I’m fine.” She slammed the gas pedal, and the car lurched forward with nervous energy.

      “I can’t believe Billy left me his bookstore.”

      “It’s inexcusable,” Mom said as she pulled onto the ramp for the Bundy Drive exit. “Putting that kind of burden on you.”

      “It’s not a burden. I loved Prospero Books.”

      “Loving something and being responsible for it are two very different things.” She gripped the wheel so forcefully her knuckles turned white.

      “Why do you think he left me a copy of Jane Eyre?”

      “I have no idea.” The gift seemed to anger her regardless of whether she knew what it meant.

      “Was it an important book to Billy?”

      “I just told you I have no idea.” Mom turned on the radio to a top forties station, a type of music I knew she didn’t like. We listened to syrupy vocals and catchy rhythms until Mom pulled into the driveway of our Spanish Revival. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to snap at you,” she said as she stopped the car. “I don’t think Billy considered how much this would hurt me.”

      I twisted the antique key I’d found in Jane Eyre between my fingers. It was oxidized almost completely black. It had to open an old safe or jewelry box tucked away in the other part of my inheritance, Prospero Books. And it had to have something to do with the name left in cursive font in the front of the novel.

      “Do you know who Evelyn Weston is?”

      Mom jolted. “Where’d you hear that name?”

      “At Forrest Lawn. Billy was buried next to her.”

      “You saw Evelyn’s grave?” Mom appeared nervous, suddenly frantic.

      “Was she Billy’s wife?” It was the only logical reason he would have been buried beside her.

      “She was,” Mom whispered as she stared at our familiar white house. The lines around her eyes were more pronounced than they’d been last time I’d seen her. Everyone said I looked like Mom. We had the same curly hair, same narrow builds. Her face was longer and narrower than mine; her speckled brown eyes were more golden than mine had ever been. I’d never be as pretty as Mom.

      “Was she someone he met after us?”

      Mom turned toward me, confused. “You said you saw her grave?”

      “I didn’t look at it very closely. I don’t remember anyone ever mentioning her.”

      “He was married to her before you were born. She died a long time ago.”

      “And Billy never remarried? He never had a family?”

      “He only ever wanted Evelyn.”

      “Why’d he name the bookstore Prospero Books? Did it have anything to do with me?” As a child, I thought Prospero Books was named for me, an homage to my namesake, like Prospero Books lived and breathed with me, like when I wasn’t there, it ceased to exist.

      “It was open before you were born.” Her tone remained even.

      “Did you name me after the bookstore?”

      “I named you after Shakespeare.”

      “You and Billy just happened to pick the same play?”

      “It was Evelyn’s favorite play.” She smiled, shrugging off her sadness. “How much of a disaster do you think the kitchen’s going to be after your father has had free rein of it all afternoon?” Mom patted my leg and stepped out of the car into the bright afternoon.

      I

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