The Noel Letters (The Noel Collection #4) - Richard Paul Evans Page 0,46
the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.
—Madeleine L’Engle
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 28
As we expected, Saturday’s crowd was even larger than Friday’s. Before his death, my father had gifted us one last big signing—Laura Numeroff.
Hundreds of people showed up, and the line literally stretched around the block. For more than four hours our bundled-up employees walked up and down the line handing out cups of hot wassail.
Dylan texted me when he arrived. I met him and Alexis in the back parking lot where I had saved him a space and brought them in through the employees’ entrance. I escorted them past the stanchions to the front of the line.
Ms. Numeroff was personable and even got up from the table to take a picture with Alexis, something we didn’t have time to let the other customers do.
That morning I had picked Ms. Numeroff up from her hotel, something my father used to do for the authors, and we’d built a quick rapport as she shared great gossip. She told me she had once dated the drummer of a famous rock band (name withheld), but he dumped her shortly after their first album took off. In her subsequent melancholy, she wrote her first If You Give… book. The series, so far, had sold more than 45 million copies, nearly triple the band’s combined album sales. “Karma is sweet,” she said to me.
Dylan offered to stay and help with the signing, but I sent him off to watch the football game with his father. Ms. Numeroff had a tight schedule, and we had to close the doors with people still in line so she could catch her flight out.
By the end of the day we were all exhausted. Wendy was beyond ecstatic about our success. Even though the bulk of the sales were run through credit cards, she had still emptied the cash from the register into the safe six times.
As we were locking up, she said, “Your boyfriend is cute. Was that his daughter?”
“Alexis,” I said.
“She was well behaved.”
“Good fathering,” I said.
“We could use more of those,” Wendy said.
Her comment piqued my interest. “Were you close to your father?”
“I didn’t even know him. He left my mother when I was two.” She turned off the front display lights, then said, “By the way, your letter came in the mail today. I left it back on the desk.”
“Thank you.”
“Have you figured out who’s sending them?”
“I think it’s Dylan.”
“Maybe you should just ask him.”
“If he wanted me to know, he’d tell me, right? And if it’s not him, it would just be embarrassing.”
“You’ll figure it out.”
I saved the letter for when I got home.
Dear Noel,
Be kind. If you can’t love your neighbor, be kind to them, and you may see your kindness turn to love. Do not proclaim your great love for the disadvantaged masses when you hate your next-door neighbor. The world of humanity is not the vast, unfathomable ocean, it is the lone starfish that washes up on the beach.
Do not think of love as weakness. Love is not the fluff of greeting cards. Love is the hard, rocky shore that holds fast against the ocean’s turbulent waves. Love is the soldier who lays down his life for his friends in the trenches. Love is the mother who goes to bed hungry so her children will have breakfast. Love is the opposite of self-interest, the disciples of which flee at the hint of self-sacrifice. Those without love are like the ethereal seeds of a dandelion, scattering to the wind at the first small breeze to find the next real thing.
Tabula Rasa
I lay the letter on the bed. “You should have been a writer, Dylan.” I was glad he had come to the signing. I went to bed with him on my mind.
CHAPTER thirty–three
Half my life is an act of revision.
—John Irving
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 30
Monday was a Monday. Our first customer of the day was a return. She was a thickset woman with thick glasses and a shrill voice. She set the book on the counter, then announced, “I need to return this book.”
“Is something wrong with it?” I asked.
“Just look at it. It’s not… right.”
“What’s not right?”
“The pages. They’re cut wrong. They’re uneven.”
I looked at the book’s edge. “Oh. You mean the deckled edge. It’s a decorative feature.”
“Decorative?”
“Yes, the publisher had the pages trimmed like that on purpose. It gives it the appearance of an old-fashioned handcrafted book.”