The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue - V. E. Schwab Page 0,88

a hand on her shoulder. The boy, older, sterner, an echo of the father behind the sofa. And the younger son, lean, wary, smiling the kind of smile that doesn’t reach his eyes.

Henry stares back at Addie, from the photos he’s in, and the ones he clearly took. She can feel him, the artist in the frame. She could stay there, studying these pictures, trying to find the truth of him in them, the secret, the answer to the question going around and around in her head.

But all she sees is someone sad, lost, searching.

She turns her attention to the books.

Henry’s own collection is eclectic, spilling across surfaces in every room. A shelf in the living room, a narrower one in the hall, a stack beside his bed, another on the coffee table. Comics stacked over a pile of textbooks with titles like Reviewing the Covenant and Jewish Theology for the Postmodern Age. There are novels, biographies, paperbacks and hardcovers mixed together, some old and fraying, others brand new. Bookmarks jut up from the pages, marking a dozen unfinished reads.

Her fingers drift down the spines, hover on a squat gold book. A History of the World in 100 Objects. She wonders if you can distill a person’s life, let alone human civilization, to a list of things, wonders if that’s a valid way to measure worth at all, not by the lives touched, but the things left behind. She tries to build her own list. A History of Addie LaRue.

Her father’s bird, lost among the bodies in Paris.

The Place Royale, stolen from Remy’s room.

The wooden ring.

But those things have their mark on her. What of Addie’s legacy? Her face, ghosted in a hundred works of art. Her melodies at the heart of a hundred songs. Ideas taking root, growing wild, the seeds unseen.

Addie continues through the apartment, idle curiosity giving way to a more purposeful search. She is looking for clues, searching for something, anything, to explain Henry Strauss.

A laptop sits on the coffee table. It boots without a password prompt, but when Addie brushes her thumb across the trackpad, the cursor doesn’t move. She taps the keys absently, but nothing happens.

The technology changes.

The curse stays the same.

Except it doesn’t.

It hasn’t—not entirely.

So she goes from room to room, searching for clues to the question she cannot seem to answer.

Who are you, Henry Strauss?

In the medicine cabinet, a handful of prescriptions line the shelf, their names clogged with consonants. Beside them, a vial of pink pills marked with only a Post-it—a tiny, hand-drawn umbrella.

In the bedroom, another bookshelf, a stack of notebooks in various shapes and sizes.

She turns through, but all of them are blank.

On the windowsill, another, older photo—of Henry and Robbie. In this one, they are tangled, Robbie’s face pressed against Henry’s, his forehead resting on Henry’s temple. There’s something intimate about the pose, the way Robbie’s eyes are almost closed, the way Henry’s hand cradles the back of his head, as if holding him up, or holding him close. The serene curve on Robbie’s mouth. Happy. Home.

By the bed, an old-fashioned watch sits on the side table. It has no minute hand, and the hour points just past six, even though the clock on the wall reads 9:32. She holds it to her ear, but the battery must be dead.

And then, in the top drawer, a handkerchief, dotted with blood. When she picks it up, a ring tumbles out. A small diamond set in a platinum band. Addie stares down at the engagement ring, and wonders who it was for, wonders who Henry was before he met her, what happened to put him in her path.

“Who are you?” she whispers to the empty room.

She wraps the ring in the stained kerchief and returns it to its spot, sliding the drawer shut.

VIII

“I take it back,” she says. “If I could only eat one thing for the rest of my life, it would be these fries.”

Henry laughs and steals a few from the cone in her hand as they wait in line for gyros. The food trucks form a colorful stripe along Flatbush, crowds of people queuing for lobster rolls and grilled cheese, banh mi and kebabs. There’s even a line for ice-cream sandwiches, even though the warmth has dropped out of the March air, promising a crisp, cold night. Addie’s glad she picked up a hat and scarf, traded her ballet flats for calf-high boots, even as she leans into the warmth of Henry’s arms, until there’s a break