Free Harriet Wolf's Seventh Book of Wonders by Julianna Baggott Page B

convention.”
    But his concern, I know, is false. He wants me to inch closer to my family merely so he can inch closer to Harriet Wolf. “Colette doesn’t want me at her wedding,” I finally say.
    “Look, if you don’t come, people will wonder why. I don’t want to tell people at my daughter’s wedding that you’re divorcing me. It’s bad form.”
    What if I did go home and reunite with Tilton and even Eleanor? Wouldn’t they want to meet Hailey? Wouldn’t Hailey want to meet them? And if Hailey met Eleanor and Tilton, wouldn’t she have more sympathy for me?
    “Come to the wedding. Just show up.” Ron pauses a moment and then whispers, “Pretend you like me.” It’s what Weldon says to Daisy when the photographer has them sit for their wedding photograph.
    “I do like you.” And it’s true. I’m not quite sure why, but the feeling persists—even when I hate him.
    “I like you too,” he says, and then he adds, “Wow, so the gatekeeper’s really in the hospital.”
    The gatekeeper—I hate the term although I’ve employed it myself and used to dole out memories of Harriet and Eleanor to Ron and other members of the Harriet Wolf Society. When I ran out, I made some up. I’ve never told Ron that my grandmother burned the pages of the seventh book every day after she wrote them. In fact, I hinted that she shipped them to another writer—the identity of whom I said I could never quite figure out. Perhaps a lover? Perhaps a female lover, I intimated once, just to make it more interesting. The real confession is that I loved my grandmother’s books—not in a scholarly way, but in a heartfelt way that I’d be embarrassed to talk to Ron about. “Don’t call her the gatekeeper. She’s my mother right now, okay?”
    “But your mother could well have kept it locked up all this time. If someone unearths the final installment, I tell you, it’ll be big news. The publishing event of the year, if not the decade! The feminists alone—they’ve canonized her for being a single mother. It’ll be a feeding frenzy.”
    I’m trying to imagine my mother in a hospital. “The idea of Eleanor dying is surreal,” I say. “She’s always been so, I don’t know, vivante! ”
    He starts pacing. “Maybe this is what our marriage needed. This—helping you through this—would give me purpose,” he says, as if I give a shit about his purpose. And then he realizes this or reads my disgust enough to amend. “It could bring us together.” He stands there, hands on his hips, waiting.
    “Are you kidding?”
    “What would happen if you needed someone? Really needed someone? And what if that person was me? ”
    “I’m going without you. I needed somewhere to go, and now I have it.”

Chapter Six
The Reader’s Brazen Heart
    Harriet
    I ’m not naive. If Tilton pulls these pages from their hiding place, they will likely move out into the world. Will Tilton read them herself? It doesn’t matter, Tilton. We know each other as constants, deeper than any details. Ruthie will read these pages, if given the chance. She may be a grown woman with her own vexations, but she won’t outgrow her curiosity, that beautiful suspicious gaze, and her deep need to be understood. No one can know someone else, I want to tell her. We can’t even know ourselves. (Are you here, Ruthie?) She’s taken George’s absence the hardest. It’s burrowed deep down and dwells.
    Eleanor is so willful, she may choose not to read this. Hello, Eleanor, if you’re here. For so long I didn’t speak of your father. To know the truth now may be useless. I was too heartbroken to explain my own loss. I opted for fictions. I’m sorry. I wasn’t capable of anything else. And I know that my choices took a toll on you. When George first came along, you grabbed hold of him like someone spurned. Did I spurn you? As for your father, you should know that you were no more spurned by your father than I was by my mother. You need to understand that. I hope