For Rye Gavin Gardiner (best book club books for discussion TXT) 📖

her hands over her bunned hair, quickly checking the headful of clips and clasps before once again reaching into the satchel. She closed her eyes as she ran her fingers over the coiled noose. The knives, the eyes, the faces. Soon, they’d all be gone.

Soon, she’d be gone.

She was turning to leave the bookshop when a thought came to her. A gift for her father, how nice.

just bruises

After all, they were separated by decades from their last meeting. Yes, she’d see if she could pick up one of her novels for him. How lovely, how nice.

My love, they’re just bruises. He would never hurt us, not really.

She was tiptoeing through the bookcases searching for the romance section when, upon turning a corner, she found herself in the midst of a towering dark figure. She reeled back, before realising the figure was a cardboard cut-out. The blood-red shelving of its book display fanned around the figure, macabre imagery making it obvious as to which genre it subscribed. The man depicted in the life-size cut-out wore a dark turtleneck and tweed blazer, an expression of calculated theatricality staring through thick horn-rimmed glasses. The sign above read:

Horror Has A Name:

Quentin C. Rye

Choose Your Nightmare – If You Dare

The display’s centrepiece was a pseudo-altar upon which sat the author’s latest release, a hardback titled Midnight Oil. She was turning from the display when her eye caught a thin volume squeezed between spines of increasingly doom-laden type, many screaming the words NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE. The novel calling to her had only two words trailing its spine, two words that seemed to speak to a place buried deep within her. She reached for the book.

Its cover depicted a woman standing in the middle of a road, an emerald green dress flowing behind her in the fog. This road was empty but for one vehicle: a rust-coated pickup truck from which flames billowed, flying in its wake like tin cans from a wedding car. It tore towards the mysterious woman, who stood fearless in the face of the hurling metal. Horror Highway, the title read.

Suddenly, blinding pain.

The paperback dropped from her hands. Agony flashed through her head, tearing like a claw, then fell away as quickly as it had risen. She looked down to find her knuckles white around a wheel that was not there. Struggling for breath, she released her imaginary grip as a stray strand of hair floated into her vision. In a panic, she picked a fresh kirby grip from the handful in her duffle pocket and fastened it amongst the mass already intricately fixed. A loose strand meant something out of place. Something out of place meant disorder. Disorder meant disaster. She closed her eyes and thought of those long white corridors, sterile and simple, everything in its place. Her breathing settled. She’d never really left hospital, or maybe hospital had never left her. She slowly opened her eyes and turned from the Quentin C. Rye display. Find the book – it’ll be nice – then get out of here.

…he would never hurt us.

Romance read faded lettering above a shelving unit at the far end. She stepped towards the unassuming section and traced a finger along the alphabetised volumes towards W.

The cashier scanned the book’s barcode, offering the woman not a glimmer of recognition.

Just how she liked it.

‘From one writer to another, being spotted with your own book ain’t the most flattering of images.’

The voice materialised from many. She stood at the pick-up spot on the street outside the station, hesitating before looking around to the source of the voice. She glanced instead at the book in her hands as if to remind herself of whom the voice spoke:

A Love Encased

The latest in the Adelaide Addington series

Renata Wakefield

‘Miss Wakefield,’ the voice said with a New England twang, ‘it’s a pleasure. Big fan.’

She turned to find a pair of thick horn-rimmed glasses watching her, the same glasses from the Quentin C. Rye display. The same face from the Quentin C. Rye display.

Quentin C. Rye.

‘My wife is anyway – ex-wife, that is.’

Her mouth refused to open. The burning pickup truck and emerald green dress filled her head.

‘Didn’t mean to startle you, Renata,’ he said, slipping a fat leather notebook back into his blazer. He ran his fingers through slicked back hair shot with streaks of grey, then held out a hand. ‘Don’t mind if I call you Renata?’

So many years avoiding human interaction and it should be this American to greet her upon resurfacing? Of all people, of all eyes, why were his welcoming her back to the place she hadn’t called home for three decades? You couldn’t write it. She should know.

Renata stared at the outstretched hand.

‘Your work’s kinda outside my field of expertise,’ he continued, twirling a pen between the fingers of his other hand, ‘but I’ve been assured you’re quite the talent.’

‘I’m sorry, I—’

‘Name’s Quentin. The local cops asked me to help with the investigation after your Mom’s…uh…’ His brown frames glanced over her shoulder. ‘Detective! How’s it going? You guys know each other, right?’

The bulky detective stepped towards Renata, his wrinkles multiplying as he strained against the afternoon sun. ‘We did a long time ago.’ He smoothed his long navy raincoat, chewing on a toothpick straight from a forties noir. ‘Maybe long enough for you to have forgotten. It’s Hector, Detective Hector O’Connell.’ He held out a hand. This one she shook, noticing its slight tremble. She risked a glance at the man. He was right: she barely remembered this greying face in front of her, but she did recognise something pained in that deep-set gaze. Not the beginnings of jaundice-yellowing looking back at her, but something else, something that stared from every mirror she’d ever gazed into. Whatever it was, it didn’t stab with