“Track Four:” I Witnessed a Crime
“I guess the moon had had it out for us. And the night and the stars the same” Esther flipped the page, re-reading her favorite chapter for what she noted to herself, wholly embarrassed, must have been the sixth time. “Everything she touched turned to stone or died eventually. Or was never seen the same again.”
Esther Kelly was a critic. A respected and important one at that. Her words elevated careers, or they destroyed them.
There was no gray area with Esther Kelly. She said what she said, wrote what she wrote… and those who were less fortunate fell to her wrath. Following a rising star wasn’t new for Ms. Kelly. She’d been covering them for the last decade of her career. But never had she re-read an author’s work with such- hunger.
Or, in such shame.
The fact was, Esther had to stop herself most days from re-reading his beautiful book. But today, hidden beneath the cover of a beige umbrella on a sunny day, even with her porcelain face just half visible beneath her large black glasses… each time she paused and really let it sink in where she was- and why… Ms. Kelly wondered if she’d gone too far.
It was her fascination with his novel that lead Esther to “join” the book tour well ahead of her scheduled coverage in New York. There was something undeniable about this book that she couldn’t ignore even when she did make a mild attempt to try. Which was not often, to be fair.
There was a magnet pulling her to him and his words, and rather than ignore it, Esther let herself follow the string of tour dates that would lead her up to her own. She attended reading after reading, but always staying tucked away in the back. She’d find a well-placed stack to lean against to hide her semi-famous and often critical face.
That was how Esther arrived here. In this sleepy seaside Rhode Island town. Just another stop on his tour.
It’s how she found herself in this quaint little book shop…
It’s how she came to find herself in Lost Letters.
Inside the shop, Esther made her rounds through the pillars of books and trinkets, eyeing any and everything this eclectic and cozy spot had to offer.
To kill time, she’d pretend to weave toward the horror section but never self-help. She’d venture toward the back to see what was tucked away in the nooks, or the cracks of the forgotten sections… but it was all just to delay the inevitable. It was all just a way to keep her circling, to keep her from making a beeline straight to the table hosting Iain Bowery’s debut novel.
Esther, having held herself to wandering for all of nearly seven minutes, could feel an invisible track moving her feet toward Iain’s words when a girl no older than twenty, her skin a sunless white, approached Esther.
“Can I help you find something?”
Esther flinched. “No, dear, I’m just browsing. Thank you.” She preferred to treat all bookshops like libraries where speaking was prohibited.
“Well, I’m Genevieve. If you need anything, just holler.” The pale young girl went on her way and left Esther to her browsing.
Once the girl had gone, Esther made her way toward’s Iain’s book display but was thwarted yet again by the other shop girl who was setting out his handsome photograph next to a stack of his perfect book.
His spellbinding book.
Pages and pages filled with his beguiling words.
And words- after all, are Esther Kelly’s favorite things.
The bell on the shop’s front door rang out and caused Esther to turn.
Then her heart lurched into her throat.
Iain Bowery had just walked into Lost Letters.
Esther slinked to the edge of a nearby rack, hovering as Iain approached his display and the pretty young shopkeeper.
“How’s that one then, any good?” Iain asked. Esther watched as Iain finished his line with a smirk that slipped over his perfectly imperfect teeth.
She stayed close enough to hear him banter with the girl. His soft Scottish accent dripped from his mouth like honey. A trait Esther learned, Iain knew how to dial up or down based on the conversation or speaking engagement he was engaged in. And right now, it was the perfect level of warmth and charm.
Intrusive as it was, Esther couldn’t turn her ear away from their chat.
“You wouldn’t want to go for a spot of tea at your shift change, would you? I don’t know anyone in town and-”
Esther hung on his last words.
He didn’t know anyone in town.
She knew him. But he didn’t know her. Not yet.
“I’d love to.” The girl’s smile beamed with hope as Esther’s heart dropped into the depths of her gut. This young beautiful girl in the book shop would be ending her day with Iain Bowery at a café, and Esther would be off alone in her musty, wallpapered hotel room.
Esther Kelly left Lost Letters with her heart still lodged somewhere in the pit of her stomach. Outside in the fresh air, she let her lungs expel the breath she’d trapped inside her. Esther’s shoulders hung as heavy as her thoughts, her back slumped against the rough brick wall.
A rough, random brick wall in a town she had no business being in. She stared across the street, shaking her head. What did she think was going to happen? That Iain would have crossed paths with her in one of these towns, and he’d- what?
Befriend her?
Appreciate her?
Fall for her?
Had she not felt like such a fool, she’d be inclined to laugh at herself. It’s what she would have done were it anyone else. But as it were, today, she was not so inclined to find this funny.
Esther knew it was time to go home to New York before she further embarrassed herself beyond repair. And so she looked up, plotting which way to escape from her current round of missteps, when a shiver went down her spine.
Across the street, Ester found herself locked onto a handsome young man. Not because of his stature or the strong cut of his jaw, but there was something in his eyes…
Esther shot upright, her slouch all but disappeared.
His glassy eyes were trance-like, staring at the storefront window of Lost Letters. Esther shivered, smoothing out the skin of her goose-flesh. Something about him made her skin crawl, and her toes instinctively shifted her feet in the opposite direction.
Esther hurried away from the book store and the boy with dead eyes as quickly as she could.
Esther hadn’t moved that fast in years. Before this, her cardio was spent in a race to hail cabs outside her brownstone. But right now, her feet were moving swiftly down the street, the flats of her shoes punishing the balls of her feet against the uneven cobblestone.
The packing up of her hotel room was just as breakneck. Between her shame of following Iain here, to the ice the young man with stare sent down her spine, Esther had no desire to remain in the cool breeze of this seaside town for a moment longer than she had to.
In the lobby, Esther paid her bill as quickly as she could.
With her sunglasses on she darted across the marble of the hotel entrance; that’s when she spotted him out of the corner of her eye. At the bar sat Iain, sipping on an old-fashioned. That’s what he was always drinking; she’d sat near enough to him to know his drink now. Esther stopped, and the echo of her heels ceased along with her walk.
One drink before she left couldn’t hurt.
At the bar, a mere few seats away, Esther ordered a whiskey ginger from the server; both the whiskey and the ginger were meant to steady the nerves that were firing in her stomach. But when Iain pulled out his pen and his notebook, there was no controlling her mind. From her side-eye, she watched Iain as he scribbled, his beautiful gold and black pen setting ink to paper, no doubt brandishing it with something beautiful and evocative… it was killing Esther that she couldn’t know what Iain Bowery was creating mere feet from her stool.
It took everything in her not to ask what he was working on, to not strike up a casual conversation.
Then Iain looked at his watch. He was off to meet the shop girl.
And Esther was filled with a familiar sense of silliness again.
Iain left the bar, and then, so did she.
In her cab, on the way to the train station, Esther stared out the window, longing for the trip she planned on, and mourning the trip that never was.
At the next stoplight, Esther found herself placed back in front of Lost Letters as if to taunt her ridiculous excursion one final time. The light, stagnant in its purpose to turn from red to green and free her of this town, left Esther’s eyes with time to wander.
Across the street, the scuffed plastic walls of the bus stop gleamed in the setting sun, casting a glare on Esther’s eyes strong enough she needed to place her large black framed glasses over her eyes. But when she looked back, Esther found that mysterious, icy boy from the bus stop crossing the street right in front of her cab. And with- purpose.
And by the time her eyes caught up to where the boy was going, it was too late.
Esther watched the boy with strange eyes scurry down the sidewalk. Through the glass of her sealed-up window, she saw the words leave his lips; directed at Iain.
Iain- cowered against the bricks.
Her heart raced; none of it was right.
But her cab was inching forward now; she could feel her chance slipping as the rubber of the tire tread crinkled over the pavement.
Then, in an instant, the opportunity to intervene slipped away. The cab was nearly through the the intersection, her driver pulled past the alley… and she saw it all in slow motion…
The boy with the icy stare cornering Iain with the charming grin.
Iain’s gold and black pen crashing off the pavement-
She could ask the cab to stop.
Esther could phone 911…her cell phone still in the palm of her hand.
But what, Esther wondered, would she say she was doing in town? So close to Iain.
What could she say?
What would people say?
Esther pocketed her phone back into a slot in her purse.
She turned her eyes back to the road the cab was set on.
Esther had been on a lot of book tours.
But never one that ended like this.
And on the drive home, she thought to herself, I think I witnessed a crime.