Monster Among the Roses

Planning bookshelf projects and reading about bookshelf projects were entirely different beasts than actually building fucking bookshelves.

“Dammit,” I muttered, tossing down another board I’d cut a fourth of an inch too short. “I suck at this. I so totally suck at this.”

You’d think routing fancy edges or aligning and screwing boards together would be the real challenge for me. But nope, I just couldn’t measure and cut worth crap.

“Too short again?” Isobel asked from across the room, where she sat at the opened window and brushed wood stain across a freshly sanded shelf. Between us, the floor was covered in plastic drop cloths while sawdust fluttered in the air and the crisp scent of lacquer floated to me from the breeze the window let in.

“Yes,” I mumbled, tearing off my hat to run a hand through my hair and trying not to lose my shit. But seriously, you’d think I’d learn not to fuck up the length so badly after the first five boards I’d cut wrong. Moodily, I jammed my hat back on.

“Well, this is only the sixth miss,” Isobel said, dipping her brush into the metal can she held with one hand. “You’ve easily cut three times that number right.”

I blinked at her, wondering when the hell she’d turned so optimistic and encouraging. And why was she being so helpful? From the moment I’d showed her my idea for the library, she’d been involved in this project one hundred percent, just as much as I was. In fact, I wasn’t building these bookcases at all. We were.

The saw scared the shit out of her, so she didn’t do any cutting, but she sanded and beveled and measured, and now she was staining. This was supposed to be my handyman job, but she’d worked and sweated as much as I had. And I had to say, it was nice. We’d bickered, and disagreed, and then agreed and complimented, and now we were encouraging each other, apparently.

“Why don’t you take a break from cutting,” she suggested. “I only have one more board to stain before I’m out of the ones that have been sanded.”

Grateful to move on to something else for a bit, I started toward her. “You need some more sanded?”

She pointed her brush toward a stack of cut boards. “Those right there.”

“On it,” I said, happy for a change of scenery.

“I know it’s not plausible, but I was hoping we could at least put up one range of shelves today. I’m excited to see how the new ones will look next to the old ones.”

I grinned. Her enthusiasm was contagious. And adorable. I wanted to make sure she got whatever she wanted. With a grin, I said, “I bet we could get one up before the end of the day.”

She snorted. “It’d probably take us another eight hours, working straight through, to get to that point, and you get off work in,” she consulted her wrist, “two.”

I shrugged. “I don’t mind staying a couple hours longer.”

Blinking, she stared at me as if I’d just suggested I give her my undying love and devotion.

“But…you don’t have to do that. You already work here nearly fifty hours a week as it is.”

Sending her a grin, I merely said, “But I want to see one of the bookshelves up today, too.”

Before she could argue the point further, I slid my safety glasses on, turned up the sander and drowned out her protests with noise.

We’d been working on the bookshelf project for about a week now. And throughout all the planning, brainstorming and calculating, we talked. We talked a lot. We talked about books, movies, and our favorite television shows. We talked about my family, my mom’s situation, her lost bakery business, and my absent siblings. She wasn’t as open about her family. She mentioned things about her dad and brother, but usually avoided conversation about her mom entirely, as well as the fire that had changed her life.

Occasionally, I asked her about her future, what she wanted to do with her life and if she ever planned to move out of Porter Hall on her own. But her eyes would glaze over with this faraway expression, and she would never go into any of that. So I’d change the subject.

But mainly, smiles and conversation flowed smoothly between us, just as it did for the rest of the afternoon.

At one point, Mr. Nash strolled into the room, saying, “Izzy, did you receive the note I left, letting you know I’d be late on Friday because I had a business dinner?” He was shuffling through a pile of mail in his hand, not paying attention to any of the progress we’d made.

“I saw it,” she answered, her voice strained, because she was busy holding two boards in place for me so I could screw them together.

Henry finally lifted his face and blinked. He gazed about the construction zone we had going on before returning his attention to us. “Shaw,” he said with some surprise. “I must not have been paying attention when I pulled into the drive. I didn’t realize you were still here. It’s two hours after your regular time to leave.”

“We wanted to get at least one shelf installed tonight.” I glanced at Isobel. “Ready?”

She nodded, her knuckles going white as she held everything in place while I drilled a screw through wood.

Henry moved curiously closer. “It’s really coming along,” he murmured with a note of surprise. “Looks professionally done, too.”

“That’s because Shaw is a perfectionist,” Isobel announced, sending me a glance with a bit of censure but also pride in her teasing gaze. “He usually redoes a single piece five times before he’s satisfied with it.”

“I’m not that bad,” I immediately argued, only to flush when she sent me an arch stare. “Okay, I might be that bad.”

“You’re totally that bad.” She laughed before turning to her dad. “We’ve made it to this point three times already, only for him to insist we start all over again.”

Shifting uncomfortably because I was sure Mr. Nash would get upset over how much lumber and supplies I’d wasted by doing that, I glanced up at my boss, only to see him gazing strangely between the two of us.

“Well,” he murmured quietly, “it seems like whatever he’s doing is paying off, so I say he should keep up the good work.”

The meaning in his gaze was clear. Henry wasn’t talking about bookshelves.

I glanced at Isobel and cleared my throat, worried she’d catch on to the silent message her father was trying to convey. After the past few days, I’d actually forgotten what my main purpose here was. I’d been too eager to see Isobel, spend the day with her, and work on our project together. Being reminded why I’d originally been brought to Porter Hall soured the beauty of the moment.

“It looks as if you’ve turned into quite the assistant, sweetheart.”

Isobel sent her dad a pleased but tired smile. “He probably needs about five assistants, but we’re getting it done. Slowly.”

Taking that as a cue that he was excused now, Henry shifted a step back. “I guess I’d better let you two get back to it, then.”

I snorted as I pulled a screw I’d been holding between my teeth and plugged it into the end of the drill. “What a friendly snub to your own father that was.”

Isobel flushed guiltily before sending me a scowl. “I couldn’t help it. I wanted to get this done tonight, and he was slowing us down.”

With a laugh, I shook my head and drilled the next screw into place before she could accuse me of slowing us down.

An hour later, we had the first shelf pieced together and standing upright. The next step was anchoring it to the wall.

“The stud wall should be right here,” Isobel murmured, marking an X on the wall with a pencil as her stud sensor beeped.

“You sure?” I asked, approaching with a tape measure.

She swept out her hand, inviting me to find out for myself. “Well, why don’t you drill a hole and see if it hits a stud?”

The idea had me startling to a stop, but Isobel continued. “Can’t hurt anything since all this space is going to be covered by bookshelves, anyway.”

I shrugged. Good point. “Okay.” I put the tape measure away and retrieved the drill. But as I pressed the bit to the wall directly over the small pencil mark, I froze.

Staring at my hand I had braced against Sheetrock, I couldn’t seem to make a hole.

“Okay, you can start,” Isobel said behind me.

Could I? Really? I wasn’t so sure. This suddenly felt big.

“Anytime now,” she added, only to huff a second later. “Seriously, Hollander, you don’t have to wait.”

“I know,” I muttered, still not getting to work.

“Then why aren’t you?”

“I will.” I held up the hand I’d been pressing against the wall, hoping to quell her impatience. “Just give me a second.”

“A second for what? You know how to use a drill, right?”

“Yes!” I spun to nail her with the full impact of my indignant glare. She knew I knew how to use a drill; she’d been watching me use one all damn week. Then I realized she’d been heckling me on purpose, trying to get a rise out of me, and I scowled.

Lifting her eyebrows to meet my scowl, she set her hands on her hips. “Just what is the problem?”

“I told you…” It was hard to say from between clenched teeth, but I managed. “Give. Me. A. Second.”

“And I asked… For. What?”

“Oh my God!” I lowered the drill and backed away from the wall, losing my cool. “For…for… You know, you are the most annoying woman on the planet. Can you not even wait ten goddamn seconds for me to deal with this and let the gravity of it actually sink in?”

She blinked a moment, before more quietly asking, “The gravity of what?”

“The…that!” I motioned toward the bare wall. “This. Everything. It’s all finally hitting me. These shelves are going to be permanent.”

She sniffed out a degrading sound before nudging my arm and grinning through a teasing eye roll. “Don’t be so sure about that. I give them a couple weeks. In fact, I predict we’ll be calling a real carpenter in here within the month to fix your mess.”

“Wow,” I muttered. “Thanks for your vote of confidence.”

She shrugged, even though her eyes sparkled with her tease.

“It’s just…” I sighed and ran my fingers through my hair. “This is the first thing I’ve ever made that’s going to last. And it’s going in this house, this huge, amazing grand house where freaking millionaires live. Long after we’re both gone, these shelves will still be here, a piece of history.”

She made a sound in the back of her throat and wrinkled her nose. “Again, debatable.”

I ignored that, needing to get this feeling off my chest before I could start drilling anything. “It’s like I’m making my mark on the world.” My chest filled with a sense of purpose. “I mean, I’ve always loved archeology stuff and the history of things, learning about cultures. Studying that had always been my big passion, but this…today…it’s like I’m the one actually providing a piece of my own life for future archeologists and it’s…well, it’s pretty freaking cool. I wonder if someone hundreds of years from now will look at my shelves and comment on them, maybe speculate on why I made them the way I did or wonder about the life I lived. It’s almost…humbling.”

Isobel blinked at me.

I blinked back, realizing how much I’d just exposed. A sense of alarm filled my gut. After Gloria and even kind of my mom had belittled my passion for artifacts, I’d always pushed it down and tried to hide it, thinking it was stupid and trivial. I fully expected Isobel to make fun of me for getting so sentimental and weird, too.

But she just studied me with the oddest expression before turning to look at the bare wall as well, as if never having seen it before.

A second later, she spun away and moved off. I gazed after her, wondering what that meant, what she thought of me now, and where the heck she was going. She paused at the study table and pulled open the drawer under it before riffling around and coming up with a thick black permanent marker.

“What…?” I wrinkled my nose, confused, as she returned to me.

She didn’t say a word, just stopped in front of the wall, lifted the marker and started to draw in huge block letters:

Isobel was here.

A slow grin spread across my face.

When she turned back to me and arched a lofty eyebrow, I nodded my approval and thanks. She hadn’t made me feel like a freak; she’d joined me, making her mark as well.

Biting my lip, I took the marker from her and wrote above her phrase, adding:

Shaw and…

She snorted and pressed a hand to her mouth, holding in a laugh. “Now you have to change my was to were.”

I looked up, reread everything, and flushed. “Oh yeah.” Lifting the marker again, I marked out the a-s after the w and added e-r-e above it.

When I stepped back to check out the result, I winced. “Oh, great. Now it looks like total shit.”

“Yeah,” Isobel agreed, nodding. “Maybe you should put those shelves up to cover it.”

I shook my head at her dry sarcasm, even though I was still amused by her witticism. “Smart-ass,” I muttered, biting my lip to hold in the grin.

Then I lifted the drill, and bored a hole through the wall of Porter Hall’s library.