Chapter 2
The next morning I left Eddie at home, to his great disgruntlement. Even Aunt Frances noticed his grumpiness.
“What’s with him?” she asked, nodding toward his back feet, which were thumping up the stairs. If past performance was any indication of the imminent future, in a few seconds he would jump on my bed, stand in the middle as he viewed the pillow selection, then flop down onto the one that offered the highest likelihood of Eddie comfort.
I showed Aunt Frances my hands, which were empty except for the mittens I’d just pulled on. “No cat carrier. He’s cranky because he thinks every day should be a bookmobile day.”
She looked up the stairs. “Would some cat treats make him feel better?”
“Sure,” I said, “but then you’d have to give him treats every morning, and he’d follow you around, asking for more, and you’d give them to him just to shut him up and he’d get fat.” I zipped up my coat. “Then we’d have to find a kitty treadmill, find a place to put it, teach him how to use it, and make sure he got at least thirty minutes of exercise every day.”
Aunt Frances handed my backpack to me. “Much easier not to give him treats in the first place, then.”
“I’m glad you understand. Now, if you could explain that to Eddie, we’ll be all set.” I headed out into the cold morning. Two steps away, I turned around and poked my head back inside. “You know,” I said, “one or two treats would be okay.”
She grinned and, from the pocket of her oversized fleece sweatshirt, pulled out a small canister of cat treats. “Three at the most.”
I left my enabling aunt and my cranky cat to their mutual devices and started my morning commute across town. Bookmobile days, due to the Eddie element, necessitated that I take my car to work, but on library days when it wasn’t pouring down rain or howling with snowy winds, I walked.
My route first took me through streets lined with trees and filled with late-nineteenth-century houses built as summer cottages. People from Chicago had steamed up Lake Michigan to spend the hot city months in the coolness provided by lake breezes. More than a few of the houses were still owned by descendants of the families who’d built them, the walls decorated with the same pictures that had been hung a hundred years earlier.
I walked west, facing the rising wind, and fought the urge to tiptoe as I passed the sleeping houses, shut up tight until spring. A few blocks later, I was out of the historical district and into the section of town where normal people lived.
This was a neighborhood of narrow two-story houses, an occasional ranch house, and large old houses divided up into apartments; these homes had lights on in the kitchens and cars in the driveways. No sleeping here; there was school to attend and jobs to drive to.
Out on a tiny front porch, a woman was bundled up in a long puffy coat and was drinking from a steaming travel mug.
“Morning, Pam,” I said. “Can I have some of your coffee?”
Pam Fazio, a fiftyish woman with smooth, short black hair, top-notch fashion sense, and an infectious laugh, clutched her mug to her chest. “Mine, mine—every drop is mine,” she growled.
I smiled. Pam, owner of a new downtown antiques store, had an uncanny ability to match product to customer. It could have made entering her shop dangerous to the wallet, but she also had an amazing knack for sensing budgets.
“Are you going to drink morning coffee on your porch all winter?” I asked. Pam had moved to town from Ohio that spring; her long-term tolerance for cold and snow was still a question mark to many.
She took a noisy sip. “Every morning that I went to work in a windowless cubicle at a large company that shall remain nameless, I vowed that I would spend an equal number of mornings on my front porch, drinking my first cup of coffee in the fresh air.”
“No matter how cold?”
“Cold?” she scoffed. “I’m not afraid of the cold. Not when I have coffee.” She put her face into the rising steam. “Ahhh.”
I laughed, waved, and started walking again. From here, downtown was only two blocks away. A left turn and then a right, and I was there: downtown Chilson in all its haphazard glory, an oddly comfortable blend of old and new architecture that attracted tourists and small-town urban planners from all across the region. But now it was the off-season, which lasted roughly eight months of the year, and business was not exactly bustling.
The only cars on the street were in front of the Round Table, the local diner. All the other storefronts were dark; many had signs taped to their front doors. CLOSED FOR THE SEASON. SEE YOU IN THE SPRING. Some of the shuttered stores were run by managers for absentee owners; others were owned by people who worked hard all summer long for the pleasure of heading to warmer climes over the winter.
My boots echoed on the empty sidewalks, which weren’t nearly wide enough in summer when all the tourists were in town. I breathed in the fresh air, drank in the view of Janay Lake, looked around at the odd mix of old and new downtown buildings that should not have complemented each other but somehow did, and thought, as I almost always did when walking to work, that I was the luckiest person alive.
I was still thinking that when I let myself into the library, kept thinking it as I logged in to my computer, had it in the back of my mind as I brewed coffee, and let it settle there to keep me company as I got to work.
Two hours later, I was forced to revise my opinion. No way could I be considered lucky if my boss was standing in my office, clutching a sheet of paper and shaking his head.
“Minerva, did you really think I was going to ignore this?”
In a perfect world—the world in which I would continue to be the luckiest person alive—yes, I would have expected him to ignore everything I wanted him to. Sadly, this was not a perfect world, and I was going to have to work hard to convince Stephen that, even though the grant I’d been promised from an area nonprofit group had vaporized when a major donor had gone bankrupt, there were still other methods of funding next year’s bookmobile operations.
“There are other possibilities,” I said.
“Possibilities of what?” he asked. “Spending even more time and money on efforts to bring a handful of books to a handful of patrons? Tell me how that’s a sensible use of the library’s extremely limited resources. We must think of the greater good, Minnie.”
At least he’d pulled back from calling me by my full name. I took that as a good omen and started marshaling my arguments. They were the same ones I’d written into the memo I’d e-mailed when I’d received the bad news about the grant, but maybe they’d be more believable if I used positive facial expressions, persuasive oratory, and hand gestures that communicated sincerity.
“Exactly,” I said, smiling and nodding. “Just like our mission statement says, we serve as a learning center for all residents of the community.” Life didn’t get much better than when I could back up my ideas with the statement Stephen had written himself.
He fluttered the e-mail again. “I don’t see the connection between that and the loss of the bookmobile funding. And your latest foray into serving homebound patrons is only going to add more cost to your operations.”
My chin started to slide forward into what my mother would have called my stubborn stance. I almost put one hand to my face to push it back. Getting red-cheeked and angry would not help my case. Logic—that’s what I needed.
“All residents,” I reminded him. “We’re supposed to be a learning center for everyone, yet some of our patrons can’t come to the library, especially in the winter months.” I glanced at the window behind me, where a light snowfall had started. Thank you, serendipity.
“That’s well and good,” Stephen said, “but we cannot operate without proper funding.”
I knew that. Of course I knew that. How could I not, when it was up to me to provide services on an annual budget that was getting smaller and smaller? For a moment, I wished fiercely for the settlement of the late Stan Larabee’s estate. Stan’s will had included a generous bequest to the library, but his relatives were contesting the will, and it was a toss-up if we’d ever see any of Stan’s intended gift.