Graydon’s face went from politely kind to frozen. He stared down at me. “You’re Minnie Hamilton?”
I blinked. Somehow I’d thought he’d known who I was. Somehow I’d figured he’d seen my mishap and understood that these things can happen to competent and intelligent people who sometimes didn’t pay quite enough attention to where they were going.
“Yes,” I said, lifting my chin. “I’m Minnie.”
He nodded but didn’t say a word. At least not to me. Instead, he looked at Otis and the other two board members. “Shall we get started? I don’t want to take up any more of your time than is necessary.”
They walked away without a backward glance.
I watched them go, getting a sick feeling deep in my stomach that my professional future was not as rosy as it had been ten minutes earlier.
Chapter 14
The next day was a bookmobile day. We were in the southeast part of Tonedagana County, and driving the curvy, hilly, narrow roads kept my mind too occupied to tell Julia the tale of the previous afternoon. I’d started to talk about it at the first stop, but we were stampeded by too many children in search of books for me to be able to finish. The moment I started braking for the second stop, however, Julia was pumping me for the rest of the narrative. I obliged, and was to the part where I was walking backward in the lobby, when a carload of white-haired ladies pulled into the parking lot.
“Have to finish this later,” I told Julia, nodding at our incoming visitors. “It’s the softball team.”
Julia’s face, which had started to droop, perked up. “All of them?”
I peered out the window. “No, but more than half. Pitcher, catcher, shortstop, left fielder, center fielder.”
“Oh, excellent.” Julia beamed. “I love these ladies. What shall we give them today?”
A few months earlier, we’d stopped for lunch at a small café in the tiny town of Peebles. The waitress had noticed the mammoth vehicle parked at the curb and asked us about the bookmobile. When I said the phrase “thousands of books,” she’d grinned and said, “I have to tell my mother-in-law about this. Do you happen to have a copy of your schedule?”
Since I always carried a few copies, I pulled one out and handed it over.
“Perfect,” she said, scanning the list. “I bet you’ll see them next week.”
“Them?” Julia and I had asked.
The waitress had just laughed and told us that we’d know them when we saw them.
And we did. No question about it.
The waitress’s mother-in-law happened to be the pitcher and coach of a local softball team, and the entire team, with the exception of one player, had been playing together since they were in high school. How they’d managed to stay a healthy team was a mystery of immense proportions, but their fifty years of experience—each, not total—pushed them to the top of their league every year. Only the catcher was a newcomer, and that was because the original catcher and her husband had retired to Arizona.
“Still playing ball, though,” Corky Grigsby had said that first day, nodding. “What about you ladies?” She flicked an experienced glance over Julia and me. “No time like the present to join a team. Do you play?”
I’d smiled and said I was more the swimming/hiking/bicycling type, but Julia had looked interested.
Now I looked at her as she unlocked the door and pushed it open. “You know Corky’s going to ask if you’ve joined a softball team.”
“And I have,” she said. “You are looking at the new right fielder for the Chilson Swingers.”
“Really? Did you have to try out or anything?”
“They asked how much I’d played, and I told them.” Julia pulled down an imaginary baseball cap and pounded her fist into an imaginary glove.
“Which was how much?” I asked.
“Gym class, back in high school.” She looked at me and grinned. “I’m going to be horrible, but I’m going to have fun.”
Of that, I was sure. If I hadn’t known that Julia was a world-class actor famous in theatrical circles around the world, I would have thought she was a fun-loving party girl who’d never grown up. Of course, it seemed as if there was a lot of overlap between those two things.
Corky and her crew came up the steps into the bookmobile. In a line, they went straight to the front to give Eddie his morning greeting, then came back and stood around Julia and me in a semicircle.
“What do you have for us today?” Corky asked. “And, for crying out loud, don’t give us anything that’ll make us think. It’s summer, you know.”
“Horror,” I said promptly.
The first time the softball team had visited the bookmobile—all nine of them, and I was glad they hadn’t brought any of the backup players, because I wasn’t sure the vehicle could take it—they’d requested that we give them books they’d never read, or books their mothers would have warned them about, or books that would shock their children. All three, if possible. They’d read Fifty Shades of Grey a few weeks ago, and the left fielder said she’d learned only two things, which she thought was pretty good for an old lady.
“Horror? Excellent!” the shortstop said, rubbing her hands together. “This is going to be fun. Give me something that will keep me awake all night. I don’t sleep for beans these days. At least this way I’ll have a good reason.” She elbowed the center fielder in the ribs. “And maybe I’ll wake up Joe and tell him I need comforting. What do you think?”
The ladies laughed, and I told Julia to get the bag of books I’d stashed behind the back desk. She opened the bag, peered in, and looked puzzled. “Lord of the Flies?”
“Wait a minute,” Corky said, frowning. “My kids read this book in school. You’re not trying to educate us, are you?”
“My kids read this, too,” the catcher said. “It can’t be that scary.”
I smiled. “Read the first few chapters late at night when no one else is awake. Then come back and tell me how you felt.”
Squinting with doubt, they took the books as I reassured them they wouldn’t be learning a thing. And they probably wouldn’t; they’d all lived long enough to know what people could do to each other.
I pushed away the chill of remembered fear that I’d felt upon first reading the book and turned to greet the person who’d arrived while Julia and I had been busy with the team. He was browsing the natural-history books, and was thirtyish, with long hair pulled back into a tidy ponytail. Though I’d never seen him on the bookmobile before, he looked familiar.
“Hi,” I said, stepping forward. “I’m Minnie Hamilton. Is this your first visit to the bookmobile?” Odds were high that it was, but it was also possible that I’d forgotten one face among the hundreds.
“What’s that?” The guy looked across the top of my head, then looked down. “Oh. Hi. Yeah. It is. Nice bus you got here.”
He smiled, and I got the itchy feeling that he was trying to flirt with me.
“Thank you,” I said politely. “Is there anything in which you’re interested?” Nothing like perfect grammar to turn off a prospective suitor.
His smile went wider. “My name is Jared Moyle,” he said.
The name meant nothing to me, but I nodded. “Nice to meet you, Jared. If you need a library card, either Julia or I can help you with the paperwork. Let me know if you need any help finding a book,” I said, stressing the “book” part ever so slightly.
“Mrr.” Eddie waltzed past me and thumped Jared on the back of the knees.
In the dog stories I’d read, the narrators often gave their canine friends credit for knowing, at a single doggy sniff, whether or not a newcomer was trustworthy. I did not attribute that power of discernment to Eddie. He was mostly likely after one of two things: either Jared smelled like a cat treat or Jared was wearing pants that looked like something Eddie wanted to shed upon.