So, budget in mind, instead of Gareth, I called Holly Terpening, one of the library’s clerks and my good friend. As I waited for her to pick up, I couldn’t help myself; I glanced over to where I’d found poor Andrea.
“Oh no,” I breathed.
“Minnie?” Holly asked. “Is that you? Are you okay?”
“Fine. Sorry. It’s just . . . I’ve been given the all clear to open the building, so come on in. And, Holly?” I tried not to wince at the vast amounts of fine black powder that covered the bookshelves. “If you have a couple of spare spray bottles, please bring them.”
I made three similar phone calls, then, before anyone else arrived, I jogged upstairs to Stephen’s former office for the mat he’d used for his winter boots. Its black rubber didn’t exactly match the medium gray tweediness of the downstairs carpeting, but it would cover that stomach-lurching dark red stain until I could get some carpet guys in.
Half an hour later, Holly, Donna, Kelsey, and I had managed to clean up the worst of the powdery mess. Josh, our IT guy, another good friend of mine, had volunteered to work the front desk while the women did the dirty work.
“I’m not very good at cleaning,” he said, sidling away.
“Just like a man,” Kelsey called after him.
“Just trying to get to the coffeemaker before you do,” he said, and he slid out of sight.
“He has a point,” Holly said, and Donna and I agreed. Kelsey had a tendency to make coffee strong enough to rule the world and, though I always made the first pot of the morning, every one after that was a race of sorts.
“Someday,” the thirtyish Kelsey said airily, “you young things will grow to appreciate the virtues of real coffee.”
Donna, a seventy-year-old marathoner and snowshoer, said, “Real coffee? The only good coffee is coffee that’s laden with cream and sugar.” Kelsey gave what didn’t appear to be a mock shudder, and we all laughed.
The chatter went on as the cleaning continued, and I knew we were trying not to think about what had happened in that spot a few hours earlier. Maybe we were being shallow and callous, and almost certainly we were being inappropriate, but I was starting to understand why law-enforcement officers joked at crime scenes. There was only so much sorrow you could let yourself feel before it consumed you; humor was a method of keeping the pain at bay.
“I think we’ve got it, ladies,” I said, stepping back and looking over our work. Though, if I looked hard, I could see minute traces of fine black powder in some crevices, we’d cleaned every surface that anyone would touch and we’d made sure the books were spick-and-span. We wouldn’t pass the white-glove test, but, then, a library rarely did. “Thanks so much for helping.”
Donna and Kelsey murmured that it was no problem, and Holly rolled her eyes. “Don’t be such a twinkle toes. Of course we’d help.”
I squinted at her as the other women went to put away the cleaning supplies. “Twinkle toes?”
She grinned. “It’s Wilson’s new phrase.”
Wilson was her eight-year-old son. Her daughter, Anna, was six, and though Holly’s husband, Brian, was currently working out West, all seemed well with the Terpening household. “Where did that come from?”
“Twinkle toes?” Holly shrugged as we walked toward the main desk. “Your guess is as good as mine.” She lightly elbowed me. “Would you look at that?” She nodded toward the stocky thirtyish Josh. “Who knew he was such an excellent desk clerk?”
Josh slid her a look that could kill. The two had recently been at odds over what he saw as interference on her part regarding the decorating of his first house purchase. Josh had ostentatiously ignored each and every one of her suggestions; then, at his housewarming, she’d discovered that the small home was decorated precisely as she’d recommended.
He’d found the whole episode tremendously funny. Though Holly had been thrilled at how well her ideas had turned out, she’d also been annoyed at Josh’s game playing. That had been a few weeks ago, and their respective feathers were only now smoothing down. Now, instead of listening to them go at it like brother and sister, I sent up a very shiny distraction.
“They’re talking about setting up the interviews,” I said.
Both their heads whipped around.
“They?” Josh asked. “You mean the library board?”
“For Stephen’s job?” Holly inched toward me and looked around. No one was close by, but she lowered her voice to ask, “When’s your interview?”
“Yeah,” Josh said, nodding. “You need to tell us so we can help you prepare. I’ll be the board chair.” He dropped his voice an octave. “Ms. Hamilton, please tell us what you think qualifies you for this position.”
Holly crouched down about five inches to mimic my height. She twirled her straight brown hair and said in a voice startlingly like mine, “Mr. Chairman, I worked under Stephen Rangel for four years, and I’m quite sure that anyone smarter than a box fan would be more qualified than he was.”
“Yes, I see what you mean,” Josh said in his chairman’s voice. “Still, we would like to hear specifics about your credentials.”
Holly, still crouching, said, “As you can see from my resume—”
“No, they can’t.”
My friends stopped their playacting. “What do you mean?” Holly asked, standing up and narrowing her eyes.
“Well,” I said, inching away, “I haven’t actually applied for the job.”
“What?”
“Shhh,” I told them, making shushing gestures with my hands. “This is a library. No loud exclamations of surprise allowed.”
“Don’t care,” Josh said. “Why haven’t you applied? What have you been doing the past month?”
“Minnie, you have to apply,” Holly almost wailed. “Who knows what we’ll get if you don’t. Didn’t Stephen practically promise you the job?”
What Stephen had told me was that he was grooming me to be his eventual successor. But that had been before his departure had been accelerated by multiple years. “The library board,” I said, “hires the director, not Stephen. Besides, I’m not sure I want the job.”
Holly pointed her index finger straight at me. “You’re the obvious choice. Don’t mess this up, Minnie.”
“Yeah,” Josh said. “Get to work on your application, or we’ll fill it out for you.”
Holly’s face brightened. “That’s a great idea! I bet we could write up a better one for Minnie than Minnie would.”
“And we’d do a lot better job on her resume, too.” Josh started laughing. “She’d be all accurate about every single freaking thing. No one does that.”
“When you’re done,” I said, “let me know. I’ll have it bound and shelved in the fiction section.” I gave them a bright smile and headed to my office.
* * *
Instead of going home to the marina after work, I walked to the boardinghouse of my aunt Frances. She was sitting on the front porch’s swing and spied me as I turned the last corner.
“Minnie!” She jumped off the white-slatted swing, letting it bounce up and down in its chains. Down the creaky wooden steps she hurtled, then ran the last yards toward me with arms flung open wide.
I braced myself for a jarring thud, but she gently enfolded me in her embrace and, once again, I knew how lucky I was that my father had such a wonderful older sister. Not only had she invited a young Minnie to spend her summers in Chilson, where I’d met Kristen and Rafe and many others, but she still welcomed me back to her home every fall when it got too cold on the houseboat. Come spring, of course, she kicked me out, but I was happy enough to move.
Not that I disliked the people who replaced me; I always liked them very much. No, it was more that I would have been a fifth wheel to the summer boarders and might have messed up my aunt’s careful calculations. This was because, though my aunt’s summer guests didn’t know it, they’d been selected based on compatibility with another guest.