Greetings from northern Sudan! Today Mark and I put the final brick into the schoolhouse. It was super hot, so when we were done, we took a delightful swim. Before we got in, they warned us about guinea worm. Ever heard of it? Let’s just say I tried to keep my mouth closed so I didn’t swallow any water during my swim. If I did, a year from now, a 3-foot-long worm might emerge through my skin. I’m already on the lookout. Bisous! Coco
Mark had come into a ton of money when his aunt Rose passed away, and he and Coco decided to spend the year after their wedding traveling to developing countries to do humanitarian work. Mark had trained as an engineer, so he knew how to build houses and schools. Coco used her skills as a nurse to treat patients and educate the townspeople about basic medical care.
I missed her so much. She and our older sister, Maddie, were two of my best friends in the world. Chatsworth was a couple hours away from New York City, where Maddie still lived. Both of us were a little less than three hours from the Ulster County town where my mom and my stepfather, who had been Dad since I was eight, lived. Our family managed to see each other every few months; sometimes—in a string of holidays or birthdays—it was as much as once a month. In between, we all burned up the phone lines talking several times a week. Now, it was catch-as-catch-can with Coco’s scant access to technology. I anticipated her postcards like each one was a missive from heaven.
In just three weeks, she would be in Khartoum, where the phones were more plentiful, and we would finally be able to have a real chat.
That night, I snuggled down under my covers, taking a deep breath of the crisp, sweet air pouring in through the window, happy to return to the embrace of my pillow-top mattress. Delightfully happy. Almost perfectly happy. Except that I had a queen bed, which was pretty roomy for one person.
A very small part of me was willing to admit that the blaring background and constant pulse of New York had become like soothing white noise at bedtime during the years I had lived there. I loved Chatsworth. Loved, loved, loved. Like a croissant loves chocolate. Still, I couldn’t help but admit that sometimes the refreshing quiet of Chatsworth could already be a little too . . . quiet. And if I had been the type of person to get lonely, it was possible that I might have felt a teeny, tiny bit of loneliness now. Which was why it was such a good thing that I wasn’t the kind of person who got lonely.
Just in case, I thought of the least lonely place I could: the Chatsworth Library. Within its walls were longtime friends whose kindnesses and adventures had inspired me and entertained me as far back as I could remember. Sense and Sensibility’s Marianne Dashwood would not have sulked in her soup about being boyfriend-less. Miss Nelson wouldn’t have gone missing again due to an ice cream hangover from her single lady pity party. Neither would Viola Swamp. And fair Rosalind from As You Like It would have dressed up like a man and found her fellow and . . . well, anyway . . . the library. That’s where I would go tomorrow, I resolved, and I finally fell asleep thinking about settling down in my favorite reading nook surrounded by books and the shafts of light streaming through the windows.
—TWO—
I poked at my ringing phone to answer it without running off the road. Managing to open it and hit speakerphone, I heard Kendra’s voice from far away. “Where are you?”
“Driving to the library,” I shouted.
“For a change,” Kendra joked. “Dodie, you do realize that speakerphone amplifies your voice, right?”
“I know,” I said a little more quietly. “And yes, I’ve practically melted my library card in the past two months from overuse. Need anything?”
“Nah, I think that new five-hundred-page biography of Abigail Adams that I just got there with you on Wednesday should tide me over for a bit.” Kendra laughed.
“Cool. I’m in the lot now, so I’ll call you later.”
I could have chatted with her all the way up to the door of the library, but I wanted to enjoy this moment, the feeling of possibility before walking inside, knowing that endless choices awaited me.
When I lived in Manhattan, I often visited the flower market. I would go first thing in the morning, tea in hand; walk to the very center, where all the heady smells pooled; and then meander from row to row. Sometimes I bought gerbera daisies in just the right shade of red orange, or yellow French tulips with pink veins as I’d planned. Other times, I ended up taking home something unexpected—a branch of cherry blossoms or pussy willows. Either way, whatever I brought home was always perfect. The library was like this too—you could get exactly what you were looking for or surprise yourself. And at the library, you didn’t even have to pay!
Instead of a brick schoolhouse building like many New England libraries, the Chatsworth one was housed in a sturdy, cream-colored clapboard rectangle with two small additions on either side for the audiovisuals room and the computer lab. The shingles seemed like a little wink on such a big building, especially since the shutters on each window had been painted a subtle but unmistakable pale green. People often approached the building in hushed tones and left it talking excitedly. It is definitely hushed today, I thought. In fact, no one was leaving the building. No one was going up to it either. Except me.
The interior of the library was in utter darkness. My heart sank as I saw the sign in the window: CLOSED INDEFINITELY FOR RENOVATIONS.
I stood there for several minutes. The door to the addition opened. The assistant librarian and my friend Geraldine’s bottom appeared, then the rest of her. She was tugging a trash bag.
I rushed up to her as she hitched it into the dumpster. She lifted the surgical mask off her face and said, without a touch of surprise, “Hi, Dodie. Bummer, eh?”
“What happened?” I spluttered.
“Asbestos abatement.” Geraldine squinched up her face.
“How much needs to be abated?”
“No idea, but it sounds like a lot. The McClenahan kid went exploring on his own and must have stepped through the floor, which was actually the ceiling, because it started raining asbestos during story circle yesterday.”
“No one knew it was there? How is that possible?”
Geraldine shrugged. “Maybe they knew but didn’t do anything about it. Anyway, they have to now.”
“Why?” I asked plaintively, though of course I knew the answer. I didn’t want to be inside an asbestos-infested building any more than the next person.
“Because Officer Frederick was in the story circle at the time with his niece.”
“I see.”
“Yeah, the inspector said the electricity and pipes are outdated, so they’ll probably do a big overhaul while they’re at it. I wouldn’t be surprised if it took them until next Christmas, judging by how long it took them to renovate the Derbyshire Library,” Geraldine mused.
I tried to breathe very slowly through my nose. “The Derbyshire Library?”
I had been there once after running an errand nearby. It smelled so ascetic—like a new car. The books hadn’t had time to settle in and exude their historic perfume. It had felt like a place doing an impression of a library instead of actually being one.
“You okay, Dodie?” Geraldine asked. “You look really pale all of a sudden.”
“I’ll be fine.”