“Sure, that would be great. My parents got tied up . . .” She looked down at her shoes.
After dropping her off, I rolled down the window to get my fix of fall air. I could smell burning leaves somewhere. It should have felt more like winter by now. But I loved the slow change of the season, the way the leaves smoldered red for weeks and weeks before sailing dazedly off the branches toward earth. Breathing deeply, I felt my heart lift even higher as I arrived home.
Back in July, my Chatsworth house had the same happy effect on me when my mother and I first visited it. Mom had come to town to help me choose a place to live. Partly because of how amazing she is. Partly because she and Dad were going to loan me a little money for a small down payment, knowing it would take me some time to find my financial footing. But mostly because she feared that when it came to the really big decisions—like which adorable house I would want to buy—I might be a little . . . indecisive. She and Dad had had to listen to me talk for hours about whether I would want Greek Revival style or Queen Anne, or a Victorian or a Federal home. Even before I had known whether those existed in Chatsworth or if any of them would be in my limited price range.
Sullivan had started scouting for-sale houses when she was driving around town. “There’s one you have to see. It’s got kind of a weird mushing together of different styles, which some people wouldn’t go for, but I think it’s super cute.” When my mom and I pulled up to the house that day, my face flushed. I was certain, right away, that it was meant to be my home. I couldn’t describe the architectural style. Turns out, neither could the broker, Bonnie. As we stood in front, she shuffled through the papers attached to her clipboard. “Um, it says Arts and Crafts on one page, Tudor on the other, and Cotswold Cottage on this other description.”
Mom later told me my eyes lit up. Three times. Especially at the mention of “Cotswold Cottage.” How very fairy-tale-ish!
I loved the fact that it had three different identities all linked by a certain quirky but solid charm. The main foundation was a sensible brick rectangle, but sticking out from what would have been the second-floor level, above the front door, was a projection of sand-colored stucco facing. A single peaked gable bisected the roof rising behind it. Forest-green half timbers striped downward from the peak above the mullioned window. The whole roof was covered in thin, almost pumpernickel-dark shingles. On the left side of the house, there was a tall brick chimney; on the right side, an adorable little room jutted out from the front, also in sand-colored stucco, with dark-green frames on the three floor-to-ceiling windows. A sunroom!
When Bonnie gave us the tour, I saw that the sunroom was smaller than it had looked from the outside—the house itself wasn’t all that large—but it would be a lovely place to put a comfy chair so I could read and look out the window with a cup of tea.
As she took us through the rest of the rooms, it felt like a house that had been well loved, lived in, and—most of all—that wanted to be well loved and lived in again.
“And this is the final treat,” Bonnie announced, gesturing through the kitchen toward the back of the house. I was busy imagining where all my pots and pans would go, the dinner parties I would throw there, and chatting with my guests in the adjacent living room, which was open to the kitchen. Bonnie opened a glass door at the back of the house that had been covered by a gauzy curtain. “This is the full sunroom.”
I turned to my mother and whispered, “I want to live here.”
She nodded, giving me only a Shh, we don’t want to seem overeager look. Instead of being surprised by how sure I was, she recognized that this house was perfect for me too. I smiled at my mom reassuringly. She was probably worried we’d have a repeat of New York, when the broker I was working with to find an apartment to rent claimed that he’d never received my check—after cashing it.
Her return smile didn’t quite reach her eyes. She might also have been a little worried about my transition from the big city to a small town. In New York there had been plenty of glamorous parties with my worldly boyfriend Daniel, cultural events featuring artists and literati, and restaurants serving burrata over arugula with Dalmatian fig jam (for example). But New York also meant giving up a lot. As much of an optimist as I was, I could best describe my experience of the New York dating scene as meeting different versions of the same immature, superficial man over and over. I knew there were others, but I hadn’t found them. And I missed being able to take long green walks. Central Park was great, but it wasn’t a tree-lined neighborhood. I didn’t have a yard in New York. I couldn’t get a dog. On the salary I’d probably be earning there for the foreseeable future, I couldn’t have more than four walls. I had found myself wishing for an escape from the city, not only for a weekend here or there to somewhere I felt less anonymous but to somewhere I could put down roots and belong.
Now, thanks to Sullivan and my parents, I had the perfect house of my own—a blend of city and country, stately and humble and homey and artsy and overall cozy and welcoming.
As I put the key in the door, I felt just how charmed my life was. Now if only I could keep making it better for Elmira . . . and Lula and her kids . . . and all the other people of Chatsworth who had a big, fat, book-shaped hole in their lives without a nearby library to go to.
—THREE—
The flyer was a smashing success. I set up three big wicker baskets in my art room so that the kids and parents could stop by anytime to dump in their donations. The baskets filled up more quickly than I could have imagined.
“Your flyer is a classic,” I complimented Elmira on the sidewalk a few days later. “We’re swimming in books!”
I set up a community lending library in my classroom, but it didn’t last very long. Patrons stopped by and disrupted my classes, and it started taking over all the shelves that were meant for art supplies. When Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire fell off a desk and crushed my student Abel’s rather miraculous drinking-straw suspension bridge, I knew it was time to reconsider the location.
“Tell me everything,” Kendra insisted when I called a debriefing over coffee in the teachers’ lounge, and I happily obliged, right down to Abel’s stoic response when he heard about the demise of his construction.
“So I’ve been trying to figure out where else it could go. I was hoping some part of the school library could be used for the lending library, but I know you only have room in there for a small selection of children’s books as it is.”
“What about the public library at Derbyshire?” Kendra asked.
“I thought about it, but we need something here. And I really want the place to have a different vibe. I don’t want anyone who comes in to feel like they have to be quiet or obey a ton of rules. I see it as more of a social place,” I revealed. “More intimate feeling. Plus, Derbyshire Library is so far away.”
Kendra nodded. “You’re thinking of installing it in your home for now, aren’t you?”
I secretly had been. “Part of me realizes it’s a crazy idea. I mean, my house isn’t that big. But it’s big enough, especially for one person. I could use the sunroom in the back of the house for the time being. Move out some of the furniture and try to fit as many books in as I can. There won’t be room for tons of people to linger, but that’s okay. Hopefully they’ll be encouraged to come and find a book, have a cup of tea together somewhere afterward, invite each other over for book clubs, that sort of thing.” Actually, I hoped all those things could be squeezed into the back sunroom somehow, but first things first . . .