“No, it was anonymous. I wish I knew so I could thank them. Or at least dedicate the new children’s room in their honor. So what we’re working on tomorrow is getting set up in the new space.”
“Do you need me?”
She sighed in relief that I asked. “Desperately.” I could go to Gran’s tomorrow to get everything together. Besides, it would be nice to have something to distract me from feeling guilty about not crying and wondering what the hell I was going to do with that money.
“Oh thank goodness.” She gave me the address and I wrote it down. Nice. It was right up the street from the library in a vacant storefront. Weird that whoever had donated the space didn’t want to be known.
“Who was that?” Raine asked as she baked yet another batch of cookies. I had no idea where this baking obsession had come from, but I didn’t want it to stop anytime soon.
“Madeline. The library has gotten a temp space, so she needs me to come down and help set it up. I didn’t tell her about Gran. Should I have? I just assumed if I did, she’d tell me I didn’t have to come, and I really need to do something else right now.”
“Up to you. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.” That wasn’t necessarily true. “Are you sure you’re up for it?”
“I think so. It would be nice to get back to something normal. Or, at least semi-normal. They say things come in threes. So the fire was one, Gran was two. What’s the third thing going to be? Zombie apocalypse?” I shouldn’t have thought about that. Now I’d jinxed myself.
“Babe, I think you need to get out of this house and go do something. It would be good for you,” she said.
“Okay, then I’m going to go over there tomorrow. And then maybe we can head over to Gran’s after. You’re still up for coming with me?”
“Absolutely. Whatever you need.”
The temporary library space was even better than I thought it would be. There were huge windows that opened to the street and had views of the park across the way. The ceilings were high and there was a second floor, complete with an elevator. The windows had little platforms where we could put displays, which would be really fun to set up.
“I think it will work for us,” Madeline said as she strolled across the floor. “We’ve got the temporary shelves coming in, but we’ve got to figure out where everything is going to go before we even think about setting them up.” As always, Madeline was in charge and she’d doled out assignments. There was a thin layer of dust over everything that had to be dealt with first.
I’d worn comfortable jeans and a t-shirt that I didn’t mind getting dirty, and set to work mopping the floor.
“I feel like it’s been forever since I’ve seen you,” Sabrina said as she got on a ladder to wash the enormous windows.
“I know. How’s everything going?”
“Same old, same old. Bored out of my mind. I don’t know what people who don’t work all the time do with themselves. On the bright side, I’ve been watching a lot of Netflix and reading, so I guess that’s something.”
I laughed.
“I know how you feel. I always wish I had free time and then I get some and I don’t know what to do with it, or I feel guilty about wasting time. Not that reading is wasting time, but you know what I mean. There are always little chores that need to be done,” I said.
“Amen.” She sighed and moved down the ladder. “But what I really want to ask you is how have things been with that glorious young man you were flirting with?” I knew she was going to ask about Declan. The conversations around us died down and I could feel all the ears perking in our direction. Word had gotten out about Declan, surprise, surprise. Took long enough.
“Oh, um, things are good. He’s good. I’m good.” I didn’t know how to explain what things were like with Declan.
“Well, my advice is to lock that down as soon as you can. He’s not going to buy the cow if he can get the milk for free. Not that I’m saying you’re a milk-giving kind of girl.” Oh Declan was getting plenty of milk, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t getting anything out of our deal.
“So I should tell him to put a ring on it?” She pointed at me with the rag.
“Exactly,” she said.
Tracy, another one of the librarians started humming “Single Ladies” and that led to us all humming along and dancing as we worked. Who said librarians didn’t know how to have a good time?
“My arms hurt and it doesn’t look any different,” I said under my breath to Sabrina a few hours later. The space was clean (up to Madeline’s exacting standards) and now she was mapping out how to get the maximum amount of shelves in the space without making it too crowded.
“So do you think we should put them this way, or this way? Or maybe zig-zag them?” she said, motioning. Everyone started offering solutions and she wrote them all down.
“How about we calculate the area of the space, how much room we need to walk, and then take what’s left and divide that by the dimensions of the shelves?” I said.
“That’s a great idea,” Madeline said, scribbling it down. “Plus, we’ll have to have space for the check-out desk and reading corner and so forth.” She scribbled down some more numbers and then went to measure out spaces and make marks on the floor.
By the time we’d figured out where to put the shelves, I was tired and achy and hungry.
“I think that’s it for today. The shelves should be here tomorrow, but I’ve paid extra for them to be set up. I’ll be here to supervise, but it would be great to have a few extra hands. Any volunteers?” Nearly everyone’s hand went up. My family was meeting again to deal with the will, so I figured that was going to take most of the day to hash out.
“Sorry, I have a family thing.” I still hadn’t told anyone about Gran. It would have just unleashed a lot of attention and sympathy that I didn’t think I was ready to deal with.
“That’s fine, we’ve got plenty of hands to help. I’m thinking this weekend the replacement books will start coming in. I’ve got an ad in the paper asking for helpers to come and unload. I hope people will show up, but we’ll see.” Oh, people were going to show up. Probably more than she thought.
Raine picked me up from the building and said hello to everyone. They knew her pretty well since she came often to the library to visit me and participate in some of the events.
“Ready to go?”
“I’m starving,” I said, rubbing my stomach. “I’ve barely eaten anything today. And I really want to shower and change my clothes.”
“Well, I’ve got food in the car and we can go home if you want to shower.” Bless her.
I showered at home and stuffed my face with wontons, lettuce wraps and eggrolls and we headed out to Gran’s.
“It feels so empty,” I said when we opened the door. The house was also eerily quiet. I turned the lights on and sighed. “I feel weird now. Like I shouldn’t touch anything.” How was I going to do this? God, it was like I was ransacking her house.
“Just take a minute. We don’t have to do anything today. We can come back tomorrow. Just give yourself some time.” I nodded and slowly walked through the house, looking at all Gran’s things. Her teacup collection, her silver service, her paintings.
“I keep expecting her to walk around the corner and tell me to stand up straight,” I whispered.
“Why are you whispering?” Raine asked, also whispering.
“Because I feel like I’m a criminal and I’m trespassing.” I circled back to the sun porch where we’d had our tea and Gran had met Declan. What a disaster that had started out as, but by the time we’d left, it seemed like she actually liked him.
I inhaled and blew out a breath slowly.
“Okay. I think I’m okay.” Gran kept her albums on a bookshelf in a row. I pulled several of them off and sat down on the floor. They were all dated and there were about thirty of them.
“We should have brought a box or something,” Raine said, sitting down next to me. The albums weren’t
even dusty. Someone must have cleaned them off recently.
“Yeah. I guess I wasn’t thinking ahead.” I didn’t open the first album. It was from Gran’s childhood, according to the label on the spine.
“We should just bring them back with us. There’s too many to look at here,” Raine said.
“Okay, but let’s just take a few.” I pulled the first five off the shelf and stacked them up.
“Is there anything else you think we should get? Maybe some of the pictures she has around?” she said. Gran didn’t keep a lot of pictures up, in general. Most of them were formal posed pictures, including her wedding picture and the last photo of the entire family. I was a few years younger and my hair was a lot longer in that picture.
“Yeah, sure.” Raine stacked the pictures in her arms and I got the albums.
“This really does feel like stealing,” I said as we walked out to the car.
“She’s your grandmother. It’s not stealing. She’d want you to write her a good obituary. Don’t you think?”
She would. I hoped she’d be proud that I’d agreed to do this. To do her life justice.
“I guess.” We got the albums in the car and I still felt uneasy. “I wish I could talk to my parents about this, but Mom’s a wreck and Dad’s too busy dealing with her and Gerald and Pearl and I don’t want to bug him.”
“Talk to me. I haven’t been through this before, but I’m here for you, babe.”
“I know. You’re better than a sister.”
“Damn right,” she said.
I kept turning over my shoulder and watching the albums as we drove home. If anything happened to them while they were in my care, I’d never forgive myself. I didn’t think Gran would, either.
“Wow, she looks so young,” Raine said as we looked through the first album. It had taken nearly a half-hour of holding it in my lap before I opened it.
“I know. I’ve only known her when she’s been older. It’s hard to think of your grandmother as being young, you know?” I’d seen pictures of her before, but not so many at once.
She was a beauty, that was for sure. I couldn’t see any of my features in her face.
I put a sticky note on the page with one of her school pictures so I could find it later.
“Look at that one. She almost looks like she has Resting Bitch Face,” Raine said, pointing to a picture where Gran was posed on a bench.
“Yeah, she kind of does.” Clearly, Gran hadn’t been in a good mood for the picture. The more I looked at it, the more I found it hilarious. A snort of laughter escaped my mouth and before I knew it, I was giggling.
“What are you laughing about?”
“Gran’s Resting Bitch Face,” I said between bursts of laughter. “She’d kill me if she heard me say that, but it’s so true.”
I wiped tears of laughter from my eyes. Oh, so I could cry from laughing, but I couldn’t cry from grief. Nice.
“I think I need a break,” I said, setting the album down gently on the coffee table. It had been a long day.
Raine motioned for me to turn my back to her and she started rubbing my shoulders.
“So I was thinking we should go out this weekend. See Angie. I’m sure Blue would give you free drinks if you told him about your Gran.” He probably would. “What do you think?”
“I don’t know. I’ll think about it. I just have so much going on right now.” At least we didn’t have a book due.
“Okay, if you don’t want to do that, then will you look at something I’ve been working on?” Clearly, she’d been waiting to ask me about this.
“You’ve been working on something? When?”
“Couldn’t sleep the other night,” she said, hopping up to grab her laptop and bring it over.
“Is it something for us, or something for you?” We’d talked about writing individual books, but we preferred to write them together. Two brains were better than one.
“It’s a little bit for that secret book we’ve been talking about forever. I just had this voice in my head and I couldn’t get it out.” She pulled up the Word document and handed me the computer.
“If you hate it, don’t tell me.” I wasn’t going to hate it. I could never hate something Raine had written.
“I’ll lie,” I said and started scanning the words while Raine waited, bouncing a little in anticipation of what I would think.
She only had about two thousand words done, but when I got to the end of what she’d written, I had to sit back and think for a minute. But that wasn’t good enough for Raine.
“What do you think? You hate it, don’t you?
I shook my head slowly.
“No, I definitely don’t hate it. It’s amazing, Raine. Freaking amazing.” I wasn’t lying. The words she’d written were dark and gritty and harsh. Nothing like any of our previous books. Where did this come from?
“So it’s good? I’ve never tried something like this, but I just had this voice and it wouldn’t shut up. I didn’t even know what was coming out until I got the words down.” That was the mark of a good story. When it took a hold of you and wouldn’t let go. Not all of our books had been like that, but the few that had consumed us had sold the best and had pleased our fans the most.
“May I?” I said, poising my fingers over the keys.
“Oh, go ahead,” Raine said. I typed a few things, made a few tweaks and then handed the laptop back to her.
“Shit, this is fucking brilliant.” She typed a few more lines and I read over her shoulder as she typed. It was getting more brilliant the more she typed.
“Hand it over,” I said, and she did, and I typed a few more words.
“Oh, snap! We should end the chapter there. On a cliffhanger. Keep ‘em coming back for more.” I glanced at the albums. I really needed to go through them and work on Gran’s obit. But I could feel the words spinning in my brain. I was afraid that if I didn’t get them down, then they would be lost and I wouldn’t get them back.
“Okay, we can work for an hour and then I have to get back to this.”
“Yeah. One hour. You said you needed a break.”
“How the hell has it been three hours?” I said, rubbing my eyes. One hour had multiplied. Once we’d started, we didn’t want to stop. I was using words and descriptions and talking about things I’d never written about before. It felt good and fresh and I was a little high from the experience. We still didn’t know where the story was going. This was a first. Usually, we were meticulous about plotting our books. They didn’t necessarily turn out the way we planned, but at least there was a plan and a direction. This was a complete shot in the dark. It felt awesome.
“I don’t know,” Raine said, pushing her chair away from the desk.
“Holy crap, I’m starving. We should probably eat dinner or something.” She got up and stretched out her shoulders. We both had to remind ourselves to get up and stretch so we didn’t end up with hunchbacks. I was thinking of going to see a chiropractor soon. I’d rather spend money now than have a bowed back later.
“Hey, how about I make us something to eat and you can get back to work on the albums?” she said. I slowly got to my feet and sat back on the couch.
I was just opening the album when my phone went off. Another text from Declan.
Do you think I might be able to see you this weekend? I understand if you have family obligations, or if you’re not ready.
I did have family obligations, but I definitely wanted to see him. Between him and Raine, they were a break from the crazy that was my family.
Not sure when, but definitely. I need a break from everything.
I was definitely going to need a break after tomorrow. It was going to be a clusterfuck of epic proportions. There was no way around it.
Fantastic. Let me know and I’ll come pick you up.
Good. I had a little bright spot to look forward to.
I cracked the album open and went through more of the pictures. I found another one with Gran wearing a sour
face. Guess she wasn’t always so poised.
I made it through the first album and then went to the second. There were so many pictures of Gran posing with people I didn’t know. I wondered if their names or any other information was written on the backs, but I didn’t dare take them out of the album.
“Hey, why don’t you scan them? Then you won’t have to worry about the pictures being lost. You could put them into a slideshow or something,” Raine called from the kitchen.
Why hadn’t I thought of that? I got out my tablet and started taking pictures of the pictures. Gotta love technology.
My phone went off again, but this time it was my parents calling. I sighed heavily and then picked up.
“Hello?”
“Hello, Blair,” Dad said, and I was relieved.
“Hi, Dad. You doing okay?”
“I’m doing fine. Your mother is having a hard time, so I’m trying to be strong for her. It’s a lot to deal with.”
“It is.” I set the album aside so it didn’t fall off my lap. “Anything I can do?”
“You’re already doing enough. How is the obituary going?”
“Um, good. I’m just trying to get a sense of what I should write. I went to Gran’s and got some of her albums so I could get some of the pictures. Want me to read you what I’ve got so far?”
“Sure.”
I got my notepad where I’d started scribbling down ideas. I’d read some obits to make sure I followed the right form. It was sad how some obituaries were so short and didn’t contain much information. As if the person’s life hadn’t meant anything. I was a firm believer that everyone had a story. You just had to find it.
“How’s that?”
“Sounds good so far, Blair. You’re doing a good job. I’m very proud of you.”
“Thanks, Dad.” We rarely had moments like these. Sad that it took Gran’s death for one of them to happen.
“I was also wondering if maybe you could take your mother out sometime this weekend. Just get her out of the house for a while.”
That was the last thing I wanted to do, but I was going to suck it up because Dad rarely ever asked for anything. He needed a break.
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