by Mindy Klasky
“What’s wrong, dear?”
She might have been an eighty-one-year-old woman. She might have believed that my fate depended on my ability to withstand the siren call of toads. She might have worried about the most absurd disasters ever to preoccupy a human mind.
But she loved me. She loved me despite my unsightly freckles and unruly curls and smudged eyeglasses. And it seemed like I was never going to find another person who would—never find a man who would.
I shook my head. “Nothing, Gran. I just wish….” I closed my eyes. “I wish I had a magic wand. I wish that I could change things.”
“Things?”
I came to my senses just in time. The last detail I needed to share with Gran was the existence of my Imaginary Boyfriend. She was still waiting for me to get over Scott, a man she’d never truly liked. If she heard about Jason, she’d immediately start planning our wedding, my baby shower, our child’s first birthday party, all before I could complete my confession. I forced myself to laugh. “Oh, Gran, you know. Just things. Make the day sunny. Find the perfect shoes to go with my new skirt. Finish shelving our new books.”
“Jane, you know there aren’t any shortcuts. No magic wands in the real world.”
“Of course not,” I sighed, glancing at my clock. 10:30 sharp. “Sorry, Gran. I really do have to run to that meeting.”
As I hung up the phone, I wondered what other promises I’d make before the month was over. I shook my head and crossed the floor to Evelyn’s office. She sat behind her desk; it was half-buried beneath the piles of important papers that had cascaded across its faux-leather surface. I glanced at the prints on the walls—the regimented gardens at Mount Vernon and the colonnaded porch of Monticello—and I wondered once again how my disorganized boss could have chosen to work in a library collection based on order, harmony, and the rational strength of the human mind.
“Jane,” Evelyn said as I stopped in her doorway. “Good news and bad news.” She waved me toward a chair.
I always felt vaguely guilty when I sat across from her desk, as if I were reporting to the principal of my elementary school. It didn’t help that Evelyn looked exactly like the Mother Superior in The Sound of Music. You know, the one who looks like John Wayne in a nun’s habit? Poor thing.
I smiled as I sat down. “The board decided that we should hire three new reference librarians, and I’ll be in charge of the department?”
She shook her head ruefully. “I’m afraid not.”
Unease curled through my gut. This looked serious. “I’ll take the good news first, then.”
She blinked at me, and I realized that she was a bad-news-first person. She’d be the one to eat her pickled beets before anything else on her plate, holding her nose if she had to. I never understood that—what would happen if you filled up on pickled beets? Or got sick on them? Or had to leave before dessert? What if you didn’t have any room left for chocolate cheesecake parfait?
“The good news, then,” she said. “The board has authorized a special fund for a new project.”
I smiled in anticipation, but Evelyn looked away. All righty, then. The good news wasn’t actually all that good. I braced myself mentally and asked, “What sort of project?”
“You know that we’ve been trying to increase walk-in traffic. We want to be more a part of the neighborhood.”
I nodded, but I bit my tongue. It wasn’t like we had a treasure trove of novels and picture books. The Peabridge and its grounds might occupy a city block in Georgetown, in Washington D.C.’s most historic neighborhood. It might be nestled amid Federalist townhouses and cobbled streets, still looking like the colonial mansion it once had been. It might have grounds that were the envy of city gardeners up and down the East Coast.
But the Peabridge contained the world’s leading collection of books, manuscripts, incunabulae, and ephemera about life in eighteenth-century America. Not precisely after-school fare, and hardly a draw for a Mommy and Me book club.
Evelyn went on. “The board decided that we should expand our base by taking a page from Disney’s book. You know how they set up Epcot– each European country in its own special ‘land.’” I nodded warily. I couldn’t see any good place that this idea was heading. “Well, we’ll do the same thing here. We’ll turn the Peabridge into colonial America.”
“Turn it into….” I trailed off, bracing myself for the hit.
“Yes!” Evelyn exclaimed, with the enthusiasm of a parent explaining the joys of drilling and filling cavities. “We’ll wear costumes!”
“You have got to be kidding,” I said before I could stop myself. I felt guilty, though, when Evelyn’s face dropped. “Costumes?” I glanced toward Jason’s now-empty table. What sort of Imaginary Boyfriend would be attracted to a woman in hoops, a bodice, and a mob cap?
“The coffee bar just isn’t enough, Jane. We still don’t have the foot traffic that the board wants. Dr. Bishop has already made arrangements with the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation; they have some extra stock just sitting in a warehouse. The costumes will arrive by next Monday. You’ll see. This will be so much fun!”
Fun. Evelyn might look forward to new clothes. She could set aside that boxy pink and brown suit that was designed for a woman two decades younger. Me, though? I’d feel like I was dressing up for Halloween, every day of my working life. Where was that magic wand when I needed it?
I settled on a logical argument: “Evelyn, we’re supposed to support serious scholarship!”
“And we do. We will. But there’s nothing that says we have to be sticks in the mud while we’re doing it. After all, we don’t want anyone to think of us as ‘Marian the Librarian,’ do we? We don’t want to be boring and fussy and….” She trailed off, searching for a suitably terrible word.
I swallowed hard and realized that the worst bit of news remained untold. After all, the costumes had been the good news. I braved her gaze. “And the bad news?”
Evelyn answered in the grave tone of a physician diagnosing a fatal disease. “The board discussed salaries.”
No one became a librarian because they wanted to be rich. And absolutely no one took a job at a small private library—a library that had to dress its librarians in eighteenth-century embroidered silk just to get patrons through the door!—because they thought they’d retire early. I’d originally come to the Peabridge on an internship while I was studying to get my masters’ degree, and I’d stayed because I liked the people—Evelyn, the rest of the staff. The patrons. I wasn’t expecting to become a millionaire.
Still, I wasn’t prepared for Evelyn’s next words. “We’re going to have to cut your pay by twenty-five percent.” She rushed on. “I argued against it. I really did. But you know that there are still board members who don’t think that we need a reference librarian at all, that we only need an archivist.”
I couldn’t say anything.
I’d already reduced my vacation budget to a one-week car trip to the beach. I brought my lunch every day (or snuck a gigantissimo latte from the bar). Breakfast was a Pop-tart when I bothered at all.
Well, at least I wouldn’t need to waste money on a professional work wardrobe any more. But twenty-five percent? Not possible. Not even in my worst nightmares.
“Rent,” I croaked. “If you take a quarter of my pay, I can’t pay my rent. I’ll be out on the street, Evelyn. I’ll be living beneath Key Bridge, pushing a shopping cart to the library’s front door every morning.”
“Now, Jane,” Evelyn said, moderating her tone as if she were talking a jumper down from the top of the Washington Monument. “I told the board that twenty-five percent was too much, that we couldn’t do that to the staff. We especially couldn’t do that to you—I know that you’re already relatively underpaid, even in our field.”
Well, it was nice to hear her say that, at least. In fact, she actually looked pleased as she prepared to make her grand announcement. “Jane, I came up with something better. I’m offering you a home. Free of charge, f
or as long as you work at the Peabridge.”
“A home?” I blinked and wondered if I’d slipped into some alternate universe. I resisted the urge to glance around for hidden cameras, for some signal that this was a wacky new reality show.
“It’s perfect!” Evelyn raised her chins from her chocolate-colored blouse and gave me a broad smile. “You’ll continue to work for us, we’ll make the salary cut, but you’ll live in the guest house, in the garden out back!”
The guest house. What guest house? The Peabridge gardens were extensive, but there was no guest house. There was a gazebo, and a pagoda, and an obelisk, and…. Then it hit me, like an icepick to my belly.
“Do you mean the old caretaker’s shed?”
“Shed?” Evelyn’s laugh was a bit forced. “You’ve obviously never been in there. It’s practically a mansion!”
Sure. In someone’s sick nightmare. Every time I walked by the ramshackle building, it gave me the creeps: The hair on the back of my neck literally stood on end, and the walls seemed to create their own clammy drafts. “Evelyn, I can’t live in a dusty tool shed.”
“It’s not a tool shed! It used to be home for a gardening professional, for a trained specialist in colonial horticulture! It has a kitchen. And a separate bedroom.”
“And a toilet? Is there even running water out there? Electricity?”
“Of course! Do you think that we’re barbarians?”
I stared down at my black slacks and my favorite silk blouse, cut to show off my, alas, minimal décolletage. The outfit was my “Monday best,” chosen to lure Jason’s attention right at the start of the week. This would be the last time I’d wear it to work. Starting next week, I’d be dressed like Martha Washington.
Barbarians? No, but I thought the Peabridge board was entirely out of line with reality.
What else was I going to do, though? Move back in with Gran? Park myself on the floor of Melissa’s one-room apartment? How was I ever going to move Jason from the Imaginary Boyfriend category to the Real, if I lived in a cardboard box under Key Bridge? If I was arrested for defaulting on my student loans?
“Rent free?” I asked.
“Rent free.”
“Utilities included?”
“Utilities included.”
I was tired of fighting with my landlord to fix the leaky ceiling in my current apartment. Thieves had broken in twice in the past year (not that I had anything worth stealing). My commute by public transportation was nearly an hour, each morning and each afternoon.
A one-minute commute.
I could sleep until 8:00 and still make it to work on time. I could dash home during the day and whip up a quick lunch. I could offer to help Jason with a research project, stay up late working beside him at my kitchen table, then suavely offer him a nightcap.
I could have it all—a real boyfriend, a successful library job, a home of my own, Scott Randall and missing magic wand be damned. I held out my hand, smothering my flash of embarrassment when I saw my chewed fingernails. Hmmm… Another goal, breaking that lifetime habit. “Done,” I said.
Evelyn’s fingers were cool on mine, and her smile was encouraging. “Done.” She smiled.
There. My job was secure. I had a new home. I was going to be spared wear and tear on my admittedly-limited wardrobe.
Then why did it seem as if I was about to tumble headlong over a precipice?
~~~
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ALSO BY MINDY KLASKY
The Diamond Brides Series
Perfect Pitch
Catching Hell
Reaching First
(Triple Play I: Perfect Pitch, Catching Hell, and Reaching First available as a boxed set)
Second Thoughts
Third Degree
Stopping Short
(Triple Play II: Second Thoughts, Third Degree, and Stopping Short available as a boxed set)
From Left Field
Center Stage
Always Right
(Triple Play III: From Left Field, Center Stage, and Always Right available as a boxed set)
The Jane Madison Series
Girl’s Guide to Witchcraft
Sorcery and the Single Girl
Magic and the Modern Girl
(Available as a boxed set)
The Jane Madison Academy Series
Single Witch’s Survival Guide
The As You Wish Series
Act One, Wish One (formerly How Not to Make a Wish)
Wishing in the Wings (formerly When Good Wishes Go Bad)
Wish Upon a Star (formerly To Wish or Not to Wish)
(Available as a boxed set)
Stand-Alone Works
Capitol Magic
Fright Court
Season of Sacrifice
The Glasswrights Series
The Glasswrights’ Apprentice
The Glasswrights’ Progress
The Glasswrights’ Journeyman
The Glasswrights’ Test
The Glasswrights’ Master
Harlequin Special Editions
The Daddy Dance
The Mogul’s Maybe Marriage
ABOUT MINDY KLASKY
Mindy Klasky learned to read when her parents shoved a book in her hands and told her she could travel anywhere in the world through stories. She never forgot that advice.
Mindy’s travels took her through multiple careers – from litigator to librarian to full-time writer. Mindy’s travels have also taken her through various literary genres for readers of all ages – from traditional fantasy to paranormal chick-lit to category romance, from middle-grade to young adult to adult. She is a USA Today bestselling author.
In her spare time, Mindy knits, quilts, and tries to tame her endless to-be-read shelf. Her husband and cats do their best to fill the left-over minutes.
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