by Hillary Avis
Tomes & Terriers
A Magic Library Mystery Book 1
Hillary Avis
Published by Hilyard Press, Eugene, OR
©2020 Hillary Avis www.hillaryavis.com
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.
This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real people, places, events, or organizations is purely coincidental, and all are the creation of the author.
Cover design by Mariah Sinclair www.mariahsinclair.com
For permissions contact: [email protected]
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Other Series by Hillary Avis
About the Author
Chapter 1
Sunday
Everyone knows the magic of Oregon is in the trees. It was no coincidence that Remembrance, the town where Allison had lived her whole life, was founded around a tree nearly a hundred and seventy years ago. The pioneers who settled here had built the town with a grand oak at its center, the shade of its spreading branches treasured as a place to gather and remember the hardships of the migration westward.
Of course, the Founders’ Tree was long gone—and so was the timber industry that had helped the town thrive for generations—but Allison still looked to the trees for company and guidance on a daily basis. Today, the row of willows along Claypool Creek seemed to be rooting her on, tossing their pompoms of new spring leaves with the enthusiasm of cheerleaders on the sidelines of a high school football game.
They seemed to say that this time, she was on the right track.
Pogo, her foster Yorkie, was less inclined to consider the opinion of trees. He paused in front of Golden Gardens Memory Care and lifted his stubby leg to water the bottom three inches of a Doug fir. When he was finished, Allison led him around the building to the service entrance. This was her usual habit, sneaking in the back.
“You’re here so much, you might as well be staff,” Myra had joked when she handed her the key, after months of buzzing her in the front door at least once and often twice daily. Myra was the head nurse at Golden Gardens, but over the last two years, she’d become one of Allison’s dearest friends. “Save me the trouble and let yourself in.”
So this was just a day like any other day. Don’t make too much of it. Allison paused in the narrow back hallway to take a deep breath and soothe her knotted stomach. Then she breezed past the empty mailboxes, through the yellow industrial kitchen, where the scent of oatmeal cookies baking in the oven was so pervasive that she could almost taste them, and out the other side into the central activity area. Right away, she spotted Paul seated at one of the long oak tables, staring blankly down at the surface and tracing the woodgrain with his finger.
Allison pulled out the chair beside him. “May I?”
He jerked his head once without looking at her, a polite acquiescence, so she sat down and patted her lap. Pogo bounded up onto her knees and circled a few times before settling into a little loaf shape. He gave a contented sigh and nestled his chin between his paws.
“I had a dog like that once,” Paul said, his words slow and measured.
Allison swallowed the lump that rose in her throat and turned toward him, her pulse pounding. “Did you, now?”
He nodded. “He liked to walk with me by the creek. He didn’t fetch, though—he wasn’t that kind of dog. His name was—” he broke off, his forehead creasing with the effort of recall. His face reddened. “Oh, something.”
“Tiny,” Allison prompted.
“Yes!” Wonder spread across his face as he smiled at her. “How did you know?”
Her heart squeezed and she tried to keep her voice calm as she answered. “Lucky guess.”
She didn’t tell him that she was the one who bought Tiny as a puppy and brought him home to celebrate their first wedding anniversary. That only two days later, she’d gone to the doctor and found out she was pregnant. That she almost took Tiny back to the pet shop—that was where you got a dog in those days—because the thought of raising a puppy and a baby at the same time overwhelmed her, but he was the one who convinced her that they should keep the dog.
“It won’t be a puppy in nine months,” he had pleaded. “I’ll do all the walking. You won’t have to lift a finger.” And he’d kept his promise. He walked Tiny by the river every day, in every weather, for the next fourteen years.
“Can I hold him?” Paul asked.
Allison nodded and picked up the end of Pogo’s leash from the floor, stretching to hand the end of it to Paul. His fingers brushed hers as he took it, and her heart skipped a beat. The dog lifted his pert head to see what was going on.
“Here, boy!” Paul reached down and snapped his fingers. The familiar gesture made Allison’s breath catch—it was the same that he’d used when he’d called Tiny. Pogo hopped down from her lap and bounded over, bumping his head against Paul’s hand. Paul laughed, the sound as full and rich as it had been every day for all twenty-four years of their marriage.
Twenty-five, next week.
Instead of scooping the dog onto his lap, Paul stood. “Do you mind if I take him for a walk?” he asked. “Just around the room.”
She nodded wordlessly and then watched, her breath still tight in her chest, as he walked Pogo around the perimeter of the room. Please, let him remember.
She hadn’t planned on taking on another foster dog right now, not in the middle of selling bakery and moving, not with everything else going on. But when Rachael, the woman who ran Oregon Tails Dog Rescue, told her Pogo was a purebred Yorkie, Allison couldn’t resist. She’d hoped that maybe, just maybe, the dog would jar something loose in Paul’s memory.
God knows, she’d tried everything else in the last two years. Family photos, guided meditation, acupuncture. Medication, supplements—hypnotherapy, for goodness sake! So far, nothing had worked. The memories Paul had lost overnight remained just that—lost. He could remember his childhood, his parents and school friends, the streets and geography of Remembrance. But his life with Allison? Vanished, as though it had been surgically removed. He couldn’t remember their wedding; their snug apartment above the bakery where they’d lived for their entire marriage; their beautiful daughter, Emily; or even Allison’s name.
But Pogo had jogged his memory, somehow. He remembered Tiny! He remembered taking the dog for walks along the creek. Maybe he’d also remember how, at the end of every walk, he and Tiny always came home to her.
Let him remember that. Let him remember me.
She clutched the arms of her chair, hardly daring to breathe as she watched Pau
l and Pogo mosey around the perimeter of the large, open room.
“Hey hon.” Myra’s voice came from behind her. Allison jumped and then felt a warm hand squeeze her shoulder. “Can I ask you a favor, or are you too busy checking out your good-looking man?”
Allison grinned up at her, but her smile faded when she caught sight of Myra’s expression. Usually, Myra beamed sunshine. But today, her forehead was furrowed above her wide-set eyes, and her jaw was tense. Right away, Allison knew something was troubling her. “What’s wrong?”
Myra sighed and crossed her arms over her magenta scrubs. “I hate to bother you when you’re visiting Mr. Paul, but I could really use some help with the morning snack. Lizbet quit yesterday and Julio is sick, so we’re shorthanded. Do you mind hoofing some snack trays?”
Allison pushed her chair back and stood up. “Of course not.”
Relief spread across Myra’s face. “You’re an angel. I’ve got everything lined up in the kitchen. You know how we do it; you’ve seen it enough times.”
Allison nodded, and with a quick, regretful glance at Paul and Pogo, followed Myra into the kitchen. She grabbed the first tray of fresh oatmeal cookies and milk off the counter, then headed for the closest bedroom. She pasted on a smile before she stepped through the door.
“Good morning!” she said in a brisk, sing-song voice more suitable for toddlers than for the elderly women in the room.
Lilian, one of the longtime residents at Golden Gardens, snorted from where she sat knitting in her bed, propped up with pillows. She jammed one metal needle against the other, the ruffles on her white bed jacket quivering with each furious stitch. “What’s so good about it?”
“Well, the sun is out, for one.” Allison set the tray on the nightstand between the two beds and nodded to the window that looked out on the sparkling front lawn and even afforded a peek of the creek through the willows across the street.
“It stinks in here,” Lilian muttered without looking up from her yarn. “That man came, and he stinks like death. I hate him. I hate her.” She glared at the other bed, where her new roommate, Gertrude, was snoring softly with the covers pulled up to her neck so only her steel-gray bob showed.
Allison was a little glad that Gertrude was asleep, if she was being honest. Some people became as sweet and crumbly as shortbread when they aged, but not Gertrude Winter. She’d hardened like a stale baguette and was more likely to spit at you than smile. Plus, now that Lilian mentioned it, there was something in the air that wasn’t the scent of cookies in the oven, though of all the smells that could be floating around Golden Gardens, this one wasn’t bad. It was woodsy and familiar—a man’s cologne, maybe.
“Let’s open a window,” Allison suggested. She knew better than to try and muscle Lilian out into the main room when she was like this. Wiser to placate her with small kindnesses and cajole her out of her funk.
Gertrude’s eyes flew open and she sat up in her bed. Apparently, her deep sleep had all been an act. “Don’t be stupid! It’s freezing in here!”
“We’ll never get the stink out otherwise.” Lilian set her jaw stubbornly as she glared at her at the woman across from her. “Anyway, you’re napping. What do you care?”
“I’m awake now,” Gertrude said. “Your noisy friend made sure of that, coming in here and banging the dishes like she’s a one-man band.”
Lilian puffed out her cheeks, her face reddening. Before she could erupt, Allison stepped between her and Gertrude. “Maybe you’d like to have a snack?” Gertrude looked skeptical, so Allison added, “Milk and oatmeal cookies.”
Gertrude scowled. “I don’t like hot cereal!”
“It’s a cookie, not—” Allison began, but Gertrude interrupted by dramatically flopping back on her pillow and yanking the covers over her head.
Her muffled voice came from under the quilt. “You know, sleep deprivation is used as a torture method by the CIA.”
“Isn’t she a gem?” Lilian asked sourly. She jerked her knitting, sending the ball of lavender wool rolling out of her lap, onto the floor, and under the bed. Allison immediately dove after it, but just as her hand closed on the ball, she tripped over her own feet, yanking so hard on the yarn that the whole knitting project flew out of Lilian’s hands and landed on the floor next to her. Lilian leaned to peer over the edge of the bed. “What in heaven’s name are you doing down there?”
Allison scrambled to her feed and picked up the scarf. She winced when she noticed two or three inches of knitting had unraveled. Hopefully Lilian wouldn’t remember knitting the missing rows by the time she got back to it. She hurriedly poked the needle back through the remaining stitches, wound the ball of yarn as neatly as she could, and set it all in the basket near the tray of cookies.
Hoping to distract Lilian from her ruined project, Allison walked around the end of the bed and cranked the window open, smiling brightly. “There you go—a little fresh air for you. Why don’t you have a cookie while the room airs out?”
Lilian stared at the knitting basket and crossed her arms. “I don’t like sweets.”
“Now you sound like someone else.” Allison nodded her head meaningfully toward the patchwork lump on the other bed.
“I do not!” Lilian swung her legs off the bed and jammed her feet into a pair of fuzzy house slippers. “I just don’t want a snack. I want to chat with you. It’s the least you can do after ruining my scarf.”
Allison grinned. Of course, Lilian didn’t miss a trick. She might not remember what she ate for breakfast today, but she was still sharp enough to notice that her scarf was a few inches shorter. “Well come on, then. Let’s go visit on the sofa. Just for a minute, though—I still have more snack trays to deliver.”
She held out her arm and Lilian took it. She matched her pace to Lilian’s careful shuffle, and roughly ten years later, they made it out to the sofa. They sat together, Allison only half paying attention to what Lilian was saying as she watched Paul and Pogo take another lap around the activity room. Paul’s expression was deeply satisfied, almost proud. He looked like his old self. Her stomach churned with equal parts hope and dread as the two of them neared the sofa where she sat.
This was it. This was it.
“Who do we have here?” Lilian beamed at Pogo as Paul handed the leash back to Allison.
“Thank you, ma’am.” He barely looked at her. His eyes went instead to the window with a view of the neat brick patio in the care facility’s back yard.
“His name is Pogo,” Allison answered absentmindedly, still searching Paul’s face for a flicker of recognition.
Lilian patted her knees. Pogo leaped eagerly into her lap and then jumped up to lick her chin. Lilian screeched with girlish laughter as she covered her face with her hands to avoid the dog’s tongue. She patted him until he settled and then planted a kiss between his ears. “What a delight,” she said, beaming up at Allison.
Allison tried to smile, but she couldn’t even fake it. Paul still didn’t know her. It was as though the last twenty-five years were just...gone. The doctors had said that sometimes when people lose their memory suddenly, they could get it back. The people, the places, the names. Sometimes the brain just needed to heal—though from what, the doctors couldn’t say. All they said was be patient. But after two years of this, Allison’s patience was wearing thin.
She could feel the tears coming, so she quickly said goodbye to Lilian, grabbed her purse and Pogo’s leash, and scurried for the kitchen so she could have her meltdown in private. In the solace of an empty room, amid trays of milk and cookies, she leaned against the counter and let her grief overflow. Pogo whined and pawed at her ankle.
“It’s OK,” Allison snuffled into a paper towel, more to reassure herself than the dog. “Everything’s going to be fine.”
Myra returned to the kitchen with a stack of empty trays. Allison scrambled to scrub away her tears before they gave away her frazzled state and grabbed a tray, but Myra just shook her head as she put the empty tray
s in the sink. “I got the rest. Baby girl, you need a cookie. And that’s my medical opinion.” She scooted a tall stool out from the pantry and patted the seat. Allison perched on it and watched as Myra put two still-warm cookies onto a plate and handed it to her.
She nibbled on one of the cookies, hoping its sweetness would take some of the sting out of the morning, but it caught in her throat. She set down her plate and Myra frowned.
“Do you want milk?”
Allison shook her head and scooped up Pogo to nuzzle his fur. He wriggled in her arms, a huge grin on his face as he enjoyed the eye-level view of the cookies on the counter.
Myra stared at her with frank sympathy. “Then what’s got you down?”
Allison gave a helpless shrug with Pogo still in her arms. “I hoped this little guy would help Paul remember me, but he only remembered the dog we used to have. Nothing else.” Her voice cracked a little at the end.
Myra gasped. “Mr. Paul remembered something new?”
Allison nodded.
“Oh my word, that’s wonderful! That’s a breakthrough! And here you are crying about it.” Myra shook her head and tsked. “If he remembered your old pup today, who knows what he’ll remember tomorrow—or next week. Give it time.”
Allison’s eyes burned as she struggled to keep her tears in check. She crammed half a cookie in her mouth and mumbled around the crumbs, “I don’t have time.”
Myra rested her hands on her hips and leaned back as though she were trying to take in a joke. “What now?”
Allison swallowed the bite of cookie before she answered. “The bakery sold—we close on Friday. I’ll be living with Emily in Portland until I figure out what’s next. I can’t visit Golden Gardens except on the weekends, and even then, not every weekend. This was kind of my last shot.”
A shadow of sympathy crossed Myra’s sunny expression and she reached out to pat Allison’s back. “Oh, hon. You can’t give up now! Not when you’re so close!”
Allison brushed the crumbs from her fingers and stood, setting Pogo down gently on the patterned linoleum. “What other choice do I have?”
