by Hillary Avis
At least one fear was calmed, though, when she saw Taylor’s BMX bike leaned up against the yellow house’s porch. He must be home, finally. Michelle was probably fussing over him and—if she judged Michelle right—giving him the scolding of his life.
Buoyed by the image, Allison could now face her own problems head on. It was possible, even probable, that all this trouble, all this seeking wouldn’t work. It was possible that Elaine would get what she wanted when she ripped out all of Paul’s memories of the last twenty-five years.
What did she want, anyway?
It was time to find out. Allison pushed open her front gate and headed into the silent house. As she set down her purse, her stomach rumbled, reminding her that she hadn’t eaten since brunch, so she made herself a peanut butter and banana sandwich to munch on while she sorted through the boxes.
She didn’t know what she was looking for, but something in those boxes was the key to Elaine’s plan. Elaine had been too eager to get her hands on them at Emily’s graduation. Her desperation made it clear that destroying Paul’s memories wasn’t enough for her. She needed something more. And no way was Allison going to just hand it over to her.
She sat cross-legged on the floor of the entryway, sandwich in one hand, and slit the tape on the first box. It was stacked full of kitchen things. Serving platters carefully packed in bubble wrap. Some vintage knick-knacks from Paul’s parents: a collection of Christmas cookie cutters, a gravy boat from their wedding china, a cherry pitter, things like that. The krumkake iron and mold from her own parents. Little things she’d thought Emily might want and probably didn’t have.
It held Paul’s favorite baking tools, too, a sturdy wooden spoon and a rolling pin, a shallow wooden dough bowl, a pastry board inscribed with circles for rolling out pie dough to the correct size. Things they’d never need again now that the bakery was closed. Paul couldn’t remember his old recipes, anyway.
She took the items out one at a time, turned them over and looked for markings, any signs that they were special. She lingered over Paul’s tools, the handles worn smooth by years of his touch. She’d give anything to be back in the bakery, shoulder-to-shoulder with him. People sometimes asked her if it was weird working for your husband, following his orders like an employee, but Allison never minded. He was a good leader. She liked learning from him.
Plus, he didn’t act that way at home. They weren’t co-workers at home. They were friends. Co-conspirators. Lovers.
Maybe that’s what Elaine wanted. Maybe during her years as guardian, Elaine read their memories in the books, saw the strength of their relationship, and grew jealous. Allison knew she’d lost her husband a long time ago, when Zack was a baby, so maybe she felt robbed of that kind of happiness, the happiness of a perfect family.
That would explain why she’d spent the last two years insinuating herself into Emily’s life, too. Elaine had Paul—or at least had taken him from Allison by destroying all the memories of their marriage. Now that Zack and Emily were engaged, she had Emily, too.
It didn’t explain why she needed this stuff, though. Allison leaned back to take in the array of items she’d laid out on the floor in front of her. Family heirlooms, sure, but they were all practical things that could be replaced. If Elaine were trying to recreate some family scene, she could easily pick up a rolling pin and a gravy boat at Target. Even the old-fashioned cookie cutters were just trees and stars and gingerbread men, nothing unique or unusual.
Allison sighed and began repacking the big platters in the box, layering crackling sheets of bubble wrap between them. Maybe the answer was in the second box. She piled the other items carefully on top of the platters and slid the box to the side, leaving the flaps open.
The second box held a more eclectic assortment. A couple of old teddy bears that Emily had left behind when she went to college. She wasn’t a sentimental person, but Allison figured she might want them someday when she had children of her own. A little wooden sewing kit that Zelda, Paul’s mother, had kept on a shelf in the hall and opened it almost daily. She was always making things, fixing things.
Allison ran her fingers over the ornate painted lid and cracked it open. Lined in worn blue velvet, the box held two neat rows of bone-handled tools and wooden thimble. She couldn’t imagine Emily using it—Allison had only used the kit a handful of times herself, to attach flowers to Emily’s ballet outfits and replace missing buttons on Paul’s shirts.
A loud knock came at the front door, startling Allison out of her reminiscences, so much so that she dropped the sewing box, scattering its contents across the floor.
“Coming!” she said, scrambling to collect the delicate tools on her hands and knees before she stood to answer the door, ready to shoo away a window-and-door salesperson or Firefly Kid selling caramel corn. To her surprise, it was Michelle standing there on the porch, leaning heavily on her cane. She made a move to enter the house, but Allison quickly stepped out onto the porch, closing the door behind her. No guests in the library, not even neighbors. Michelle glowered.
“So glad Taylor’s back,” Allison said, after a moment of awkward silence. “Where was he?”
“He’s not,” Michelle snapped. “If he was back, I wouldn’t be here.” With surprising agility, she sidestepped Allison and let herself into the house.
Chapter 8
“Don’t!” The word was out before Allison could even process what was happening. She followed Michelle, whose cane was already thumping down the hall toward the dining room, her ears ringing with panic and her heart hammering. “You can’t come in here! It’s not allowed.”
“It’s fine,” Michelle said tersely. “I’ll explain everything; I just need to sit. Why don’t you get out the birthday books?”
Allison gaped at Michelle as she pulled out a dining chair and settled into it, leaning her cane against the bookshelf beside her. How was she going to get this woman out of her house? She couldn’t even call Kara to come help, because Kara wasn’t allowed inside, either! But if she dragged Michelle out by the hair, as she was tempted to do, Kara might be coming, anyway.
“Go get them!” Michelle slapped her hand down on the tabletop. “Now!”
Allison stepped backward, stumbling slightly. “What are you talking about?” she stuttered. “What do you want?”
“Don’t play dumb.” Michelle leaned forward across the table, her tone tinged with acid. “The books with the birthday memories. I need them.”
“I’m not supposed to—” Allison broke off, shaking her head in disbelief. Somehow, Michelle knew about the library. Somehow, in the years living next door, she’d worked out that the books held memories.
Michelle pursed her lips, frustrated. “I told you, I’ll explain everything. But first I need to see if he’s alive. Please,” she added earnestly, her eyes shiny with emotion. “The birthday books.”
A piece of the puzzle clicked into place. Michelle knew enough about the library to understand that the memories in the books disappeared when a person passed away. She wanted to see Taylor’s memories to make sure he wasn’t dead.
“The birthday books,” Allison repeated, sure she still sounded stupid. The truth was that she didn’t know exactly where they were. The library wasn’t organized logically—it was more of an intuitive system. Books about food and cooking were in the kitchen, books about water were in the bathroom, and so forth. But birthdays—she wasn’t sure.
They could be with the other celebrations, upstairs in her bedroom alongside the weddings and graduations. With family gatherings, here in the dining room. Or possibly even in the kitchen with the cakes and treats. Despite her efforts to catalog the books, she hadn’t been guardian of the library long enough to learn where everything was shelved yet.
“Top shelf by the door.” Michelle nodded to the French doors that led to the back yard and the bookcase to the left of it.
Allison nodded and dragged the ladder over to that shelf, mounting it reluctantly. If she showed Michell
e the books, it was over—there’d be no defense, no plausible deniability. Her guardianship was done. She’d have no chance to spend the next three years searching the books for scraps of Paul’s memories that Elaine had left by accident.
But Michelle deserved to know whether Taylor was alive or dead, surely. And since she already knew about the library, maybe that was a loophole in the rules. The library was no more or less at risk than it had been before Michelle barged her way inside. Maybe Allison’s guardianship wouldn’t be revoked if Michelle had prior knowledge of the memory books.
She located the birthday books, a set of bright pastel covers with silver swirls on the spines, and reached for them.
“Just get down Ten and Eleven,” Michelle ordered. “We don’t have all night.”
Allison swallowed and nodded, selecting the two volumes, both shades of blue, and pulled them off the shelf. Michelle grabbed them from her as soon as she was within reach and immediately turned to the table of contents in the first book, sliding her finger down the list of names until she found what she was looking for.
“One-seventy-four!” she said, relief evident in her voice as she flipped eagerly to the page headed “Taylor Robinson.” Allison leaned to read the memory over her shoulder.
“He swatted the balloon and it bounced back, nearly hitting him in the face. Stupid things. The smallest brush with a branch and they popped. Useless...” The scene bloomed in front of Allison like a movie, overwhelming her senses as she inhabited Taylor’s memory.
Rough bark dimpled her palms as she hoisted herself up into the lower branches of the oak tree and peered down at the balloons bobbing below, tied to the handlebars of the new bike leaned up against the fence. A present from Grandma.
Well, Allison didn’t want a new bike. Tears pricked the inside of her eyelids, blinding her, and she pulled herself up higher into the tree, grazing her knuckles.
The old bike was fine. Dad got that bike from a yard sale, painted it blue and tuned it up. They’d picked out a new seat together, a cool one with a lightning bolt. They’d ridden around together in the evenings when Dad got off work, jumping over dirt humps and potholes in the empty lot by the feed store, skidding to a stop and sending a spray of gravel up from the back tires of their bikes. Dad even made videos of their tricks on his phone sometimes.
She wondered where the videos were. Grandma probably got rid of those, too. Her throat tightened—
Michelle abruptly closed the book, jolting Allison out of the memory. Without thinking, she put her still-stinging knuckles in her mouth until the sensation of Taylor’s injury faded.
After a moment, Michelle cleared her throat, her cheeks flushed under the layer of freckles. “He outgrew the other one. His knees practically hit the handlebars. I didn’t know that—”
“It’s OK,” Allison assured her, all too familiar with the sense of shame the memories could provoke when you saw something through someone else’s eyes. “The important thing is that he’s alive.”
“He’s alive,” Michelle repeated, her tone almost disbelieving. Then she took a deep, shuddering breath, leaned back in the chair, and said it again. “He’s alive.”
Allison sat down across the table and studied Michelle’s face. Her forehead was still creased with worry, and her jaw was still tense. “I’m sure he’ll turn up in the morning. He’s probably staying overnight at a friend’s and just forgot to call.”
Michelle’s eyes flew open. “He wouldn’t do that!” she snapped. “He knows how important it is! Especially tonight of all nights.” She passed her hand over her mouth as though she was suppressing a scream.
Allison raised an eyebrow. This lady was intense. As worried as she would have been if Emily had stayed out after dark, she’d be plenty reassured to find out she was alive. This was Remembrance, not the mean streets of Salem or Portland. “He’s fine. He’s OK. He’s alive,” she said soothingly. When Michelle stayed frozen in her chair, staring into space, she added cautiously, “Can I get you some tea or something?”
“Alive might be worse!” Michelle gave her a wild, accusatory look, then shook her head, dropping it into her hands. “Sorry. I’m sorry. I forgot you don’t know anything.”
Annoyance crawled up Allison’s back and heated her cheeks. Michelle was being awfully presumptuous. This was her house, after all. She was the guardian of the library. And she’d been the one to find Taylor’s bike. “I mean, I know some things.”
“Not everything,” Michelle said harshly, glancing up at Allison. Then something in her face shifted. “I’ll take that tea now. I think I promised you an explanation.”
Chapter 9
Allison scurried to the kitchen to put the kettle on, half glad to escape Michelle’s sharp tongue for a few minutes and half heart-poundingly curious to find out what—if anything—Michelle would reveal. The way she’d said it, not everything, held so much promise.
What had she seen over the years from her window? All the questions about Elaine and her guardianship buzzed in Allison’s mind as she located a tin of lavender-chamomile teabags and plopped them into two mugs while she waited for the water to boil. Who was Elaine and what did she want? Maybe Michelle’s next-door spy report would hold the answers.
When the kettle finally squealed, Allison filled the two mugs to the brim and carried them carefully back to the table. Michelle took one gratefully, wrapping her hands around it to soak up the warmth. She gave Allison an embarrassed grimace, as if to apologize for snapping at her earlier. “It’s been a stressful day. Where should I begin?”
Her question seemed genuine. Allison fumbled for a response—there were so many places to start, but they all seemed sideways. “How do you know about the memory library, I guess?”
Michelle nodded. “Good. An easy one. I’m the watcher. I’ve been the watcher for the last twenty-six years, basically since my dad died. Cancer. Nothing nefarious,” she said reassuringly, as though Allison might think otherwise. “He made me the watcher before he passed on.”
Allison’s confusion must have shown on her face, because Michelle laughed. “That didn’t clear anything up, did it?”
“Nope.”
“I’ll try again. The library has a guardian—you. It also has a watcher. Me.” Michelle blew on the hot tea and then sipped from her mug as Allison processed the new information.
“And you do what?” Allison finally asked, still feeling completely in the dark—a feeling she suspected Michelle was trying to sustain.
“Watch.”
Allison rolled her eyes. “Watch what?”
“The guardian, mostly. Did you never wonder how the rules of the library were enforced?”
Allison had to admit that she hadn’t. “I thought it was magic.”
Michelle chuckled. “The books are magic, but the building isn’t. The only person who can kick you out is me. I keep an eye on the place, and if the guardian slips up, it’s my job to tear out their pages, change the locks, and find a new one.”
“So you’re the landlady.” Allison shifted in her chair, thinking through all her activities of the last few weeks. All that time, eyes were on her. Watching. It was sort of rude, actually. “You could have at least come over and introduced yourself.”
Michelle shook her head. “The whole point is that we’re not friendly. You have your job to do and I have mine. That’s how it works.”
Michelle had promised answers, but she was being so cryptic, it only left Allison with more questions. “What works?”
“The library. Didn’t Myra tell you the history when she passed on the guardianship?”
Allison flushed. “Of course she did. The library was created after the Founders Tree was struck by lightning. Each founding family got some of the wood, and one family made theirs into paper. The paper started recording people’s memories, so they made it into books and put it in the library.”
“They?” Michelle prompted. “Who’s ‘they’?”
Allison, sure she was bein
g patronized, couldn’t keep the brittle edge out of her voice. “The descendants of the three founders.”
“Julia Baker, Violet Claypool, and Martha May Crisp,” Michelle recited the names of Remembrance’s original settlers, unearthing them from the depths of Allison’s memories. “My maiden name was Crisp. My grandfather is the one who made the paper that became the books in this library.”
Allison sat back in her chair. All this time, she’d been thinking she was the only one who knew about the library, that the line of secrecy stretched back, guardian to guardian, a tree without branches. But of course there were descendants of the original founders still alive here in town. Of course they knew of the library’s existence.
Allison was surprised at the sense of relief that flooded her. If there were others, she could talk about it with them. She wasn’t as alone as she felt. “Who else in town knows about the library?”
Michelle stilled, her mug halfway to her lips. She set her tea carefully back down on the table. “Just you and me.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Allison blurted out. “What about the other descendants?”
Michelle pushed back her chair and, rising to her feet, took her cane from where it leaned against the bookshelf. “I should be going. Keep that birthday book out—I may need to check it in the morning.”
“But—” Allison protested, but Michelle held up a hand to stop her, already headed down the hall.
“I can’t waste any more time on this. Right now, I need to find Taylor.” Michelle turned to glance back at Allison as she sat, dumbfounded, at the table. “If you want to be helpful, you can start looking in the books for where Taylor went today. Start with kidnapping and work your way backward.”
“Kidnapping?” Allison’s jaw dropped. “You don’t think someone...”
“Alive doesn’t mean safe,” Michelle said darkly. “Alive could be worse. Text me if you find anything.”
