by Hillary Avis
“It’s not that. I couldn’t even submit a request. They don’t have any record of evidence being recovered in the case.” Michelle narrowed her eyes as she gnawed the inside of her cheek. “Made me think maybe Leroy didn’t confiscate them. Maybe you have those boxes still. That’s what you want, isn’t it? You’ve got Paul’s pages, the blank paper, the pen...you can do anything now that you have everything from the storage unit. I don’t know why I was stupid enough to let you talk me out of just burning the place down. I should have known you were just trying to consolidate power, too.”
Allison’s jaw dropped. Michelle was out of her mind. “Leroy pulled me over right in front of your house and took them out of my trunk. You saw him yourself!”
“I saw him drive away. I didn’t see him take anything.”
Allison whirled on her heel and stormed back to her own house in a blind fury and located the Guardians book, muttering under her breath about Michelle’s sanity or lack thereof. She returned to the porch and shoved the book into Michelle’s hands.
“Check it. Check my memory. You’ll see. Leroy took everything except Elaine’s diary, and I already showed you that.” She watched defiantly as Michelle sucked in her cheeks and then opened the book, flipping to the back and leafing through the pages, skimming until she found what she was looking for.
Minutes ticked by while Michelle read, many more minutes than it’d taken for Leroy’s traffic stop in the first place. Either the woman was a slow reader or she was reading it over and over again. Allison tapped her toe impatiently, her hands braced on her hips. “See?” she said, when Michelle finally looked up. “I’m telling the truth.”
“Are you?”
Allison stared at her. “I told you Leroy took the boxes, and he did. Why, did you read something different?”
“I read that you figured out how to get Paul’s memories in the books. I read that you’ve been using the pen that you promised not to use. I read that you’re encouraging my grandson to lie to me,” Michelle said, color rising in her cheeks to fill in the spaces between her freckles. No wonder it had taken her so long—she’d read a whole lot more than one memory.
Allison bristled at the invasion of privacy, but she didn’t have the energy to argue with Michelle. At least, not about what she’d done. That was all true, anyway. “You’re missing the point. Leroy didn’t confiscate those boxes as evidence. He took them because he wanted them. And why would he keep them if he wasn’t in on it with Elaine? It’s proof that those pages she tore out of the Homicides book belong to Leroy, not Paul. He’s the killer. He might not know it, but he is.”
With some effort, Michelle pushed herself up from the rocking chair, her purse swinging on her arm as she made her way toward the front door.
“Wait!” Allison blurted out before Michelle could disappear inside the house. “What are we going to do?”
Michelle shrugged. “We proceed as planned. Emily inherits the pen. We pack the books. You choose a new guardian. I’ll find a new library. We’ll all move out of town as quickly as possible and hope that Elaine and Leroy aren’t as creative with that paper as you were.”
“I could tear out Leroy’s pages,” Allison said, her heartbeat a panicked staccato as the chance to recover Paul’s memories might slip away. At Michelle’s horrified expression, she amended, “Some of them. Nothing important. Just the ones about Elaine. Then he wouldn’t be motivated to help her anymore. She’d be stuck in jail without any allies. Zack thinks she’s crazy and Leroy wouldn’t care anymore.”
“You’re no better than a Claypool,” Michelle spat, reaching for the door handle. “Willing to do anything to get what you want. Willing to play God.”
Allison’s fear blazed suddenly into anger. “Isn’t that what you’re doing, though? Inaction is a choice. You’re condemning Paul to a life without his fondest memories. Foisting responsibility for the pen on my daughter when Paul is still alive and perfectly capable of making decisions. Ripping Taylor away from everything he knows, everything he cares about. You won’t even let him ride his bike, Michelle. The one thing that brings him joy. And if you whisk him off to Elkhorn, he won’t even be able to use the gazebo to visit the memories of his mom and dad. How is that not playing God?”
Michelle inhaled sharply. “I’m just doing my duty. I didn’t ask for this.”
“Your duty as the watcher? How are you going to watch the library from Elkhorn? The answer is: you’re not. You’re so obsessed with getting me out of here that you’re not thinking about who comes next. The way you want it, the author will be in Portland, the watcher will be in Elkhorn. Only the guardian will still be in Remembrance. They’ll be the one with all the power. They’ll be able to do anything they want, and you won’t even know.” Allison paused to catch her breath, her chest heaving as she stared at Michelle at the other end of the hall.
Rattled, Michelle dropped her hand from the door and passed it over her face. “You’re too close,” she finally said. “The guardian has to be neutral. You’re not neutral.”
“You’re right, I’m not. I care about our families,” Allison said quietly. “I care what happens to Emily and Taylor. I care about this town and everyone in it, too.”
Michelle scoffed. “You only care about Paul. If you cared about everyone, you wouldn’t be so eager to destroy Leroy’s mind.”
“I’m not eager. I know better than anyone how terrible it is.” Allison stepped toward her, holding her hands out, pleading. “I only suggested it because you gave up on getting those boxes back from Leroy another way. You know that moving out of town is not a real solution. It’s just a bandage, one that weakens the alliance between the founding families. It weakens the library’s defenses. But if we can recover the stolen memories and the blank paper, we have a real chance to put things right. The way you want them. We have to try.”
Michelle’s chin crumpled like she was holding back tears and she looked more like Taylor than she ever had. She let out a long, shaky breath. “One more try. That’s all I have in me. One more.”
Chapter 26
Friday
Taylor leaped up from the living room floor and hooted triumphantly, waving his arms in the air. “I found it! It’s right here, look!”
From her spot sitting cross-legged on the carpet next to him, Allison craned her neck to read the entry in the book in front of Taylor aloud. “Mother had spare room in her garden shed now that her health meant she no longer led the Remembrance Dahlia Society. She rarely went in there now, so she’d never notice Elaine’s pretty paisley boxes on the shelves where she used to overwinter her bulbs.”
She looked up at Michelle on the sofa with a grin so big she thought it might crack her face. They’d spent hours scouring the books for where Leroy had stashed those boxes, and they’d finally found it. “He hid them in the garden shed.”
“I heard.” Michelle heaved a small stack of books off her lap and dusted her hands. “Well, I expect you’ll be conducting some kind of criminal operation, so this is the part where Taylor and I make our exit.” She scooted to the edge of the sofa and pushed herself up. “Tell me when it’s over.”
“Not so fast.” Allison winked at Taylor. “I need your help.”
“I am not creeping around in a catsuit in the dead of night,” Michelle declared. One corner of her mouth quirked up. “They’re very unflattering.” Was Michelle being funny?
“It’ll be dark. Nobody will see you and Taylor sneaking around,” Allison deadpanned. Taylor snickered and Michelle’s face resumed its usual dour expression.
“I don’t want Taylor involved in your criminal activity in any way.”
Now it was Allison’s turn to roll her eyes. “I was kidding. I thought for a minute you might have a sense of humor.”
Michelle sucked in her lower lip. “Maybe when you’re done making jokes, you can get around to—”
Allison cut her off. “Let me guess. I need to choose a new guardian.” Allison’s stomach hurt at the tho
ught. She wouldn’t have time to copy over all of his memories, or even most of them. But maybe she could get a few of the important ones in there before she turned over the key and the new guardian removed her memories of the library.
“Obviously,” Michelle said. “But before you set one foot on Mrs. Gauss’s property, you need to try convincing Emily that you’re telling the truth. What if you’re caught breaking in and are arrested? Good luck getting her to listen to you then. She needs to be fully on board before a new guardian takes over, since Paul won’t be able to properly pass along the author responsibilities without your help.”
“He would be able to if you let me take the time to restore his memories.” Allison made her voice sweet but pointed, a tone she’d probably picked up from Lilian, who was a master of the honeyed dagger.
“Those are my terms,” Michelle repeated woodenly. “Come on, Taylor. Mrs. Rye has some things to think about.”
“But I want to feed the pup—” Taylor began, but Michelle silenced him with a look. He gave Allison a regretful shrug as they left, mouthing a silent apology.
“It’s OK,” she said reassuringly. “Everything is going to be OK.”
Michelle stopped so suddenly that Taylor crashed into her back. “Don’t,” she said, her voice cold.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t lie to him.”
AFTER MICHELLE AND Taylor were gone and the puppies were fed and exercised, Allison distracted herself from the task she now dreaded the most—calling Emily—by shelving all the books they’d pulled out back in their original locations, or at least as close as possible.
It was always such a chore finding memories in the library. If she had more time—or more help—she could use her rusty librarian skills to make better sense of the place. She wished that someone like Odetta Patterson would come over and invent a foolproof method to organize the volumes. The books would have to be cataloged by topic to preserve the privacy of individuals, of course, but the whole thing could be a lot less higgledy-piggledy.
Maybe the next guardian would sort it out. Her shoulders sagged as she slid the last book into place. Maybe, once she stole the boxes back and the security of the library was reinforced, Michelle would change her mind about installing a new guardian as soon as possible.
Buoyed by this hope, Allison sent a text to Emily. “When are you coming down to test the water? I promise to be on good behavior.”
“Tomorrow afternoon,” her reply zipped back. Another text followed. “Relax, I’ll leave Zack at home this time.”
Allison hesitated, her finger above her phone’s screen. Then, with a crashing finality, she sent a few words. “No, bring him.”
It’s not that she trusted Zack or even liked him. The weeks since Emily and Zack’s engagement had been so strange and fraught that she hadn’t had time to really learn who he was as a person. She’d only viewed him as an extension of Elaine—someone to fear or despise. But she’d seen it in the books: Zack wasn’t his parents or grandparents. It was unfair to punish the younger Claypool generation for the older generation’s mistakes. What the Claypools did sixty years ago was wrong, but forcing their family out of town forever was wrong, too.
It was time to right the wrongs of the past. Michelle thought that meant keeping the Claypools out of the library, but the decision to eject them was a coup itself. Allison needed to turn the clock back further—back to when the founding families worked together to protect the town’s memories, not because of duty or strict set of rules, but because they loved Remembrance and wanted to keep it safe.
Zack, Emily, and Taylor were the rightful keepers of the library. They might not make the same decisions that Michelle or Paul or she would make, but it was their turn. They could decide what the library would look like, even if it meant that powers of guardian, watcher, and author weren’t kept so separate.
The only seed of doubt still planted in Allison’s gut was that this was what Elaine wanted. She wanted to see Emily and Zack hold the keys to the library. One family with all the control.
But Allison knew her daughter better than Elaine did. Emily was strong. She had her own ideas. She had a big heart. And once she understood the history of the library, she wouldn’t let Taylor get pushed out. She’d be able to see Taylor’s undeniable compassion and wisdom, traits that many adults lacked.
And Zack was his own person, too. If Emily loved him, that was a testament to his character. Elaine might have used her son as a pawn, believing it was in his best interest, but he could decide for himself, too.
So what if Elaine got what she wanted. That might even be a good thing, if it meant she stopped her crusade to claim Zack’s birthright by any means necessary.
Chapter 27
Saturday
“Is it OK if I take him out for lunch?” Allison asked, while she passed out strawberry-vanilla scones to the residents seated around the long activity tables. “Emily and Zack are visiting, and I thought it’d be—”
“You don’t need to ask.” Myra followed behind her with a carafe of hibiscus tea, filling the pretty mismatched teacups one after another. She paused to grin at Allison. “You can always check Paul out of the husband library if you promise to return him.”
Allison set down the last scone in front of Lillian and paused by the corner of the table while Myra caught up on tea-pouring. “I’ve been thinking about that...you know how he’s retaining memories lately?”
Myra nodded and motioned her back to the kitchen. “Let’s talk somewhere quiet. I’ll take my break now.”
Myra directed Julio and another caregiver to oversee snack time, and she and Allison retreated to the back room, grabbing some leftover scones on the way and settling onto a pair of stools between the boxes of extra TP and a stack of canned goods.
“I guess you are thinking Paul might be able to come home?” Myra asked, her eyes wide and earnest as she held a napkin under her chin to catch the crumbs. Something about her phrasing gave Allison pause. It didn’t have Myra’s usual warmth and enthusiasm. It was...doubtful.
“I hoped he could at least be assessed.”
Myra cleared her throat. “Of course, yes. Make your appointments, do what you need to do.”
“But...?”
“I see my residents have their good days and their bad days. Paul’s had a lot of bad days the past couple years so he was due to have a good one. Is that improvement?” Myra gave a small, sympathetic shrug. “Maybe. But maybe not. Moves can be stressful and are often a setback. You want to be sure you can handle it before you give it a go. Only time will tell. I just don’t want to see your heart broken all over again if he has another decline.”
Allison nodded, barely listening. Myra meant well, but she didn’t understand that Paul’s memory loss wasn’t the organic decay of dementia. It was purely mechanical. A missing part. Something that could be fixed.
“How are the pups?” Myra asked, jolting her out of her daydream. “Nia’s been pestering about them, but I keep forgetting to ask you.”
“Huge!” Allison said around her mouthful of scone, the sweet strawberry flavor spreading out over her tongue. “They’re about ready for their forever homes.”
Myra sighed. “Great. Another thing on my to-do list.”
“You don’t need to take it on. I’ll call Rachael and set up an adoption event. Labs always go fast, especially sweet puppies like Jenny’s.”
Myra nodded, but her forehead creased at the mention of Jenny’s name.
“What is it?”
“Nothing.” She gave a slight shake of her head. “I still have to tell Crystal and the kids what happened. I said Jenny’s staying with you and that she’ll come home when the pups are grown. I can’t put it off too much longer, I guess.”
“Think they’d notice if you brought home a ringer?” Allison asked. “That’s what my parents did when my goldfish died while we were on vacation. They thought I couldn’t tell, but they didn’t do a great job of picking a replacemen
t.”
Myra chuckled. “Crystal would definitely know, but the kids probably wouldn’t. Not a chance there’s a pretty yellow Lab without a home out there, though. Especially not one that’s sweet and good around kids and livestock. Like you said, Labs go fast. I’m afraid I have some little hearts to break.”
Her expression was so gut-wrenching that Allison’s breath caught. “Keep one of the puppies, then. It’s not the same as having Jenny back, but it’s something.”
Myra gave her a sad smile, and Allison knew her answer before she spoke. Raising a puppy was a lot of work. She could barely manage it with Taylor’s help, and she didn’t have three babies, a daughter recovering from surgery, an overbearing houseguest, and a farm to run, like Myra did.
“Don’t tell them yet,” she said impulsively. “Hold off for a little longer. Rachael has a big network in the rescue community. She probably knows someone who has a foster Lab out on a ranch somewhere in Idaho that’s used to livestock. I can even drive and pick the dog up, teach her a few manners if she needs it.”
Myra chuckled under her breath, shaking her head.
“What?”
“You never give up, do you?”
“Nope.”
“I THOUGHT WE’D HAVE lunch at my place.” Allison grabbed Paul’s hand and squeezed as they both waited for Emily’s reaction. “I wanted to give you two the grand tour now that I’m all moved in.”
Emily glanced at Zack. “You up for it? I know you were looking forward to that Feast and Flower burger, but I’d really like to get a tap water sample from that house, anyway.”
