by Mindy Klasky
CHAPTER 29
EVELYN WAS SITTING behind her desk, her tweed suit boxier than ever, her blunt-cut hair still hovering along her jaw line at the absolute wrong length for her features. How did she maintain that exact cut? I ran my fingers through my own mop nervously, only to come up against the gathered band of my muslin cap. This was my first day back in colonial garb after nearly a week of heartbroken sulking, and I missed the casual comfort of my fleece pants.
“Jane, I’m very pleased that you were able to make it in to work today. I have to say, you still look a little pale. I’m glad you’re back, though. So much happened while you were out.”
I faked a slight cough into my hand. I’d figured that I should come in to the office and salvage at least one day of the work week. I didn’t want my boss thinking that I was a total slacker, just pretending to be sick. Somehow, I didn’t think that Evelyn would give me a lot of leeway for destroying my love life with one of our patrons. (Although she might have been interested in the cataloging project that I’d taken on in my basement—in my classification skills, if not the subject matter.)
Evelyn leaned forward and settled her doughy features into her “concerned” look. “I’m afraid that you didn’t have a chance to say goodbye to Harold.”
“Goodbye?” What? Harold had left? Where had he gone? Icy dread painted my throat. What exactly had I screamed at him last Sunday?
Evelyn sighed deeply. “Yes, goodbye. He gave us seven long years, but it had been clear to me for quite some time that he needed to move on. I’d told him as much in his annual reviews for two years running, but he always seemed too timid to take the chance. I’d love to know exactly what you said to him.”
I stammered. “I—I really don’t remember. I think that I was already coming down with the flu when I saw him on Sunday. I’d been away for the weekend, and he startled me when I was opening my front door. I wasn’t really thinking—”
“Well, whatever it was, it did the trick.”
“The trick?” I stopped fumbling for an explanation. “What trick?”
“Helping Harold find the strength to tender his resignation,” she said matter-of-factly, “He said that you always showed him the importance of being true to himself. You encouraged him to follow up on his computer skills, to hone his abilities.”
I was shocked by his generous gloss on our relationship. “So what is he doing?”
“He set up his own computer firm—SuperGeek. He said that he’d been thinking about doing it for years, but your conversation on Sunday afternoon made him realize that it was finally time.” She pursed her lips into a small pout. “Perhaps you were a little too effective with your pep talk, though. Harold insisted that he couldn’t give us two weeks notice. He was too eager to reach his first wave of customers.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, still stunned.
Evelyn smiled. “Don’t be. It was time. Past time. I’m just sorry Harold couldn’t have thanked you himself. Harold, or Professor Templeton.”
“Jason?” My belly turned to ice so quickly I scarcely had time to worry about using my so-called Boyfriend’s given name.
“Oh yes,” Evelyn said. “We had a long conversation on Monday morning. Professor Templeton told me how hard you worked to meet his manuscript deadline. He said that he sincerely appreciated the extra hours that you put in on his behalf. He’ll be donating a copy of his book to our collection when it comes out next summer, but he wanted me to know that the footnote mentioning the Peabridge does not begin to express how useful you’d been.”
Useful.
Well, that was one way of looking at it. I blinked away a mental image of his hands under my sweater as we huddled beneath the stairs at La Perla. Unfortunately, it was replaced by another snapshot—our bodies tangled on the bed in the Blue Cottage. I gritted my teeth.
I supposed I should be grateful that he hadn’t elaborated on my skills. Evelyn waited for me to say something. “I was only doing my job,” I finally managed.
It wasn’t the truth, but it seemed to match whatever wholesome scenario Jason had carved out for us. I couldn’t help but glance over my shoulder, back into the reading room, toward the table where he usually sat. How many times had I primped and preened to walk past the man? How many coats of Pick Me Up Pink had been wasted on him? I scratched my knee through my petticoats, wondering just how much my silly costume had turned him on, had led him to his cruel manipulation.
Cruel manipulation. Well, it sounded all grand and tragic when I thought about our relationship that way. I was the one who had fallen for a married man. I was the one who had tried to muscle in where I wasn’t wanted, where I didn’t belong. I was the one who had cast the grimoire spell.
The heartsick queasiness that I had battled during my time off swept over me with a vengeance. Still, I probed deeper into my thoughts, like a patient testing a bad tooth. Jason had made himself available to me. And of course he had known that he was married, that he should have been off the market. Even if he were caught in my love spell, he should have respected the truth. I couldn’t really be at fault. At least not completely.
But there was something in me, something that had made me reach out for him. I had wanted him, was attracted to him, was drawn to him. Was that because of his very unavailability? Because I somehow sensed that I could never truly have him? Because I could tell that he was emotionally bound to someone else, and I would never have to commit, never have to hurt the way that I’d hurt for the past year, getting over Scott?
Yeah, right. I could ask myself questions all day, but the reality was I had fallen really hard for a jerk.
Evelyn was continuing to speak. “Professor Templeton made it clear that he won’t be using our reading room in the near future; he said he’s had a family emergency come up, and he’ll have to spend more time at home. He specifically asked me to thank you for your … how did he phrase it? Your professional enthusiasm.”
Professional, my ass.
Before I could summon up a few polite words, Evelyn leaned back in her chair. “And that brings me to the last thing I wanted to talk to you about.”
I couldn’t read her expression. Usually, her chair-leaning signaled something bad. It generally accompanied grave news, announcements where she wanted to read my reaction completely. In fact, the last chair-leaning conversation we’d had was the one where she’d informed me that I was not going to get a raise, that I’d be living in the cottage.
“Yes?” I said, because she seemed to need a prompt to continue. What could it be now? Maybe Harold had told her something about what had happened; maybe he had mentioned his so-called love for me.
Or maybe Ekaterina had called, demanding that I be disciplined for poaching her husband. Husband. I shivered.
Or maybe there was something else going on at the library, some particularly dank corner of the basement that needed organizing, some obscure collection of impossible cramped-handwriting letters that needed to be sorted through, and Evelyn had decided that I was just the woman for the job..
Finally, she spoke. “There comes a time in every library where the director has to consider the long-term viability of the institution.”
Oh. My. God.
She was breaking up with me. She was giving me the “it’s not you, it’s me” speech, tailor-made for the reference desk. She was firing me.
I was going to be out on the street. No job. No home. No decent references, courtesies of Harold and Jason and all the insanity of my life in the past couple of months.
How was I going to feed myself? How was I going to feed Neko? And where would I put the books on witchcraft that now marched along the orderly shelves in the cottage basement?
“Evelyn, I—”
She shook her head, effectively cutting me off. “You and I face one of those times.” She settled her palms on her desk blotter and finally looked me in the eye. “Jane, I spent all day yesterday in an emergency meeting with the Board.”
“The Board?” I tried to keep my vo
ice from quavering.
“The Board, and a special guest. I supposed I shouldn’t be surprised that you never mentioned Mr. Potter to me. Not after our discussion about Justin Cartmoor and your grant applications.”
“Mr. Potter?” I could not begin to figure out how he fit into this discussion.
“He came to see me on Monday afternoon. He brought pictures of Lucinda.”
Mrs. Potter. The owner of the shih-tzu. “I never met her,” I said, because it sounded like I should say something.
“That’s what Mr. Potter said. But he seemed certain that she would have liked you. Liked you and us. Our building. Our collection.” Evelyn’s face suddenly split into a broad grin. “That’s why he decided to endow the Lucinda Potter Library Enhancement Fund.”
“The Lucinda—” My grimoire spell had struck again. Besotted, Mr. Potter had solved the Peabridge’s fiscal nightmare.
“Yes!” She couldn’t contain herself any longer; she actually leaped up from her chair. “The Lucinda Potter Library Enhancement Fund. Mr. Potter—Samuel—has already spoken with his lawyers, and the paperwork is all complete. He’s setting aside one pool of money for our daily operations, and another for special projects. He mentioned our diary collection in particular, said that you had told him how desperately we needed to get it in order. With his generous gift, we can hire one full-time cataloger, and at least two part-time people.”
I collapsed back in my chair, thoroughly shocked. Mr. Potter had said that he and Lucinda had no children, that she would have loved to help us out with our collection needs. Nevertheless, I’d never really believed him; I’d thought that he was just engaging in cocktail party chatter. Two full-time-equivalents, plus money to run the place on a daily basis?
Somewhat dazed, I pulled off my mob cap, running my hands through my hair to collect any stray bobby pins. Was it ethical to accept the gift of a man blinded by magic? Could my spell change the way he thought of Lucinda, of his wife and what she loved, what she believed in? I tried a shaky laugh. “Then I guess we’re through with the costumes, aren’t we?”
Evelyn’s own guffaw was loud, horsey. “Through with the costumes! You are a kidder, aren’t you! We’ll need them more than ever, with all the new people who are going to come flooding through our doors! We’re going to issue press releases, Jane, host a party. We’re on the Georgetown map at last!”
Well, a girl could try, couldn’t she? Grudgingly, I asked, “Then I guess the coffee bar stays as well?”
“I wouldn’t think of changing a thing!” Evelyn shook her head. “Not the coffee, not the costumes, and most certainly not you. Thank you, for everything you’ve done.”
I shook my head and dropped my mob cap into my lap. “Really,” I said. “It was nothing.”
All’s well that ends well, I tried to justify. Those were Shakespeare’s words, and they should be good enough for me. But I promised myself that I would think twice—no three times—four!—before I worked another spell.
