Original fiction · Chapter 1 of 2
The Book at the Returns Desk
The retired librarian called me on a Tuesday to say my mother had left a book at the returns desk.
My mother had been dead for eleven months.
“I know,” Mrs. Keene said when I told her. “That's why I called you.”
The branch was clearing its storeroom before a renovation. Mrs. Keene had volunteered to sort boxes because she was the only person who could remember which keys opened the old cabinets. She met me at the side door in the red glasses she'd worn since I was a child.
My mother had cleaned the library for years. I used to wait for her behind the desk on Thursdays, when her shift ran late. I read there because there wasn't much else to do. Once I complained that we didn't own enough books at home. She told me the library had enough for both of us. I didn't understand why she said it like she needed permission.
The book Mrs. Keene set on the counter was small and green, with a loose strip of paper sticking out. It was an old copy of a novel about a girl who travels across the country to find her brother. I'd checked it out three times before I turned thirteen. My mother had asked me to tell her what happened on the last page. I told her to read it herself.
“Was she borrowing it?” I asked.
Mrs. Keene said Mom had brought it in to have the spine mended. She'd bought the book at a library sale, and she was afraid the pages would fall out. Mrs. Keene took it home to fix. After Mom died, she'd put it aside because she didn't know whether I'd want to see it.
I opened to the strip of paper. It was a grocery receipt. On the back, in handwriting I recognized, my mother had copied one word from the book. She'd written it seven times. Underneath she'd drawn a little picture of a bird.
“She used to draw that bird on notes for me,” I said.
Mrs. Keene pulled up a chair. “She knew how to sign your school forms,” she said. “But when you were fourteen, she decided this would be the first book she’d read on her own.”
