Chapter Two
Always at home in a library, Arden didn’t stress her library event. After all, she’d be speaking to librarians, readers, and patrons. Plus, she had Zoey.
“You’re driving to the library where you spent hours and hours in high school. Not to study or hunt up books this time, but as the featured speaker. Doesn’t all this feel a little weird and unreal?”
“No, it doesn’t feel a little weird and ureal. It feels an entire crapload of weird and unreal.”
“Okay.” Zoey shook back her hair. “Just checking.”
When Arden’s cell phone rang, Zoey glanced at the phone in its holder. “Unknown number.”
“Hit ignore. I’ve been getting a couple of those a day.”
“You have heroic willpower. I know better, but can never resist.”
“And it’s always a bullshit solicitation or something about a car warranty or student loan. Possibly a deal on a cemetery plot.”
Zoey sighed, hit ignore. “It always is.”
“To wind back? You’re getting married in two short weeks.
Barely a month after that—and after two weeks of lots of honeymoon sex in Hawaii—you’re moving across the country and into a house you and Boone bought on a whirlwind five-day trip.
A few days after that, you’ll be marketing manager of Valley Vineyards while Mr. Boone Yeoh does what none of us really understand as VP of operations at Security One.
“Doesn’t that feel weird and unreal?”
“Hmm? Sorry, I was still on the lots of honeymoon sex in Hawaii. What it feels is bizarre. Wonderful, scary, exciting, and seriously bizarre.”
Zoey reached over to pat Arden’s leg. “I think I’ll miss you most of all, Scarecrow.”
Because she loved her cousin, Arden put her personal loss aside. “You may not be leaving Oz, but you’re having a hell of an adventure, Zoey.”
“We both are. Just think,” she added as Arden navigated into the library’s parking lot. “You’re about to go in and blow away any socks worn in the library. And after that, we’re going for the final fitting of my incredibly awesome and spectacular wedding gown.”
They got out of the car into a brisk March wind. Since the lion roared, Arden hoped, for the bride’s sake, April produced a lamb.
“Want more weird?” Zoey asked.
“Always.”
“I already feel married.”
“You’ve lived together for the best part of a year, after you dated exclusively for over six months.”
“It’s not just that. I told you how, the first time I met Boone I was like, oh no, I’m not ready for this, but there he is. He’s the one. And he was, he is.”
“So you got ready.” As she often did when they walked, Arden looped an arm around Zoey’s shoulders.
Since Zoey wore heels that added three inches to her five-five, Arden didn’t feel like she towered over her cousin. Too much.
“I did get ready, and fast, and it was easier than I thought. It could happen to you.”
“I don’t think that’s how it usually works. Plus, I’m younger than you.”
Zoey added an elbow jab with her laugh. “You used to hate when I hit you with the two years older.”
“I know, but now, and forever after, I gloat.”
Inside, Arden shook hands, introduced Zoey. They turned over coats, scarves, shook more hands.
Rachel Fines, the head librarian, kept Arden’s hand clasped in hers an extra moment. “We’re awfully proud of you, Arden. I can’t tell you how satisfying it is to shelve a book from someone we know. We have a waiting list for Whispers.”
“Well, I can’t tell you how satisfying that is. You were always really kind to me, Ms. Fines.”
“And you always studied quietly and brought back your books on time. Now, if you’re ready, we’ll get you started.”
“I’ll go find a seat, and count socks.”
“Socks?” Rachel said when Zoey walked away.
“Family joke.”
It felt the same, Arden thought, like every library—however small, however large—she’d ever stepped into. Like countless open doors waiting for her to choose which one she wanted to go through at that moment.
In the first weeks and months after her parents’ deaths, the library had been sanctuary and escape. There, she could do and be anything she wanted inside the pages of a book.
Inside the library, inside those pages, she’d realized what she wanted to do and to be. She wanted to write her own pages, her own stories. She’d wanted to be a writer.
While she waited for Rachel to introduce her, she looked over the audience. She found a face that brought that itch between her shoulder blades.
The guy, she thought … Dustin. Again? Sitting there, hands folded on a copy of her book.
She couldn’t say unreal, as there he sat, but she considered it several clicks over weird, and yes, into that spooky she’d felt the last time.
He wanted to write, she understood that, and how lonely it could feel. But to show up at all her events? Just a little too obsessive for comfort.
She decided she needed to ease off the friendly there, and stick with professionally polite.
Regardless, before she found that line, she had a job to do, and intended to do it well.
She stepped up to the podium.
“Thank you all for coming. We’re all privileged to be here, inside a library where we only have to reach onto a shelf for knowledge, for entertainment, for adventure, for solace.
We might come to check out a book or spend a quiet hour right here reading.
We come to study for an exam, to research a term paper, to bring our kids to Story Time.
All that and so much more is right here, open doors for us to walk through. ”
She wound it around to her own doors, her own path toward writing.
Her talk would run sixteen minutes—she’d timed it.
Three times.
Afterward, she’d take questions. And hoped she had answers. The unknown of that worried her a bit, but she liked the span of the audience, from retirees to a few teenagers.
When she finished to polite applause, she braced herself.
“If anyone has any questions…”
It surprised and nearly unnerved her when several hands shot up.
Where do you get your ideas?
“Well, given inflation, ideas are a dollar a dozen. The answer, for me, is to make the idea work, to care enough about the story and the people in it to make it work.”
Where do you find the time?
“Where do we find the time for anything? We make it and we take it. I was still in college when I started writing, trying to. I missed a lot of parties. I had to keep my grades up, too, and I worked part-time in the college bookstore, so it takes a lot of juggling and shuffling.”
She answered more, thought—hoped—she found a rhythm.
Then she smiled and nodded at the girl who’d been busy typing on a MacBook.
“How do you know it’s a good idea?”
“You don’t, until you take the leap.”
“So you should write what you know?”
“I don’t think so. I mean to say, write what you know if you want to write what you know. But? Right here?”
She spread her arms. “You can find out a lot you didn’t know when you walked in. Why not write what interests or intrigues you enough to find out?”
Dustin’s hand shot up.
She gave him the same smile and nod. “Dustin?”
“You told me once not to give up. When you want something you keep working until you get it. That’s not just true for writing, is it? But for just life.”
“I’d say yes, unless what you want is to rob banks.
I think it’s believing in yourself, then putting in the work.
The time, the effort, making the sacrifices.
Maybe you want to run a marathon. You can’t do it by wishing.
You have to gear up and train. You have to run, even if you can only make it a quarter mile the first time.
If you want it, you’ll keep running. Eventually, you’ll cross the finish line. ”
“Life’s a marathon, isn’t it?”
“Most of us hope it’s a really, really long one. So let’s keep running. Thank you again for coming. And remember to support your local library.”
She exhaled quietly, then braced again when people moved forward to speak to her.
She shook more hands, answered more questions.
Dustin worked his way up.
“That was really … it was just great. The marathon thing? It’s given me a lot to think about.” He held out the book. “Would you just sign this one? I haven’t decided who to give it to.”
“You keep buying my book, you’ll end up an honorary member of the family.”
As soon as she said it, she mentally kicked herself. Friendly knee-jerk needed to stop with this one.
“I’d love that! You’re a celebrity.”
She had to laugh. “Not even remotely.”
“Sure you are! I read the article about you in the paper. Anyway, I know you’re busy, but—”
“I really am. In fact, I’ve got to take my cousin for her final wedding dress fitting shortly. We’re approaching that particular finish line.”
She shifted her gaze and, relieved, greeted a familiar face.
“Ms. Cauder! Thank you, Dustin.”
She handed him the book, stepped away, and hugged her high school English teacher.
“When I saw you, I had a flashback to fourth period, senior year.”
“You did me proud.”
Because her eyes teared up, so did Arden’s.
“I couldn’t make either one of your signings. Parent conference for one, babysitting my grandbaby for the other. But I bought this.”
She pulled the book out of her bag. “I want my former, very talented student to sign it for me.”
Arden wrote what she felt. Thank you for helping me make the right turns.
“I don’t think there’s anything a teacher wants to hear more from a student. I’m trying to help this one now. Arden, this is Danica, fourth period, senior year, and she’s decided you’re her midterm project.”
“Oh. That’s a serious first for me.”
The girl was cupcake pretty with golden-brown skin, razor-sharp features, and wide, gold-flecked brown eyes.
“I want to be a writer. A novelist. I like finding out about things I don’t know. Ms. Cauder told the class about you, so I put my name on the library list, and I’ve already read your book. I really liked it.”
“Thanks.” Arden angled her head. “I bet you write every day.”