Chapter Two #2
and the kind of sloping bangs Whit had always liked, and he was just noticing her wide hips and thinking that this was the
first time he’d talked to an unfamiliar woman this close to his age in he didn’t know how long, when he noticed the lanyard
around her neck dotted with a few pins. One was a kestrel with a spoon in its beak. Ah. So she was a fan of Helen’s books.
“I’m fine,” she said eventually, as she placed the large book on the desk in front of her and began fiddling with the computer,
presumably to check it back in.
“Now,” she said to the computer, “tell me about this mysterious package only my mother can receive.”
“Oh. Your mother.” Something about that made sense.
This woman did not look like Mrs. Pryor, and she certainly didn’t dress like the older woman, who was always draped in shawls and long beaded necklaces like a retired soprano.
But there was something about her, a kind of quietly frenetic energy.
Like her mother, she didn’t seem obnoxious or loud, but you got the sense she could perform, in some necessary way, at a moment’s notice.
“Yes,” she said, looking at him for the first time, “my mother. I just moved to town, and already she has me subbing for her.
Child labor.”
She said it lightly, like a joke her mother could actually hear. Then her eyes were back on the computer again, and Whit felt
like the least interesting person in the world.
“So you see,” she continued, “whatever it is, you really can give it to me.”
Whit passed the package from one hand to the next. He moved his booted feet up and down, up and down. Helen would never know,
of course. And this woman—her name tag said ms. pryor, substitute—was a very close second to her mother, who was out sick for who knew how long. Whit certainly wasn’t going to ask.
“Okay,” he said finally. “Well. It’s—here it is. She thought . . .”
He trailed off, placing the package gingerly before him on the desk and patting it once with his hand. Then, after bringing
his interlocked fingers to rest at his waist, he thought better of it and slid the package all the way across the desk to
Ms. Pryor.
She looked at him like he had just performed the macarena sans accompaniment. “Thank you,” she said, repressing a laugh.
“It’s a gift from my wife. She thought the library might like to have it, display it somewhere.”
Ms. Pryor was still watching him, nodding and smiling like a babysitter humoring a talkative child.
“Okay,” he said again, turning to leave.
“But, oh,” he added, raising a finger and turning back as he remembered Helen’s other proviso, “she was totally okay with the school selling it or putting it up for auction or whatever, if they needed money for, I don’t know, a new gym.
But surely there are other ways to make money at a place like this, right?
And come to think of it, a gym would be sort of depressing.
A new art room, maybe. An orchestra room. Orchestra hall? You get it.”
He was babbling now, and whatever Ms. Pryor had been doing before, going on about the books in the book drop, that was different.
Those were her inner thoughts, articulated like a soliloquy for whichever audience happened to hear it. His rambles, Whit
knew, were more like the nervous ravings of a sad widower: a character he did not enjoy playing and one that, for some reason
he couldn’t understand, felt particularly disagreeable to him now.
“All right,” Ms. Pryor said, and it was then that she finally looked down at the package. He knew the words she was reading,
because they had ridden around in his front seat for months: For the most magical library there is, with all my affection and appreciation. Cheers, Helen.
The substitute librarian slowly began to unwrap the package, her short fingers treating it with delicacy and care, like she
was someone who handled books (it was a book) reverently and often.
From the front cover, it looked unremarkable. It was simply a first edition of the first book in the Greenwood Castle Saga:
The Door in the Garden Wall. But then Ms. Pryor turned to the title page, which was signed:
Helen Albright Longacre
She looked up at him, her mouth just slightly open and her eyes newly narrowed.
“There’s more,” Whit said, indicating with his hand that she should continue turning pages.
She did, her eyes widening behind her green glasses as she looked through page after page of handwritten annotations, all inscribed by one of the English-speaking world’s most prominent children’s fantasy writers.
“But how did she—?”
Ms. Pryor looked up at him again, and Whit surprised himself by laughing.
“What? How did she get this? She made it. She wrote it.”
Ms. Pryor looked down at the book again, then up once more. “She—?”
“She wrote the inscription and annotations herself. And the book.”
A realization washed over Ms. Pryor’s face: that his wife was the author of the Greenwood Castle books, Helen Albright Longacre,
who had died a little over a year ago in that most quotidian way—undetected Stage 4 cancer. Which made him the bereaved husband
who was giving her librarian mother a precious gift.
Her eyes took on a liveliness different from that of the front-office ladies. To Whit, they seemed to convey genuine compassion,
but then she set her face once more and whipped her eyes back to the book.
“But this is amazing,” she said. “This is . . .”
She ended with an awed sigh. Whit shrugged. How did you respond to that?
“Well,” he said, realizing that Ms. Pryor the fan would probably enjoy sifting through the annotations without the late author’s
husband watching her do it. “Please make sure your mom knows about it as soon as possible. Helen thought she’d be excited.”
“Are you kidding? She’ll die.”
Whit smiled softly, and then Ms. Pryor realized what she’d said, and then Whit realized what she’d said. She looked ready
to apologize, but she stopped herself, and Whit, for some reason, liked that.
“All right,” he said. “Thank you. I hope you have a good day.”
“Thank you,” Ms. Pryor said, and then she was lost to the notes Helen had written from her chemo chair about such-and-such elf and such-and-such warlock, and Whit rallied himself to once again face it, the monumental, all-consuming task he’d successfully avoided thinking about for the last hour, which was a much longer break
than usual. But first, there were the front-office ladies to deal with and the unexpected thought that maybe a steaming baked
ziti on the doorstep wouldn’t be so bad after all.