39. Teddy
THIRTY-NINE
TEDDY
I can feel the panic begin at the base of my spine. I think you should say yes. I told myself it was too fast, things may have heated up quickly physically between us, but that doesn’t mean she’s ready for more. I’ve done this to myself, again.
“Midge brought me some interesting information today,” Nellie says, although it sounds like I’m underwater and she’s speaking to me from above. “Teddy?”
She grabs my hand to stop me from fidgeting, my thumb no longer able to spin my ring. “Sorry?”
“I said, Midge brought some interesting information to me today. About a library application she submitted to the regional council. Marmot Point has received funding for a proper library. It would serve not just Marmot Point, but the surrounding communities with a mobile unit. I don’t know all the details yet, but Three Rivers University is one of the partners.” I don’t know why she’s telling me this. Maybe she thinks I’ll be happy to know that if I stay, I’ll have easier access to books. “She suggested I stick around to help them. ”
“Wait.” I give my head a shake. “We were both offered opportunities up here on the same day?”
Nellie tilts her head, grinning at me. “I think these Marmotans have been trying to play matchmaker since the day we got here. But what do you think? Should I take the role? At least to help them get started?”
“You’re asking if you should take a job that’s about half an hour from where I’ll be living? Is that a question you don’t already know the answer to?” I ask.
“I hate assumptions,” she replies. “I’m still trying to work through some feelings, and I don’t know if this is all just”—she looks off into the distance, the lines on her forehead deepening slightly as she searches for the right word—“a phase,” she finally says.
“A phase? This?” I gesture between the two of us, and she nods. “Did anything I just say sound like something someone says in a phase.” I grab her hand and place it on my chest. “This beats for you. Nellie. Nellie. Nellie.” She laughs, her fingers curling in my shirt.
“Not Library Girl?”
“Too many syllables. I think it would be considered a very irregular heartbeat.” She laughs harder, the force of it causing me to join in. “We officially have a week left here. If you decide it’s not what you want, we go home and never come back. If it is what you want, we go home and get things settled so we can come back together.”
“Together,” she mouths, the sound barely reaching my ears.
“So what exactly would you be doing?” I ask Nellie, who is sitting across from me on the floor of the bunkie .
She draws patterns in the smear of hummus on her plate with a carrot. “Honestly, Midge just gave me a very basic overview. But it sounded like a nice change from what I’m currently doing. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy working in an academic environment, but I’ve done it my entire working life. Being here has reminded me of my summer job at the library. Getting to work with kids and adults who want to read. People who yearn for a good book.” She drops the carrot and looks up at me. “I don’t think it’s something I want to do forever. I don’t see myself up here for years on end. But being part of something from the ground up would be pretty cool.”
“What about your parents? What do you think they’d say about you changing jobs?”
Nellie winces. “I don’t know. They’ve always been the type of people to encourage dreams. But they will also question walking away from a pretty stable, well-paying job. I’ll have to have my arguments well-constructed before I talk to them. I’m an adult and can do whatever the hell I want, but…”
“You don’t want to disappoint them,” I suggest.
“Exactly.”
“You haven’t talked much about them moving away. You doing okay with that?”
I watch as she looks back at her plate and begins to worry her bottom lip. She’s blinking rapidly and I am about to slide over to her when she looks up at me. “I was upset when they told me. It felt like they were abandoning me. I kept expecting to cry or lash out in some way. Spoiled, remember?” She laughs, pointing at herself. “But I just kept reminding myself that they’re just a plane ride or phone call away.” She looks at me, and I see it in her expression. They’re still here, physically still here.
When Nellie wants to call Marley after dinner, I take our plates back to the house. Midge is snuggled next to George on the well-worn couch reading from the same book. It’s ridiculously cute.
“I heard you had a job offer today,” she says the second she sees me.
“Well, a temporary job offer,” I amend, sliding the plates into the dishwasher. “It’s just until Joshua is better. Mind if I?” I say, pointing at the armchair next to them.
“Please do.” Midge smiles up at me. “What’s your story?” she asks as George closes the book and pulls her in closer.
Only two people outside of my family know everything, and now that I’ve told Nellie, I don’t feel the same anxiety about telling anyone else. Everything pours out of me in one long stream of consciousness, and when I’m done, Midge and George are looking at me with eyes full of tears.
“She’s the reason for every breath you take,” George says softly.
“Such a romantic,” Midge scoffs, although her expression softens further making her tone carry less weight.
“I would doubt that, but it sure felt like I took my first real breath in years back in December.”
“How did you end up here together?”
“That would be Bennett and Marley’s scheming. They claimed to not like the idea of Nellie coming all this way alone, and then Bennett mentioned Betty and Joshua’s rescue.”
“So everyone around you sees it?”
“What?”
“That you’re in love with each other,” Midge says plainly. “Head over heels, only have eyes for the other, dumbstruck, truly, madly, deeply.”
“Take it from two olds—” George begins.
“Olds?” Midge sputters, looking highly offended. “Speak for yourself, sir.”
“That’s what the kids call us when they think we can’t hear them, on the account of being old.”
“What kids?”
“Your blood relations, Magpie. All the wee Midges running around this place.”
“They would never.”
“They do,” George and I say at the same time.
Midge leans forward and glares out the window to see her grandkids are up to various activities in the yard. “Those rude little buggers.”
George shrugs. “I’ve earned the stamp of old. I don’t take it as an insult, and I don’t think they mean it as one.” His words don’t seem to do anything as Midge remains in her current position, wearing the look of someone planning revenge. “Embrace the feeling, Teddy,” he says to me, ignoring what Midge is doing. “You more than just about anyone know how fleeting time can be. This thing between you and Nellie is years in the making. It has been challenged, and at the end of the day, it has triumphed.”
I lean back and look out the window just in time to see Nellie jump back from the snake Devon is carrying. He grins and then he’s chasing her with it, the other kids joining in. I can’t help laughing at a memory that starts to play. We had just finished a picnic and were walking back to the car when a garter snake slithered across the path. Nellie said a very loud “Nope,” threw the basket she was carrying to the side, and took off at a run. I’d stood still, watching her disappear as the damn thing made its way to the forest floor, totally unbothered.
“This was her dream,” I say, watching as Nellie runs toward the truck.
“What? To be chased with a snake?” George asks, confused .
What a weird dream that would be. “No, to have a mobile library.”
“I believe it,” Midge says, finally done with her death stare. “She’s got a wanderer’s spirit. I have a hard time imagining her now stuck in one place.”
I look over at Midge. “How long have you known about the library being approved?”
She looks at me with a guilty little smile. “It was approved before you arrived. Nellie’s boss had suggested that she might put Nellie’s name forward for the position.”
“But there isn’t a position available yet.”
“The trailer will stay put as a temporary library until things are set. It’s going to be a long winter, but spring comes eventually, and with it a new adventure. The trailer then will be able to be used as a mobile library.”
“Those kids are psychotic,” Nellie gasps as she bursts through the patio door and collapses dramatically at my feet.