“Oh, Nick,” she said, drawing it out. “I guess I remember you.”
“You better.”
Before she could spend too much time wondering whether she should hug him, it was already happening, and he was so familiar that she almost slid her hands down into his back pockets. How long had they lasted before they made contact, nine seconds? “I’m glad to see you. I was here the other day, but I guess you weren’t around.” He ran the library now, circ desk to stacks, and when she’d come before, she’d casually glanced down every corridor and row of materials, and she’d happened to wander past every section on both floors. She hadn’t, purely fortuitously, run into him. Now she held up the books in her hand. “I’m grabbing some pulp. I get bored.”
He had a smile like a camera flash or a clap of thunder: distracting. But then his expression changed. “I heard you were coming up here to see about Dot. I’m sorry I missed the service. I was stuck here, actually. I hope she would understand—she came around a lot. I think she was here about three weeks before she died, just dropping off spy novels and picking up more.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if some of your books are still at her place. I might need a truck to return them, though.”
“So you’re taking care of the house?”
“Yeah, she has a whole lot of stuff. My mom and dad couldn’t really do it, and the boys are all over the place. So I’m taking some time up here to deal with the house in between jobs.”
“While you wait for the next animal whose story needs telling.”
She nodded slowly. His eyes were so green.
Now they had reached that point. The point where she could say, Well, great to see you, everything here looks amazing, and he would probably say something like Give my best to your family. But she racked her brain for other options. And just as she started to get desperate, he said, “I was about to walk over to get some coffee; do you want to check out your books and walk with me?”
She felt her whole body loosen with relief. “I would love that. But when I was here last time, Viola over there vouched for me. I think before we go, I should get a real library card so she doesn’t have to keep breaking whatever rule that is,” she said, noticing his shoulders, his sparse freckles, the way he still stuffed his hands into his pockets and pulled his shoulders up. She had always loved that.
“You have come to the right place,” he said softly.
He took her over to the circ desk. “So. Your name is Laurie Ellen Sassalyn,” he muttered, tapping away on the keys.
“Sharp memory.”
“Your local address is at Dot’s.”
“Yes—2623 Butterfly Street.”
“That’s right,” he said. “You know, a few years ago, one of the houses over there had a breakin, and people were walking around asking if I’d heard about Butterfly Street, and I kept thinking how much it sounded like the title of a Strawberry Shortcake mystery or something.” He tapped a little more. “You were born…July 16 of…1982?”
“Yeesh. You keeping a dossier on me, Cooper?”
“I remember things.” He looked up. “Hey, you’ve got a birthday around the corner.”
“Don’t remind me.”
“It’s a big one. I know because I just had mine.”
“Yes, I’m going to celebrate by consuming the essence of several virgins to restore my youth.”
“Gross.”
Just then, a young woman with a name tag that said JOLIE came around and tapped Nick on the shoulder. “I’m sorry, Nick. Frank Ashton says you were saving some Nova Scotia travel guides for him?”
“Ah, I was,” Nick said. He looked under the counter and pulled out a short stack of books. He handed them to her. “Tell him to call me if none of these are right.”
“You do requests,” Laurie said.
“Yes, I am a personal research concierge to a wide variety of people who hate the internet,” he said, pushing a few more buttons on his machine.
When he had printed out and laminated her card and put the bar code sticker on the back, she scanned the books and dropped them into her bag, and he held open the door as they stepped out onto the sidewalk. They walked in silence past the drop bin and the bike rack, and then finally, he bumped her with his shoulder. “Other than for thirty seconds at June’s wedding, I don’t think I’ve seen you in…twenty years?”
She nodded. “Something like that.” She had been single at June’s wedding; he had not. “So how’s Ginger?” she asked. “Still motoring?” Nick’s grandmother lived in a converted lighthouse out on the water with her dogs. You couldn’t drive all the way out to the house on the jetty, so she used a golf cart, and sometimes it would show up in town, too, even though it wasn’t street-legal. It had a license plate on the back that said SPEEDY.