The auction house that came to sell our books went into the library and made two piles: what they wanted to buy and what no one did. I got what no one did, but it was a big pile, and some of it was stuff no one did including me （because boxes of documents and papers and forms are boring） so those boxes could stay in the library attic “till kingdom come” said the man from the auction house which Pastor Jeff said meant until Bourne became heaven on earth which Mama said meant forever. The boxes-no-one-wanted could stay in the library attic forever.
All of which means I might not have the paperwork Duke Templeton does not want us to find because it might be at Omar’s or it might be in the library attic or it might be lost, but it also means I might have it because I did choose many boxes from the kingdom-come pile, and I could look for it if I knew what it was or who wrote it or why or when or on what grounds, literal or metaphorical. But when a random email warns that it is very important no one finds the damn paperwork, it could be cursing about anything.
The documents in the boxes are all in folders, and the folders all have labels that were labeled long ago, but those labels do not always tell me what is in the folders. Not labeling folders is very bad, but it is not as bad as labeling folders incorrectly or ambiguously.
One box has folders about fauna:
Brown Bear Sightings 1947–1967
4-H Fair Entry Forms: Livestock
Fishing License Applications
Dog Poo Removal Reminder Signs
One box has folders about flora:
Daffodil Bulb Order Forms
Mulching Sign-ups
Elm/Hickory Grove
Tree Doctor Contact Info （Greenborough）
One box has folders about the opposite of fauna or flora which is high school:
BMHS Field Trip Permission Slips
BMHS Parking Permits, Blank
Sheet Music: BMHS Graduation Ceremony
Reorder Form: Lord of the Flies （I consider throwing this entire folder away—even though it is more accurate to say it is already thrown away by being here with me, even though its being here with me has not prevented them reordering and us having to read this book in class—which, I would argue if pressed by a library disciplinary tribunal, demonstrates that I understood the book which is about anarchy, but I would never destroy library property, even ex–library property, because my duties as a librarian are sacred.）
Some of the folders contain nothing but paperwork related to ramps. Ramp designs, ramp repair, ramp refurbishment, ramp specs, site guidelines, handrail requisition forms, ramp signage. There is an entire box on nothing but ramps.
Then I find a box of folders, each of which has a single piece of paper in it. The folders are all labeled “Request for Aid,” and there are 117 of them. The first one is dated right after what happened happened. The last one is dated right before the library closed. The others are all in between. Inside each folder is a letter from Omar telling how hard things are in Bourne, how much we need help and also money and also compensation, addressed to “Representative” or “Congressperson” or “Senator” or “Your Honor.” Each one is stamped with the word “DENIED.”
None of it is anything I can imagine Duke Templeton or Nathan Templeton caring about never mind hiding from us never mind destroyed by. I do not know what we are looking for, but I can make an assumption it is not any of this.
Aside from the paperwork, the email gives two other hints. One is Duke Templeton has to do something you cannot do in winter. One is you used to be able to in the old days.
There are no files I can find specifically about seasonal activities in Bourne so I turn instead to my books and make a pile of all the ones in my library about things you cannot do after a freeze:
Surfing
Building a deck
Swimming laps for fun and exercise
Planting tomato starts
Planting really anything （so I put all the gardening books on the pile）
Spending a day at the beach （Technically, you could spend a day at the beach even if it was freezing, but the two books I have on the subject are both mystery romance novels marketed to teenage girls, and what their protagonists do at the beach is lie topless on towels to achieve a tan, run in the sand in bathing suits with boys, bounce in the waves with a beachball, build a bonfire after dark, canoodle in bikinis, and solve crimes. While you could solve crimes or build a bonfire—to be more accurate, you would have to—if it were extremely cold, you could not do those other things without freezing to death or losing all of your extremities to frostbite which these protagonists could not because that would not make them very attractive to the boys which is their principal goal. So I put these books in the maybe pile.）