“It’s good to see you,” she says. One raised eyebrow scolds me: It’s been a while.
“You too.” I give her a smile of my own. “I saw you at graduation. I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to say thanks in person.”
“The handshake line was a mile long. It was too hot to wait in the sun.”
“I would have left, too.”
“What can I do for you?”
“I just want to use a computer,” I say. No books today, and I can tell she’s a little disappointed.
Cora puts the book on the circulation counter before turning to face me, hands on hips. “We close at six on Fridays and I have plans, so make it zippy. Then promise me that you’ll be back sometime when we can catch up.”
“Cross my heart.”
“Got your library card?”
I shake my head and Cora reaches behind the counter. Grabbing a lanyard with a laminated card clipped to the end, she thrusts it at me. “Use this. Guest username and password are on the card. Search history is saved, so you’d better not be looking up porn or how to dispose of a body.”
“You know me so well.”
Cora laughs. “Don’t worry, I don’t have you pegged as the murdering type.”
“There’s a type?”
“Honey, I could pinpoint the ten people most likely to commit homicide in this town. And a dozen other things that would curl your toes.”
I’m really not sure what to do with this information. Cora is a contradiction in terms, an ample fifty-something with the fashion sense of an eccentric yogi and a gaze so shrewd I feel like she can see right through me. When I was little and Beth Murphy used to take me and Jonathan to the library, Cora would sometimes pick out a book and read it just to me. It made me feel so special to be singled out that way. Like she saw something in me that I couldn’t see in myself. Maybe it was the way that I could be both silly and serious, innocent and just a bit macabre. We share a weird sense of humor, and something makes me say: “Surely there are no homicidal maniacs in Jericho.”
Cora takes the bait and belts out a laugh like a dog barking. But she doesn’t say what I expect her to. “Oh, we’re all capable of murder. Even—maybe especially—the good people of Jericho.”
“Not Jericho!” I fake-gasp, clutching my chest.
She gives me a stern look but softens it with a smile. “Don’t be so sarcastic. It’s true. People around here are a bit set in their ways, but that’s true in most places. Communities coalesce around ideals.”
“What are Jericho’s ideals?”
She thinks for a moment. “Community. Family. Faith.”
“Tradition. Uniformity. Compliance.”
Cora laughs. “Tell me how you really feel!”
“It’s true,” I say, bristling a little.
“Maybe we’re talking about two sides of the same coin,” Cora concedes. “There’s who we are at our worst, most base moments, and the shimmer of who we could be. Who we want to be. We’re aspirational, I guess.”
I’ve never thought of Jericho as the sort of community that aspires. We preserve. Circle the wagons. Protect our own no matter the cost, and sacrifice those on the fringes. It’s not even close to being the same thing. “I guess we don’t see it quite the same way,” I tell her, and think for just a moment about sharing what Sullivan told me. About poison in the water and poison that put Baxter in the ground. This whole place feels poisonous to me.
“You don’t have to agree for it to be true.”
“Well, there’s nothing that would drive me to murder,” I say confidently. There isn’t. Of course not.
Cora shakes her head. “It’s not about a thing, hon. The motivation to kill comes down to who.”
This conversation is suddenly making my stomach twist, my palms go clammy. I’m not sure how to get out of it, but Cora must read discomfort on my face, because she gives my arm a pat.
“Sorry. I’m not sure how we got here,” I admit as I let her usher me in the direction of the small computer bank. There’s a long table with four desktops, their monitors all dark.
“You know I don’t do small talk,” Cora says with a wink. “Can’t tell if that’s a good thing in a librarian or a liability. Anyway, when’s the last time you’ve used one of our computers? We got new ones this spring. All you’ve got to do is give the mouse a little wiggle and follow the prompts. We default to Yahoo! but I’m sure you know how to get where you’re going.”