Chapter One
Things were pretty good for Cilla. She had a job she enjoyed (librarian wasn’t a title that spoke of intrigue or high stakes, but she was mostly happy), a girlfriend who doted on her (well, doted might be a strong word, but Georgina had bought her flowers on her birthday), and a house in Twine River (a town she liked). Her golden retriever was pretty special too, probably the best dog she’d ever met, if she were being honest. Yes, she was happy enough.
Wednesday mornings were Cilla’s favorite at the library. It was preschool story hour and Apricot, the therapy dog, always came in to enjoy the story with the kids. The only downside was that Roger, Cilla’s self-absorbed colleague, liked to hang around creating jobs for Cilla to do so he could play Romeo to long-suffering Penny, who brought Apricot in for the kids.
The library was warm, and Cilla had placed colorful cushions on the ground for the children to sit on. Posters of book jackets were on the walls and the white tables were still unbesmirched by sticky fingers and craft glue. There were already a few parents with young children looking at books or chatting in low voices by the children’s corner. Cilla could not see, but could hear, excitable Henry, who usually spent story time rolling around the floor, distracting others or pulling books from the nearby shelves.
On the lawn outside, the sugar maples had begun their fall show: acid yellow, traffic-stopping orange, and lipstick crimson. The morning mist was weaving among their dark trunks and up into the foliage, reminding Cilla of the time she and Georgina had rowed out onto the lake in the mist and Cilla had almost capsized the boat, causing an argument. Cilla squinted at the trees. Perhaps it wasn’t such a lovely memory after all.
Her reverie was cut short by Roger’s arrival, his cooling dandelion tea in hand. He followed her gaze out of the window. “Reminds me of the curtains we had in the living room as a kid in the seventies. Awful colors.”
Cilla remembered her own living room curtains in the seventies, and she opened her mouth to say something in defense of sugar maples in the fall but was cut short by Roger thrusting his mug at her as he stood erect in excitement and licked his fingertips to smooth his eyebrows. “Cilla, did you bring the other chair over by the coffee table?”
Cilla placed the mug on the circulation desk’s counter and wiped the spilled dandelion tea from the front of her blue shirt with her sleeve. It had left a damp patch across her left breast. “Not yet. I thought you wanted me to finish organizing the on-holds.”
“Never mind that. The children are arriving soon.” Roger beamed as he caught sight of the object of his affection through the window. “Go get the chair.”
Cilla noticed a poppy seed between his front teeth.
“Pricilla,” Roger continued, his tone as condescending as it was directive. And Cilla let the poppy seed moment slide by. “Did that book about the mating procedures of various species come in? I thought perhaps you could display it on the coffee table so Penny has something to flick through while you’re reading to the preschoolers. This isn’t a criticism, but sometimes your reading pace is slow and the words drag out. All right for small children, I suppose, but not very engaging for the adults.”
Cilla felt rising giggles at the idea of Penny being engaged by a book about animal reproduction and had to disguise it in a coughing fit. Roger’s attention was on the doorway. “The chair!” he commanded as he breezed off to welcome Penny.
In fact, the book had come in, and Cilla and the junior librarian, Emma, had spent most of Tuesday afternoon howling with laughter about the various animalistic things that Roger was imagining with poor unsuspecting Penny. The baboons particularly resembled Roger with his near-together eyes and prominent nostrils, and they kept finding lines to read aloud then saying to one another in a serious tone, “A good old rogering.” Cilla felt slightly bad laughing at Roger when her own sex life had faded and she could use a bit of sprucing up herself—perhaps shed a few pounds, get rid of the fluff on her upper lip, and finally get to the gray roots in her mousy brown hair. She would, this weekend. She would book the hairdresser and go for a jog. She was sure she had some tweezers somewhere. She felt the cool patch of dandelion tea on her shirt and felt less awful. It didn’t mean she was going to drag a heavy upholstered chair over to the table, though. Roger wasn’t even her boss.
Roger attempted to usher Penny and Apricot past the circulation desk where Cilla was standing, but Penny stopped to say hello. Cilla knew she wasn’t supposed to give Apricot treats, but she did like to touch her soft woolly head and scratch underneath her chin. Penny’s cherubic cheeks were pink, making her very blue eyes bluer. She was such a kind, benign woman that Cilla couldn’t picture anyone having animalistic urges to baboon her, but Roger’s hovering presence was evidence to the contrary.
“Can I get you a coffee?” Cilla asked.
“The chair!” Roger muttered from one side of his mouth, making eyes over Penny’s shoulder.
Cilla, who knew that Roger only wanted the chair so he could cozy up to Penny in the seat next to her and talk over Cilla’s story, pretended not to hear.
“No, thank you, Cilla. Sorry, Roger, I don’t mean to be rude, but you’re a little close and Apricot isn’t sure how to interpret that.”
“Right, right. The dog. Pricilla, if you would be so kind as to get the chair for Penny, as you were asked to.”
“I prefer to be on the floor with the children. Thanks, Cilla. I’ll go grab a cushion before they’re covered in crumbs.”
Thankfully, Roger’s accusing look at Cilla was blocked by a patron coming to check out some books.
Cilla began her walk home that afternoon along Main Street, making vows to get up early in the morning and go for a jog before work. Georgina was always telling her how her health would improve if she joined the gym or did a juice cleanse. Cilla found the gym equipment confusing but she could probably drink juice for a day. The ground was still soggy from yesterday’s rain, and fallen leaves littered the gutters. Cilla admired the front yards at the tail end of Main Street as she walked. Some people put so much effort into their gardens. She turned down Time Street, where her own house was in the middle of the strip looking like a child with a dirty face and overgrown bangs in comparison to some of its tidy counterparts. She should do some yard work. It was on her list. The light was falling from the sky in an orange pool, but on a whim, Cilla passed her own house and kept walking toward where the street curved around on itself and the lawns became wider and the houses farther back from the road. The last one on the block was Cilla’s favorite: an original Queen Anne-style house called Hollyoaks. The house itself was pale gray with decorative white trim, bay windows, intersecting roof lines, and dark-gray patterned shingles. It was the unexpected asymmetrical lines and turrets that captured Cilla’s imagination, and she liked the way the overgrown garden and mature trees only made it seem more mysterious. She wanted to get a closer look, but she’d never been brave enough to pass beyond the leaning picket fence. A light flicked on in the front ground-floor window, and Cilla tripped over the uneven ground on the road in her haste to retreat, saving herself with her hands and muddying the knee of her jeans. The only thing more intriguing than Hollyoaks was its owner, whom Cilla had never spoken to but seen around town, always looking like she had been transplanted from another era—the seventies perhaps, like Roger’s parents’ curtains, only a hundred times more glamorous with eclectic clothing, jangling jewelry, and long dark hair. Georgina said the woman rarely left her house because she was a drug addict, and Roger said she ate pigeons because she couldn’t afford food and danced naked around the trees in the yard in fertility rituals. Cilla wasn’t sure what the woman would want with a fertility ritual, but she supposed Roger was overly focused on matters of reproduction. As she stumbled away in the fading light, Cilla couldn’t help giggling to herself at Roger’s attempts that day to foist his book upon Penny. Much to Roger’s dismay, the book had found its way into little Laura’s hands, who would not relinquish it because it had a photo of a giraffe in it, and Laura’s mother had checked it out of the library.
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