“What did I remind you of?”

Duncan lifted a bubble wand toward his lips and blew a steady stream of bubbles in my direction. Then, when the wand was empty, he lowered it, shifted his gaze to my eyes, and said, “You reminded me what it felt like to be happy.”

And that, right there, was the tipping point.

The rest of the spring semester just floated by on a cloud of pleasantness.

Babette and I felt like maybe we had done it. Maybe we had fixed him. Or, more specifically, maybe we and six weeks of twice-a-week therapy had fixed him. Could it have been that easy? That fun? He really did seem a lot better.

He didn’t turn back into Old Duncan, exactly. He still wore his suit, still coiffed his hair, still stayed serious a lot of the time.

But there was warmth to him now. He let himself give in to play. He gave in to crazy socks. He accepted that Chuck Norris was never meant to be a security dog and started letting the kids pet him.

He let himself relax. A little.

There was no hope of resisting him after that, and I let him take my heart completely hostage. I settled into a comfortable-uncomfortable life of pining. I never found the nerve to ask him if the things he’d said on drugs had been true, and he, of course, never brought it up. He continued doing Babette’s daily tasks, and I joined him if he needed a partner, and he seemed to actively like my company … but he never tried to kiss me again or take anything to another level.

It told myself it was fine. I tried to focus on the upsides.

Babette was doing better—and making (mostly failed) attempts to learn how to cook. Alice—her fiancé still deployed until mid-summer—joined us lots of nights. We played board games at Babette’s kitchen table, and gossiped about our coworkers, and analyzed Duncan’s progress.

It was good to settle into a little holding pattern, I decided. It gave me some time to practice self-care. That seizure that had been threatening never did come, and I wanted to keep it that way. I meditated, took walks by the water, and got plenty of sleep. It started to feel like maybe things could find a way to be okay.

* * *

Until one day Tina Buckley showed up in the library. My library.

“I need to talk to you,” she said. “It’s about Clay.”

I stopped.

“He’s having trouble with his reading.”

This got my attention. Sweet Clay, with his big, owl-like glasses, was one of my most voracious, enthusiastic readers. I could not imagine him having trouble with his reading. With Clay, in fact, the challenge was finding enough books to keep him busy.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“He’s had a book on his nightstand for a week, and he’s barely read any of it.”

That definitely didn’t sound like Clay. “What’s the book?” I asked.

Tina looked straight at me and said, “The Sound and the Fury.”

I coughed. “I’m sorry, what?”

She nodded. “Yes. He did fine with Of Mice and Men, but he’s faltering with this one.”

“Clay read Of Mice and Men?” I asked.

Please note: we were talking about a third-grader.

“Yes,” Tina says, “and he aced his reading comprehension quiz. But now it’s like he’s backsliding.”

I had to step back.

“Why,” I asked then, “is your third-grader reading Steinbeck?”

Tina gave me a look. “You’ve seen him. You know what he can do. His father and I think he needs to be challenged.”

“Challenged … by Steinbeck?”

“His dad and I want him reading the classics.”

“In the third grade?”

“He can handle it.”

“Maybe he can. But should he have to?”

It wasn’t shocking to talk to a parent who was pushing difficult reading on her kid. Parents at this school did that all the time. No matter what culture or socioeconomic group they came from—and we had a wide variety here—they were all, uniformly, people who valued education. They were hard-working, driven, goal-oriented people, and most parents, I’ve found, have some level of anxiety about their kids’ relationship with reading. It’s beyond common for parents to equate reading with success—and difficult reading with more success.

I spent a lot of time trying to convince overeager parents that harder didn’t always mean better. So a conversation like this wasn’t all that surprising.

What was surprising, though, was that this was (A) Max and Babette’s daughter (who should know better), talking about her (B) third-grader and his interest—or lack thereof—in (C) reading Steinbeck.

Steinbeck.

“We also have another issue,” Tina said, lowering her voice to a whisper. “Last night, I found some disturbing materials in his backpack.”

I frowned. What were we talking about? He was a little young for Playboy.

“Disturbing how?” I asked.

“I found them—but I hid them in the pantry behind the cereal boxes before his father could see.”

“Hid what?” I prompted.

Tina took a breath, then let it out. She leaned in a little closer. Then she whispered, “Garfields.”

I frowned. Garfields? “I don’t understand,” I said.

She nodded, like we were on the same page. “Four compilations. The big, fat ones.”

I knew about those Garfields. He had checked them out yesterday. I’d let him go one book over the limit, even. “What’s wrong with Garfield?”

She looked at me like I was nuts. “It’s cartoons.”

“Not animated cartoons, though. Not Porky Pig.”

“Close enough. His dad and I want him reading real books.”

As far as I was concerned, any book was a real book. “So … no comics? No graphic novels? No Archies?”

She made a disgusted face. “Good Lord, no. His dad doesn’t want him reading kid stuff.”

“You do realize that Clay is a kid?”

Tina glared at me. “Look, my husband went to Princeton—and so did his father, and so did his grandfather. Kent is very concerned with making sure that Clay also goes to Princeton. And from every study he’s seen, reading can really give a kid the competitive edge.” Then she added, “Real reading, we mean. Garfields are not going to cut it.”

Okay. Got it. I mentally added to my to-do list: Find Clay a secret cubby where he can keep his Garfields.

I glanced up at the wall clock.

Then Tina Buckley said this: “You may have noticed that Clay is … not an athletic child.”

I waited to see where she was heading.

“My husband was a Division One athlete, so you can imagine how disappointed he is about that.”

No, actually. I couldn’t imagine anyone on earth being disappointed in Clay.

“If Clay can’t be an athlete,” Tina went on, “then his academics will have to be extra strong.”

“Aren’t they already?” I asked.

“Kent doesn’t want to take any chances.”

I wanted to stop her right there and beg her not to crush her child’s love of learning—but I could feel she was building to a question, so I waited.

“So I was wondering,” Tina went on, the muscles in her face tight, like she was deeply uncomfortable, “if I might be able to volunteer in the library. So I can be near him. And check in on him. And help him make better choices.”

The easy answer to that was not just no, but hell, no.

The last thing a kid with parents like that needed was his mom hovering over him in here, judging him and shaming him about totally normal kid stuff. This library was supposed to be a safe place where kids could follow their own reading compasses—without grown-ups watching, micromanaging, and judging them.

Seriously. Show me a kid who hates to read, and I’ll show you a kid who got shamed about it, one way or another.

I was here to protect kids from that kind of crazy. But, I just couldn’t bring myself to say no to her in that moment. She must have really wanted it bad to make the ask in the first place. I was the last person on earth she’d want to turn to.

Of course, she was the last person on earth I’d want in my library.

She couldn’t stand me, that much was always clear. And any hope I’d had that we would’ve closed ranks around Babette after Max died and find ways to stitch back together that empty hole he’d left in each of our lives was long gone. But it was also clear that for some reason—maybe one I didn’t even understand yet—Tina really, really wanted me to say yes.

So I said yes. Of course.

For Max and Babette—and Clay, if not for Tina herself.

“Of course you can,” I said, offering her a smile that was more like a twitch. “You can sign up for shifts on the website.”

There was a good chance that I was going to let her into the library and she’d find some way to burn the place down. Metaphorically. Or maybe even literally. I wouldn’t put it entirely past her.

But there was also a chance that our sunny little library would do for her what it always did for me: make her feel better. Be that little source of joy she so clearly needed. And that might have some kind of butterfly effect on the people around her. And for their sakes—especially since I was one of them—I just felt like I had to take it.

Even though, remember: this woman had kicked me out of Max’s funeral.

She looked down, like she’d suddenly remembered it, too.