FIVE

The next morning Mama still wouldn’t tell me what her supersecret errand was the day before, but she did agree to drive me to town. We passed the library three times before realizing that the yellow house on the corner with baskets of pink and purple flowers dripping all over the porch railing was not someone’s home but actually the address we’d been looking for. Back in Atlanta every library looked the same: low gray buildings and cement walkways, automatic revolving doors and security cameras pointed at the entrance. The front door of this library was propped wide open.

Mama scanned the three-story house and rolled her eyes. “Small-town America at its finest.” She handed me a white envelope. “You’ll need these to get a library card. I’ll be back in an hour.”

She drove away with the windows down and music blaring. It wasn’t like Mama to drop and run. I couldn’t decide if I felt dumped or free. After she turned the corner, I walked up the steps and past two white pillars and baskets of green ferns, then stopped short, startled by the words on a simple bronze plaque hanging next to the open door.

TOWNE LIBRARY, AND THE BOOKS WITHIN, WERE MADE POSSIBLE THROUGH THE GENEROSITY OF JOHNNY AUSTIN AND ARE DEDICATED TO HIS MEMORY.

My Johnny Austin? My eyes moved left to right. I read the words over and again, but each time they said the same thing. My daddy had donated a library to this town. An entire library. What kind of kid doesn’t know that about her own blood relative?

I stalled, giving myself a second to ponder this before going inside, when a large, boisterous family swarmed up the steps behind me, chattering and laughing, completely unaware I was in their path. There wasn’t anything I could do but get shuffled along with them until they split up and left me standing in a room unlike any library I’d ever imagined.

It was like being in the middle of someone’s living room, someone who loved books and comfortable places to read. Colorful sofas and chairs were grouped around coffee tables decorated with little vases of fresh flowers and framed photographs. In between the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, tall, thin windows shed light everywhere. There was not one tubular, headache-producing fluorescent bulb to be seen. And the books. So many books my fingers quivered.

The sweet smell of leather binding and flowers, and the homey feel of the library, made me forget about the plaque outside. I scouted out the first floor, a large, open area, with the exception of a circle of desks in the middle of the room. A wide staircase in the back led one flight up. The second floor felt more like a regular library, with row after row of bookshelves in one giant room, and people hunched over computers on two narrow tables at the far end. Internet!

A lady who was restocking shelves looked up and smiled at me. “Can I help you?”

“Yes, ma’am. Am I allowed to use the computers to go on the internet?”

“Sure,” she said. “Use your library card downstairs to reserve a time. They’re full right now, but maybe in an hour.”

“Thank you.”

She turned back to her cart. If I got a card now, I’d have to hand over all my identification papers. If someone made the connection between my name and my daddy’s, they might ask me a bunch of questions I didn’t know how to answer and I’d feel stupid. I wasn’t ready to feel stupid. I wanted to explore.

I started up another staircase that took me to the kids’ section on a third floor. A room to the left had a sign that said Teen and Young Adult. The room to the right had one that said Picture Books and Early Readers. But above me, in the middle of the ceiling, was a glass dome made from dozens of small windowpanes, each one framed in white wood. Sunshine and blue sky spilled through the glass. Tips of leafy branches surrounded the edges, making a green snowflake pattern around the border. I gaped at it with my head tilted back, wondering why every building in the world didn’t have a window on the ceiling. It was so beautiful.

A man came up beside me and cleared his throat. His name tag said his name was Jeremy.

“Oh, hello,” I said.

“You’ve never been up heyah I take it?”

“No, sir, I haven’t.”

“It’s a beauty, that one, ayuh? He was a masteh.”

He sounded like Jeffrey the mailman—times ten.

“Excuse me?”

“The ahh-tist. The one who painted it.”

“Painted what?”

He raised his eyes to the ceiling. “Up theyah.”

I tipped my head back and looked up at the glass dome and the sky.

“You thought it was real, ayuh?”

“It’s not?”

Jeremy motioned for me to follow. “Look heyah.”

He pointed out a window. Clouds had moved in and dappled the air. Everything that had been blue before was now that in-between lavender color that happens when rain clouds get between the earth and the sky. I went back to stand underneath the bright blue dome again and squinted.

“The leaves are all different, and they don’t move. That’s how you tell,” Jeremy said.

He was right. Not one leaf breathed. Each one was a unique example from different trees. In just the few short weeks since I’d been in Vermont, I could already make the distinction between a heart-shaped birch leaf and a lobed oak.

“Who painted it?” I asked.

Jeremy smiled and turned his palms up. “Local ahh-tist. Same one as donated this place. Johnny Austin. Bit of a recluse. Died in the spring. Tragedy.”

I stared up at the ceiling and shuddered.