Chapter Twenty-Five

THE LIBRARY LOOKED so inviting after the clean-out, without all those sad old books crammed into every inch. Nan walked around enjoying the sight, imagining the books breathing a sigh of relief.

How long would it be before the shelves were jam-packed again? If she were honest with herself, she knew it wouldn’t be long. The book sale was a very temporary solution; it wouldn’t help all the other space issues. After school, every single seat in the library was always full, and the checkout desk now often had lines, lines that wound around right into Nan’s tiny office. There was absolutely no room for a self-checkout machine unless she hung it from the ceiling and hoped nobody tall bonked their head on it.

Nan rounded the corner, turning into the blind spot in the Reference Room where she’d thought about putting up one of those security mirrors. There, she saw Lolly from behind, unmistakable in her running tights and hoodie. Nan wanted to thank her for helping with the book sale, to share her joy in the clean shelves.

“Hey, Lolly,” she called out.

Lolly whipped her head around, her hands covering something on the table. That was strange. For one thing, she’d been standing there, not moving like the human perpetual-motion machine she usually was, not laughing and talking as she did when plucking books for her children to read during their mandatory daily home reading hours.

Nan saw it then, a stack of books, books that didn’t belong in the Reference Room.

“It’s okay, Lolly,” she said.

“I didn’t mean anything,” Lolly said. “I was just…”

“Can I see?”

Lolly moved her hands away from the books and sat down. Nan had been wondering if the woman even knew how to sit, so mystery solved. Nan sat beside her.

The books read:

Betrayed

The Life I Led Before

Going Going Gone

“You can tell me,” Nan said. “No matter what. It’s okay.”

“I really can’t.”

Nan waited. Silence could be so full sometimes. She could practically feel the truth bumping against the surface of the silence. She could smell Lolly’s distress leaking out of her skin. The town clock rang the time slowly; Nan timed her own breathing with each peal.

Finally, Lolly leaned close to Nan. “It’s the oldest story in the book. He’s got another woman, another whole family in the next town over. Our six kids were not enough for him, apparently. He’s got three more with her.”

Nan felt that blow. She closed her eyes for a second, absorbing the shock waves that came barreling at her from Lolly. She didn’t say anything but nodded back at her.

“I didn’t mean to upset you. The titles of those books would just leap out at me when I was in here. I’d pull them off the shelves. Leaving them like this felt like I told somebody. It was a release valve for a few minutes. But I haven’t told anybody.”

“Not even T?” Nan wondered if T was Lolly’s revenge on her husband.

“That was nothing,” Lolly said. “An angry, needy moment.”

“You’re entitled.”

“See, I have a moment of weakness after great provocation. But he has a decade of deliberate deceit. His oldest kid over there is ten years old. The youngest is one month old. That’s the whole story right there. It’s in the numbers.” A tear escaped from Lolly’s eye and rolled down into her mouth. She got up, her head bowed like a contemplative, her face as still as a portrait.

“I really love that guy,” she said. “He’s my favorite person on earth. I always want to talk to him, tell him everything I’m thinking and doing. And you know what? He says he really loves me too. He says he loves both of us, all of us. So what am I supposed to do with that? I feel like I’m going to explode.” She walked out slowly, touching the books she passed with her fingertips as if saying goodbye.

Nan picked up the stack of books and brought them over to the shelving carts behind the checkout desk, where Mona stood watching everything, hearing everything, watching Lolly leave empty-handed, eyeing the books that Nan was holding, her eyes meeting Nan’s with understanding.

Then a miracle happened. Mona said nothing. Nan understood she wouldn’t say anything, that they had achieved the impossible, an unspoken agreement. Now that Mona was a person with a pain she didn’t want to discuss—her son’s divorce—she could recognize pain walking by her.