Tomes and Terriers

by Hillary Avis

  Abruptly, the memory ended as Myra shut the book, keeping her place in it with her finger.

  “Now do you believe me?” Myra asked.

  Allison nodded wordlessly. It was impossible, but it was true—it was exactly her memory in that book. And that meant that the rest of Myra’s story was true, too. Inside that house were more books full of memories. Everyone’s memories, not just hers. Paul’s memories were in there. She drew in her breath sharply.

  Myra reached over and squeezed Allison’s arm. “I know what you’re thinking. That’s why you have to be careful. It’s easy to get sucked in and live in the past, but you can’t get your life back that way. Trust me, I’ve tried.”

  “You read Al’s memories?” Allison bit her lip. The urge to rush inside and dive into Paul’s memories surged inside her, and it took all her effort to stay seated on the bench.

  Myra shook her head. “Oh, no. His weren’t in there. The minute someone passes, their memories disappear from the pages. This is a library of living memory, not a history museum. I had to be content with everyone else’s memories of Al. My own. Crystal’s. Friends’ who knew and loved him. It even got to where I looked for memories of people who didn’t know him—people who just passed him on the road. I was so hungry for him, I’d look through the eyes of a stranger to catch a glimpse.”

  Allison felt faint with greed. Not only would she be able to see Paul’s memories, she’d see other people’s memories of him, too. “How can you give that up?”

  “The answers aren’t in there.” Myra smiled at her across the porch. “You’ll see. The only answer is living, but we all have to learn that on our own. I hope this time here helps you the way it helped me. You can at least get one last look at your life with Paul.”

  Allison gripped the edge of the bench to steady herself. Paul’s memories were inside this house. If she could read them, maybe she could help him remember, too. No. She shook her head. She couldn’t even let herself hope. It was too much.

  Myra glanced at the street again. “Crystal’s going to be here soon. You have to decide. Will you be a guardian to the library or not?”

  “I will.” Allison cleared her throat. “I’ll do it.”

  A broad smile spread across Myra’s face. “Oh, I’m glad. Let me see. What else do you need to know? Oh, yes. If you tell anyone about the library, you’ll lose guardianship. Same if you remove any books from the building. Before the end of three years, you must pass along the job to someone else just as I have done to you. On this porch, holding this book, and so forth. You can transfer guardianship at any time as long as it’s within the three years.”

  “Why three years?” Allison asked.

  “I’m getting to that,” Myra said. “As soon as you go inside, you have to tear all my pages out of the guardian book and burn them.” She turned the book over so Allison could read the title on the cover: Guardians of Remembrance Library.

  “When you do that, it’ll remove all recollection I have of the library and what I did here. Unfortunately, that tears holes in a lot of other memories, too. That’s why the term is limited to three years, so you don’t lose too much of your life when you leave. Make sure that anything you want to remember, you keep real separate. Don’t be thinking about the library while you’re with the people you love, you hear? Or down the line, those moments will disappear.” Myra looked a little longingly at the book as she passed it to Allison. She shook her head. “I’m going to miss this house, but it’ll be good to make new memories.”

  A beat-up old Chevy pickup pulled up to the curb by the gate and honked. Myra stood and, grasping the handle of a suitcase in each hand, stepped down off the front porch. Allison clutched the book to her chest as she watched her walk down the front path.

  As she closed the gate, Myra turned and looked over her shoulder at Allison. “The key’s under the mat!” she called. She swung her suitcases into the back of the truck and got in the cab, then waved through the glass. Allison waved back, and Myra cranked down the window. “Hey! Be careful, OK? Don’t get lost in there!”

  Allison nodded and watched as Crystal’s rusty red truck pulled away from the curb, made a U-turn, and headed back down Rosemary Street toward the highway. She looked down at Pogo, who was waiting by the front door. He lifted a paw and scratched at it, and Allison smiled. “I guess you know this is going to be home—at least for now.”

  Chapter 3

  Allison nudged the dog aside and lifted the edge of the mat. A silver key glinted underneath. It was nothing special—just a regular house key, the kind they cut down at the feed store. Allison chuckled as she picked it up. She didn’t know why, but she’d been expecting something more unique. But it was just as plain and ordinary looking as the little green house itself.

  “Well, Pogo, here we go.” She tucked the guardian book under her arm, turned the key in the lock, and opened the front door.

  The interior of the house was dim and a little stuffy. The entryway was compact—just a handful of square feet, with a coat closet to the right and the stairs to the second floor on the left. Ahead of her, a short hallway extended to the back of the house.

  Allison blinked a few times, and when her eyes finally adjusted fully, she nearly dropped the book she’d been holding. Every spare inch of wall space in the entry and hall was stacked, floor-to-ceiling, with books. Through an open doorway to her right, just past the coat closet, she could see a living area with books on shelves, books on tables, and even books stacked in the free space under a green velvet sofa.

  Allison shook her head. “Why did I think that ‘a library’ meant one room?” she breathed. “They’re everywhere!”

  She led Pogo down the hall, which ended at a small dining room. It was furnished with a dark walnut table and matching chairs, a dusty crystal chandelier, and hundreds of books that were neatly shelved in tall bookcases. Every shelf was crammed full. She couldn’t even tell what color the walls were behind all the books. French doors in the rear of the room opened to a small patio and grassy area, perfect for Pogo to run around and stretch his legs.

  She let Pogo out into the yard and then stood there a minute, turning in one spot and marveling at the shelves of books, running her fingers over the spines as she read some of the titles. “Anniversary Dinners. First Solid Foods. Job Promotions. Mortgages and Loans.” There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to how the books were organized. It was more of a collection than a formal library—but what a collection! Allison couldn’t believe her luck. This library was like a dragon’s hoard, but full of treasure more precious than gold. Because somewhere in this library were the twenty-five years that Paul had lost.

  A wide doorway to the right led to the kitchen. At first, it seemed to be the only room that wasn’t packed to the gills with books, but she soon discovered that it was stocked with plenty of them, too, when she randomly opened a drawer and found one titled Holiday Arguments and another called Spiciest Things Eaten.

  She grinned. Paul would have a few memories in there—he was famous for trying all the hottest hot sauces he could get his hands on. She and Emily tried to find a new hot sauce every Father’s Day, always with the goal of getting Paul to cry uncle.

  She flipped open the book and ran her finger down the table of contents, looking for his name. The chapter headings might as well have been Latin. Most were words she didn’t recognize: Capsicum annuum, Capsicum baccatum, Capsicum chinense, Capsicum frutescens, Capsicum pubescens. It wasn’t until she got to “Curry,” that she realized the chapters were all different types of foods, and the words she hadn’t recognized probably were Latin. Scientific names of peppers, maybe.

  She wracked her brain for what hot sauce had made Paul cry real tears. It was Father’s Day nine or ten years ago, and he’d been overconfident about tasting the hot sauce they gave him, bragging that he wasn’t going to pour a glass of milk before he began because he could handle anything. Emily had been a gawky teen, too cool to care, and Allison knew Paul was putting
on a show so Emily would pay attention.

  “I ain’t afraid of no ghosts!” he’d said, posing with his arms crossed to underscore the Ghostbusters movie reference. Why had he said that? She tapped the book as she tried to remember. It must have had to do with the hot sauce—was “Ghost” the brand name?

  She pulled her phone out to do an internet search. When she typed in “ghost hot sauce,” fifteen million results popped up, literally. She quickly realized that all the fifteen million hot sauces had one ingredient in common—ghost peppers. It only took a little more searching to uncover that ghost peppers were a hybrid of Capsicum chinense and Capsicum frutescens, two of the scientific names that were in the chapter headings.

  But which chapter would contain memories of people eating a hybrid of the two? She flipped to the Capsicum chinense chapter and began reading the first entry.

  “He bit down on the very end of the pepper, scraping as little of the flesh with his teeth as he could...” A visual bloomed in front of her—a picnic table of people laughing and pointing at her—just as a scorching heat bloomed on her tongue. She dropped the pepper onto a paper plate and grabbed the plastic cup of lemonade in front of her, but it did nothing to douse the heat. Tears streamed from her eyes as she frantically tried to wash away the pain, but the people around her only laughed harder and pounded their fists on the table, urging her to eat the whole thing.

  Allison shut the book, and the memory vanished. She realized her cheeks were wet with real tears, and her tongue still tingled slightly. She grabbed a glass from the cupboard next to the sink and filled it with water. As she drank, she eyed the book on the counter. She wasn’t sure she could take another ghost pepper memory, Paul’s or not. She finished her water and tucked the book back in the drawer. Maybe another time.

  Her phone buzzed with a new text message. It was from Myra.

  “Don’t forget.”

  With a jolt, Allison remembered she was supposed to tear out Myra’s chapter from the Guardians of Remembrance Library. Where had she left it? She retraced her steps and found it on the dining room table. The worn volume’s title was pressed in gold letters on the green leather cover. She ran her fingers over the embossed design before she flipped opened the book. There were only two entries in the table of contents: Myra Mitchell, beginning on page one, and Allison Rye, beginning on page fifty-three. She turned to the first page and began reading Myra’s memory.

  “She felt the waistband of her scrubs start to slip, so she paused to re-adjust the drawstring before she opened the gate...” Suddenly the gardens spilled over the white picket fence in front of her. Allison pushed open the gate and walked up the path to the porch, where a woman with short salt-and-pepper hair was waiting with a book on her lap. Allison sat down on the bench across from her. The bench was hard and didn’t have cushions, so she shifted, trying to find a comfortable way to sit.

  “I know there’s no such thing as free rent,” she said, eyeing the woman. “I want it to be true, but I know it ain’t.”

  The woman laughed. “You’re right, there are some chores to do. But the work isn’t bad. I think you’ll be a natural.”

  Allison closed the book, and Myra’s first day as guardian of the library disappeared. Taking a deep breath, she closed her eyes and tore out the page. She looked down at the page in her hand and realized that she’d never done something like that before—destroyed a book. During the few semesters she’d spent at college, she couldn’t even bring herself to write in the margins of her textbooks. But now she was tearing pages—memories—out of someone’s mind.

  She wondered if Myra could feel the memories being pulled away. If she could, it was probably better to get it over with, like ripping off a Band-Aid. Allison held the book down on the dining table and began methodically pulling out the pages. It was tempting to stop and check the memories to make sure they weren’t important, but she remembered her promise to Myra. She had to tear them out and then burn them. That was her job.

  She checked her place—five more pages to go before she hit her own chapter. She finished quickly and stared at her chapter heading. Allison Rye. She was guardian of the library now. Page fifty-three shimmered, and then the page renumbered. Allison flipped back to the table of contents. Now only one chapter was listed: Allison Rye, page one.

  She almost dropped the book. Instead, she set it down gently on the table and backed away a few feet while she caught her breath. Of course, the library wasn’t normal. But seeing a page change before her eyes was still disconcerting, like having vertigo or getting those drops at the eye doctor that dilate your eyes.

  She hurriedly swept the pages she’d torn out into a single stack and looked around for a good place to light them on fire. The back yard? She looked outside, suddenly conscious of how close the other houses were to the library. No—it might call attention to start a fire out there in the middle of a Friday afternoon. A neighbor might look over the fence and ask what she was doing.

  She wandered into the kitchen and briefly eyed the kitchen sink but thought better of lighting twenty-six pieces of paper on fire indoors without any ventilation. The house had a chimney on the outside, she remembered. It had to lead to something.

  Ah-ha, the kitchen connected back to the living room, where a small but stately brick fireplace squatted comfortably between two bookshelves. Of course, more books.

  Allison kneeled down on the hearth and, with a trembling hand, used a match to light the edges of one page. The flames licked slowly, devouring the print, and then suddenly the whole pile of paper flared up and was quickly reduced to a pile of ashes under the grate.

  She put her hand over her mouth as she realized the gravity of what she had done. All the memories on those pages were gone. Now Myra would never remember being the guardian of the library. She’d spent years keeping the secret of the books, and now she didn’t even know the secret herself. Allison realized that she had destroyed much more than a few pages from a book. She’d destroyed part of Myra’s mind. She shook her head disbelievingly. This was going to take some getting used to.

  Chapter 4

  Monday

  Allison set down her suitcases by the door and took a final look around the living room of her apartment above the Ryes & Shine. It was hard to believe that was one of the last nights she’d spend here. The sprawling red sofa was gone to the storage unit, the rug rolled up in the corner. A couple of boxes were stacked against the wall, full of stuff she hoped Emily would want. Family things, practical things—she knew Emily didn’t want tchotchkes. She’d been selective when she filled the boxes with kitchen gadgets that most twenty-somethings hadn’t collected yet, fine china for holiday dinners, and baking tools that had been passed down in Paul’s family for generations.

  Strangely, the apartment looked smaller now that it was empty of furniture. If it weren’t for Emily’s height measured in pencil marks on the dining room doorframe, Allison wouldn’t recognize it.

  Pogo yipped and scampered to the door where his leash hung on a hook. Allison chuckled and clipped it to his collar. “You’re right. We should get going.”

  Downstairs, the bakery was dim and thick with the scent of flour, even though she hadn’t gotten a new delivery in weeks. The rising sun shining through the windows made the red “SALE PENDING” letters blare backward through the plate glass, assaulting her eyes that had not yet adjusted from the dark stairwell. She pushed out the front door and the bells jangled as loud as her nerves.

  Would this be the day that Paul remembered?

  Once she was on the street, though, the rhythm of her steps slowed her heartrate a little bit. She was even able to enjoy the stiff breeze that was shooing the clouds away, revealing a sparkling blue sky over the Cascades in the east. She could understand why Paul had kept his appointment to walk Tiny every morning, even when it rained. It was nice being outside this early.

  She and Pogo made good time walking until they hit Highway 19 and the school traffic was backed up almost
to the bridge. They had to wait for the minivans and SUVs to inch their way forward. Finally the line of cars moved far enough down the road that they could pass, and they jogged across the two-lane road.

  She glanced ahead down the block toward Golden Gardens and was dismayed to see a white-and-blue coroner’s van and the sheriff’s car out front. It wasn’t so unusual for an ambulance to be there, given that the average age of the residents was over eighty. At that time of life, any fall was a serious fall, any illness a serious illness. But the coroner meant that someone wasn’t just sick. Something really bad must have happened.

  Allison quickened her pace. Please, not Paul.

  She veered off the sidewalk, cutting across the lawn to the front door. Just as she was about to ring the buzzer, the long, pale face of Sheriff Leroy Gauss appeared in the glass. He shook his head no and pointed to the sign taped in the window.

  No Admittance. Police Business.

  She frowned. She had a right to know what was going on—she at least deserved to know if her own husband was OK. “Is it Paul?” she mouthed.

  Leroy made a zipping motion across his mouth and shook his head.

  “What does that mean?” Allison asked Pogo. He cocked his head to the side. “Is he saying it’s not Paul, or is he saying he can’t tell me?”

  She knocked on the glass. “You better just tell me, Leroy. You know I’m going to find out one way or another.”

  The sheriff crossed his arms and shook his head, and then, glancing over his shoulder, motioned her away from the door. She just had time to scoot backward and scoop up Pogo before two men wheeling a gurney came barreling out of the double-doors and down the path toward the van. To Allison’s horror, the stretcher held a black, zippered body bag. Allison didn’t even have a chance to ask them who was inside before they slammed the door on their vehicle and pulled out.

  The sheriff had disappeared from view. Well, the front door wasn’t the only entrance, was it? Allison marched around the building to the side door and stood on tiptoe to peer through its small glass window. Pogo yipped and she shushed him. She spied Myra with her back to the door—in teal scrubs today, with a matching scarf tied around her hair—talking to Leroy.