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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Also by Lorraine Zago Rosenthal
About the Author
Copyright
Acknowledgments
I would like to express my sincerest gratitude to my stellar agent, Elizabeth Evans; my talented editors, Brendan Deneen and Margaret Sutherland Brown; and everyone at St. Martin’s Press who contributed to this novel. I also want to thank my husband, who has always supported me and my work.
One
I stopped short. My cart filled with books in plastic covers screeched against waxed tiles. Had the South Carolina heat melted my brain? Was I hallucinating and hearing things? I must have been, because someone could not have just called me that.
My head snapped toward three teenage boys sitting at a row of computers under a skylight as the blazing July sun streamed through the glass and onto their hair. I’d seen them before and knew they went to Charleston High. I hadn’t been a student there for six years, but it seemed like yesterday.
“What did you say?” I asked in a stern voice.
One of the boys shrank into his seat. His hair was dark and his eyes were blue, and he reminded me of someone. “I wanted to know what time the library closes tonight,” he answered.
“And how did you address me when you asked that question?”
“Library Lady,” he said meekly.
So I hadn’t imagined it. They obviously saw me as one of those dateless women who dress in costumes for Renaissance Festivals and knit sweaters for cats and fret about the possibility of their lady parts rotting if they don’t get some use soon.
I almost fell over. Except for the Renaissance Festivals and the cat thing, that was me.
“Dear Lord,” I muttered through my fingers, wishing I hadn’t twisted my hair into a bun that morning. I’d forgotten that a pulled-tight bun was part of the official Library Lady uniform.
The dark-haired boy’s friends laughed at him. “Don’t let her use that tone with you,” one of them said, shooting me a condescending smirk. He had dark-blond hair like mine, a Confederate flag tattooed on his wrist, and a supersized Coke in a cup beside his keyboard. Cokes weren’t permitted in the library. I usually hated enforcing that rule and all the other ridiculous, nitpicky, uptight regulations. But I didn’t mind now.
“Get rid of that,” I said. “No drinks allowed in the library.”
He sneered. “Don’t tell me what to do. You’re not even a real librarian.”
It was bad enough that I hated my job. I didn’t need criticism from some snarky teenager. “How would you know that, smart-ass?” I asked. I’d been told since I was old enough to talk that swearing was unladylike and ungodly and rude and crude and I should never do it. But that rule often felt suffocating, and cusswords were sometimes just necessary to describe certain people.
Blondie pointed to my blouse. “Well, it’s right there.”
How embarrassing. I’d forgotten about the laminated name tag pinned to my shirt that outed me as a lowly library assistant. My job title shouldn’t have slipped my mind, since the genuine librarians never let me forget it.
I tried to maintain dignity. “So you can read,” I said, lifting my chin. “How shocking.”
Blondie’s face fell. I supposed he was the bullying type who was used to dishing out crap but didn’t enjoy the taste of it. “I’ll bet reading is all you ever do,” he said. “I’ll bet you curl up with a book every night because it’s just so lonely in your bed.”
Damn that little bastard. Why did so many guys believe the theory that any woman who has a brain and values quality literature can’t possibly attract a man? And why did this theory have to be right when applied to me? Not that it had always been that way.
“Hey,” the dark-haired boy said sharply. “Cut it out.”
I stared as mid-afternoon sunlight beamed down on him. He was handsome and sturdy, with big arms and a strong jaw and Charleston High Football printed across his shirt. I’d had a boyfriend like him once—a boyfriend named Jamie with sapphire eyes and a gleaming smile. His breath had always smelled like Original Mint Scope. But things had ended between us two years ago. We’d wanted different things. And now he was getting everything he wanted, while I shelved books and got harassed by teenagers.
“I’m sorry,” said the dark-haired kid. It was probably meant as an apology for the entire group even though the other boys had gone back to the Internet and didn’t seem the least bit remorseful. “I didn’t mean to insult you with that Library Lady thing, ma’am.”
What nerve. “Ma’am” was for mothers, grandmothers, and decrepit spinster aunts whose biggest thrill was church on Sunday. “Don’t call me that, either,” I said. “Do you know I was a cheerleader at Charleston High? I dated a quarterback, but that doesn’t mean I was an airhead. I was on the honor roll all four years. I wanted to be a writer and travel everywhere, and I will if I ever get the chance. This job is just temporary. So don’t make assumptions about people and put ugly labels on them. You have no idea how much that can mess with a person’s self-image.”
He looked at me with a bewildered stare as the other guys dissolved into a fit of laughter. I’d gone from Library Lady to Crazy Library Bitch. I’d always hoped people saw me as Sexy Librarian, but who was I kidding? I’d been neglecting myself. I didn’t have time to blow-dry my hair and devote the time to makeup application like I used to. These days, all I did was a rush job on my mascara during my morning ride to the library and I spent so many working hours under fluorescent lights that my skin had turned deathly pale. I was exhausted and disheveled, but this wasn’t the real me. Checking out books and nagging teenagers to shut off cell phones hadn’t been my plan. It had just … happened.
“I didn’t know what else to call you,” the dark-haired boy said. “I couldn’t read your name tag from here. I’m sorry.”
Another apology. He was about sixteen and I was twenty-four, and he’d probably been taught to respect his elders and to call women ma’am. It was the southern way. I’d been taught good manners, too. I’d just been pushed far enough today to forget them.
“You can call me Savannah. And the library closes at six. If you came in just to use the Internet, you’ve got a half-hour limit,” I said, and then pointed my finger at Blondie. “I told you to get rid of that Coke.”
He kept his eyes on the computer screen. “Don’t you think you’re wasting your life enforcing meaningless rules that nobody cares about?”
Every single day.
“It isn’t a meaningless rule,” I said, walking around the table to stand beside him while he tapped at his keyboard and ignored me. “Cokes can spill, and they can wreck books and computers. You wouldn’t want to be respon
sible for that, would you? So throw it away.”
He stared at sports scores. “Go screw yourself. You’ve probably had a lot of practice.”
I wanted to crack his jaw, but instead I casually skimmed my hand across the top of his cup, tipping it over. Coke and ice cubes splashed across the keyboard, dripped down the table, and soaked his crotch.
He jumped out of his seat, brushing ice off the front of his shorts as his friends laughed at him. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he shouted in my face.
Showing you who I really am. “Don’t raise your voice in the library, young man. Bad things happen when you break the rules.”
I walked away, leaving him cussing behind me while I savored feeling good about myself. That was an unusual thing lately. I glanced over my shoulder and saw him complaining to my boss—a card-carrying Library Lady who had a mop of frizzy gray hair, a lazy left eye, and a failed relationship with Jenny Craig.
I sped up to flee the crime scene. The past few minutes had given me a throbbing headache and I needed peace and quiet, so I pushed my cart to a secluded corner with shelves marked Adult Fiction, where I jammed novels into tight spaces.
I remembered an old dream of seeing my name on a cover and my words on pages. A novel by Savannah Morgan—that’s what I used to doodle in the margins of my notebooks while my mind wandered during biology and algebra. Back then, I didn’t know that Charleston High was so far from the real world. I didn’t know that dreams don’t come true, happy endings only exist in fiction, romance never lasts, and all the fantasies that authors put into girls’ impressionable heads amount to nothing but lies and deception and unrealistic expectations.
I was tempted to shred every page of Pride and Prejudice that I held in my hand.
“Savannah,” said a monotone voice behind me.
I put the book on a shelf, turned around, and looked at my boss. She smelled like coffee and always had a piece of hard candy in her mouth.
“Some boy told me you threw a Coke on him,” she said. “Is this true?”
I touched my head. There was my man-repellant bun. I yanked out the elastic band, and my hair flowed over my shoulders and down my back. It had been flaxen when I was younger, but over the past few years it had turned into a shade that Mom called golden wheat. She had a name for everybody’s hair color. She was a beautician and she worked out of our house, which we’d been struggling to keep.
“No way,” I said indignantly, trying to figure out if my boss was looking directly at me. Her wayward eye drifted so much that I was never sure. “I told him several times that having a Coke in the library is a violation of our rules, but he wouldn’t listen. He spilled it himself.”
She crossed her arms over her torpedo-sized boobs. She seemed doubtful, which was no surprise. She was always on my back about something, and I never met her standards even though most of what I did was brainless labor.
I didn’t care—or at least, that’s what I always told myself. I just needed a paycheck, although a little gratitude and encouragement would have been nice once in a while.
She slurped her candy. “You don’t have proof of that.”
“No,” I said, “but you should believe me anyway.”
The candy cracked between her molars. “Actually,” she said, “I don’t. So I’m putting you on probation for the next ninety days. I’ll keep a close watch on you and see if there’s any improvement.”
Could I be degraded any further? I wiped my hand across my sweaty, aching forehead.
“You do that,” I said, “and I’ll quit right now.”
I meant it. But I hoped she’d cave. My knees shook beneath my skirt as I thought about everything Mom and I could lose if I stopped bringing home a check.
She shrugged. “Go ahead. I’m not changing my mind.”
“I’m not, either,” I said as I unpinned my name tag. I tossed it onto the novels in my cart, where it skidded, dropped to the floor, and landed on her practical shoes.
*
Tina Brandt pulled her car to the curb. It was a white BMW convertible that had been a gift from her father for her last birthday, and she’d covered the bumper with stickers that said things like Dixie Chick and Keep Calm and Get Your Diamond On.
I opened the door and slid onto the front seat. The car smelled like a cross between the inside of Victoria’s Secret and an ashtray. A Marlboro Light dangled from Tina’s mouth, which was smeared with a hot-pink lip-plumping gloss. She didn’t need to plump anything, though. She also didn’t have to wear so much liner around her big green eyes, clip extensions into her wavy brown hair, or keep the push-up bra industry in business. She was even more beautiful without all the fakeness, but she didn’t seem to think so. Not that she’d ever say it out loud—even to me, her best friend since kindergarten.
I snatched the cigarette from her lips and flicked it out the window. I wished she’d stop smoking, because I didn’t want cancer to take Tina from me like it had stolen her mother when we were in fifth grade. The only proper female guidance she’d gotten since then was from me and Mom, but she rarely took our advice.
I pointed my finger at her. “Give up that nasty habit or I’ll tell your daddy that you haven’t really quit.”
She stared at me for a moment. “Jeez,” she said. She’d been raised in a no-cuss zone like I had, and we both believed that uttering Jesus Christ or God Almighty might get us struck by lightning. Jesus was one word we couldn’t say out loud unless it was in the sacred sense. “What’s your problem?”
I let out a heavy sigh and leaned into the cushy leather seat. “Sorry. I had a bad day.”
This wasn’t news to Tina. She was used to hearing about my bad days. “Well,” she said, “maybe this will cheer you up: It’s over with the latest.”
She meant her latest boyfriend. There’d been so many since we were kids that I couldn’t keep track. She didn’t hide them from me like she tried to keep them from everyone else—especially her father. She’d spent years crawling down the trellis outside her bedroom window so she could meet guys waiting in cars. She’d started that when we were fourteen, and she still had to sneak out at night because she still lived at home.
She knew I didn’t care for the latest. I didn’t care for any of her men. And I wished she wouldn’t give herself away so easily and so often. “I’m sorry to hear that,” I said, which was only half a lie. I wasn’t sorry she’d broken up with that waste of air, but I felt bad that she hadn’t once had a boyfriend who was decent to her. “How did it happen?”
She grabbed her cell phone from the dashboard and showed me a text message that said
I don’t want you. I don’t need you. I never gave a shit about you.
My heart sank. Tina had a knack for finding the meanest and most worthless men in Charleston. She met most of them at the country club where her father played golf and her stepmother organized ladies’ luncheons, and the latest had crossed her path while she was answering phones at Mr. Brandt’s accounting firm downtown. He’d given her the job the autumn after she dragged herself home from Davidson College in North Carolina, where she’d been accepted only because Mr. Brandt was a friend of the Dean. Her performance in high school hadn’t been anywhere near good enough to get her into such a prestigious college, and she’d promised not to let anybody down.
But she did. Just like in high school, she didn’t live up to her potential. She blew off studying in favor of her football-player boyfriend and all-night parties, and her abysmal GPA got her kicked out after one year. When she came back, she seemed even more disappointed than Mr. Brandt did. Then she whiled away the summer doing nothing but frequenting The Spa at Charleston Place and tanning beside her pool. Sugar, her stepmother, Crystal, had said, just because you’re not college material doesn’t mean I’ll let you do nothing but loaf around my house like a useless socialite.
“Tina,” I began, ready to say something encouraging and sympathetic about how the latest wasn’t worthy of her, but she cut m
e off.
“Who cares,” she said with her deep, throaty laugh that sounded like it belonged to a much older woman. She tossed her phone onto the dash and turned up the radio to blast her favorite Dierks Bentley song. “I was fixin’ to dump him anyway. He was below average where it counts.”
She drove away from the curb and sped down the street with a stiff smile and a clenched jaw. Tina always pretended that nothing bothered her, but I wasn’t fooled.
“Thanks for leaving work early to pick me up,” I said.
She pressed a button on the dashboard to open the roof. “It was no problem. Daddy never puts up a fuss if I leave before five or take a day off. So why’d you want to cut out early today?”
“I have to apply for a new job … at the mall,” I said, forcing the words from my throat. I felt like hurling myself out of the car.
Tina glanced at me as she swerved to avoid an armadillo splattered across the road. She didn’t care for critter guts on her brand-new tires. “Did you get fired? If they fired you, you could sue. You do a good job … you’re always filling in for everyone, and—”
“I didn’t get fired. I quit. And I don’t want to talk about it.”
She stopped at a red light and lifted her naturally high-arched eyebrows. “Okay,” she said. “But don’t you think you should take a break for a little while? You could use some time off. And you can always ask my daddy for a job.”
I shook my head. Her daddy was the last person I’d ask for anything, but I couldn’t tell her that. “I don’t want to bother him. I can’t take time off, either. I need money.”
Tina had a constant cash flow, but unlike most of the girls I’d grown up with, she’d never been snooty about the fact that I didn’t. She nodded, the light changed, and she hit the gas. “You mean you need money to get your car fixed? Don’t worry about that … I’ll take you anywhere you want to go.”
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