by Неизвестный
He seemed amused by my oversharing. He licked his lips and said, “Zara Riddle, formerly Zara the Camgirl, I'd be shocked by you discussing your plumbing with a man you just met, but I feel like I know you. Like I've known you for a thousand years. It's the strangest thing.”
“Not really that strange,” I said. “I was famous on the internet for about fifteen minutes, plus you watched me on my webcams and read my journal entries.”
He shook his head. “Life is funny. I can't believe I live next door to Zara the Camgirl. Didn't you live in Chicago? You're a long way from home.”
“I got a great job offer out of the blue and decided to make a leap of faith.”
“To Wisteria,” he said. “That's a big leap of faith.”
I grinned at him. “Too late! You guys are stuck with me now. For better or for worse.”
He finished for me, “Til death do us part.”
“Speaking of which, I dug up a little information about the previous owner of this house. It's probably stuff you already know.”
“Try me.” He flashed a flirty smile. Who was the Turbo-flirter now? Chet Moore. That's who.
I started spouting my research. “Winona Vander Zalm was a wacky diva socialite who showed up at parties for just about anything. You could open a sandwich shop and she'd be there helping to cut the ribbon. I saw a ton of photos of her at every event in Wisteria since people started posting on the internet. She was stunning for her age. How was she as a neighbor?”
“Ms. Vander Zalm was a very dynamic woman.”
“How did she die?” I waited with breathless anticipation.
The room filled with a buzzing sound, brightened, and the two sconce lamps on either side of the fireplace burned out with a sizzling pop.
Chet went to the sconces and frowned at the gray bulbs. “You might have a few circuits overloaded.”
“Chet, you were going to tell me how—”
Ignoring me, he said, “I can check the electrical panel before I go. Someone should look into this and make sure it's not a fire hazard.”
I joined him in frowning at the gray, burned-out bulbs. “Don't tell our kids about this. They'll be saying the ghost did it.”
“I said I'll check the electrical panel, and I will, Zara. You can count on me.”
“Thank you.”
“No need to catastrophize.”
I laughed. “You don't need to slap me like some hysterical woman in an old horror movie. I told you before, we Riddle women are tougher than we look. If we have a ghost, we'll deal with it ourselves.”
“Don't be so sure about that.”
The temperature in the room seemed to drop a few degrees. The hairs on my forearms stood up. “Do you believe in ghosts?”
“There's more to this world than what's visible,” he said. “For example, magnetic fields. They're not visible, but they're powerful. The moon pulls the ocean up on the shores like a silky blanket.”
“Chet Moore, you believe in ghosts!”
He reached up and ran one fingertip across his eyelashes. There seemed to be more silver ones than had been there a moment earlier.
“Let's leave the ghost stories to our kids,” he said. “As for Ms. Vander Zalm, she passed away peacefully in her sleep.”
“Here? In the house?”
“I did say peacefully. Can you imagine anything more peaceful than passing into the next world from the comfort of your home?”
“Chet, I like how you don't give straight answers. I'm sure it drives some people crazy, but I dig it. You're interesting.”
“Are you being sarcastic?”
“I don't know. I can never tell if someone's being sarcastic or not, even when that person is me.”
“Zara Riddle, you are so much more than Zara the Camgirl.”
“I'm a librarian.”
“Really?”
“Starting Monday!”
He raised an eyebrow. “Tell me more about this librarian job of yours,” he said.
And I did.
We joined the kids and wrestled a few slices of pizza away from them. Everyone got comfortable in the half-unpacked living room. I told Chet about how excited I was to be working my dream job in a town that felt like an undiscovered gem. How did Wisteria even exist? The town had just enough of everything, was as pretty as a postcard, and my dream house was totally affordable. How had the rest of the world not packed up their bags and moved there ahead of me?
Chet didn't have any answers but agreed that Wisteria had to be paradise because people kept telling him that. He'd grown up there, so he knew little else.
I tried to find out more about him, but he kept redirecting the conversation back to me, and heaven knows I do love a captive audience.
After the pizza, Corvin ran next door and returned with fresh brownies and vanilla ice cream. I was so cozy. My body felt like an al dente noodle. I relaxed into the corner of the sofa and reached for my favorite patchwork quilt to draw across my lap.
Chet was talking to Zoey about her aspirations beyond high school and then…
Nothing.
I was falling down a tunnel that was both dark and bright at the same time, a swirling rainbow of starbursts. Thunder cracked around me. The world tipped sideways and I lurched to a stop.
Everything was dark.
I opened my eyes. It was still dark, but things started taking shape.
I was in the kitchen. The room's lights were off, but enough ambient light was coming in from the street lamps that I could dimly make out my surroundings. How did I get to the kitchen? Why was I wearing the long flannel nightgown that I hated because it always got tangled around my legs? What was I doing?
Something in front of me was glowing red. The toaster.
With a startling KERCLUNK, the toaster's handle popped up. Two pieces of blackened bread appeared before me, smoldering.
I yanked the charred toast from the still-glowing appliance and tossed both pieces in the sink. They continued to smolder. I doused them with water to stop tendrils of smoke from reaching the room's smoke detector.
Think, Zara. What's the last thing you remember? Feeling drowsy on the sofa. Chet's green eyes. The scent of him. Being completely comfortable.
I must have fallen asleep while entertaining the neighbors. That was embarrassing, but understandable, considering I'd spent the day moving. My exhaustion explained my patchy memory, but not sleepwalking, let alone this new phenomenon of sleeptoasting.
I wrung the water out of the black toast, tossed the soppy remains into the food compost bucket under the sink, and poured myself a glass of water. Dehydration makes people do funny things.
It was after midnight, already Sunday. I had to get some restful sleep before taking Zoey shopping to get new room stuff for her sixteenth birthday.
I wouldn't tell her about this incident because I'd never hear the end of it, but as soon as I got to work at the library on Monday, I'd see if we had any books on sleeptoasting. Or ghosts. Just in case.
Chapter 5
“Who was sleeptoasting?”
My new boss, Kathy Carmichael stared at me like I was a talking raccoon. She was the head librarian at the Wisteria Public Library as well as the Director. She was the one who'd interviewed me and hired me the previous month, and now she looked like she was having some regrets.
“Never mind,” I said. “I'm sure my sleeptoasting was just a one-time thing, like making a soufflé. Everyone has to try it once to figure out it's just a weirdly eggy cake thing with a bunch of hot air inside.”
“Soufflé is overrated,” Kathy agreed.
“You know what's not overrated? Quiche. I made one with onions and I didn't soften them up enough in the frying pan, and it was still good.”
“Who doesn't love quiche?”
“I like you already,” I said.
“You might like me now, but you'll love me after I give you my recipe for asparagus and crispy bacon quiche.” She reached for a fresh sheet of paper and a pen. Her ha
ndwriting matched her appearance. Her v's were small and pointy like her nose, and her o's were perfectly round like her glasses.
We both were sitting in the staff lounge in the north-west corner of the library. Kathy had spent the previous two hours drilling me on the library's computer system while simultaneously filling me in on gossip about their most interesting patrons. I truly did like her already, and I hoped she liked me as much as I liked her, but she seemed guarded, unsure about me. I'd hoped the story about my four-in-the-morning sleeptoasting extravaganza would help us bond, and now we were sharing quiche recipes. Success!
Kathy folded the recipe into quarters and handed it to me with a quirked eyebrow, like it was a secret note we were passing in class. I glanced around sneakily and tucked it into my bra, which made her snort.
Kathy's adorable snort-laugh complemented her friendly demeanor. She had medium-brown hair falling in curls, light brown eyes that glowed golden orange under the bright lights, and an oval face with high cheeks that nudged her glasses whenever she got animated and talked faster and faster. The lenses of her glasses were perfect circles, framed in gold with delicate filigree around the hinge connecting the arms. The round glasses gave her an owl-like appearance, and I noticed she enjoyed saying the word who, drawing out the word so it sounded like she was hooting. Whooooo can resist a book with a dog on the cover? Whooooo doesn't love a trashy beach read on vacation?
As a librarian and directory, Kathy was my boss, but she kept telling me to think of us as coworkers. The patrons were our bosses, and we worked for them.
And, if we were going to be grumpy, we needed to spare the patrons and get it out in private. For that, there was the Grumpy Corner, a darkened corner of the staff break room that was outfitted with beanbag chairs and big pillows. Any member of staff could go there to chill at any time, even outside of official breaks, without judgment.
“That's a really good idea,” I said of the Grumpy Corner.
“Who doesn't need a timeout on occasion? I love being a librarian, but, well, you know.”
I agreed completely. Being a librarian is a wonderful job, but like all careers, it comes with specific stresses. Patrons expect you to have all the answers, and sometimes you don't. When one thing goes wrong, it can become a cascade. A patron complaining about the homeless gentleman snoring in the science fiction section can lead to your right arm aching all afternoon because the stress makes a repetitive-strain injury—earned from shelving handfuls of heavy tomes—flare up.
On my first day at the Wisteria Public Library, I couldn't imagine needing to chill in the Grumpy Corner. For a bibliophile like me, the library was heaven on earth, with its tidy, towering shelves and an intriguing split-level layout that encouraged exploration.
At ten-thirty, Kathy forced me to go on my mid-morning break. I wanted to keep learning the inter-library request system, but she insisted I take my mandatory morning break. After giving me the quiche recipe, she left me to it.
Alone in the staff lounge, I nibbled through my snack while jotting down a list of items we needed at the house. I finished my list and still had a few minutes left, so I made myself useful by cleaning out the staff refrigerator. I removed the plastic containers holding green-flecked leftovers, chucked the food into the compost bin, and gave everything a quick scrub with hot, soapy water.
I dried my hands and ran out to the counter to relieve Kathy for her own break.
She returned a minute later and whispered, “Who threw out my lunch? Who?” Her golden-orange owl-like eyes blinked behind her round glasses.
“Who?” I winced and thumbed my chest. “That was me. But I swear I only tossed out the old stuff with mold.”
“You threw out my acorn jelly?” Her voice cracked like she was on the verge of crying.
“Was it a brown, gelatinous sludge?”
Kathy sniffed. “My neighbor made it for me.”
“Does your neighbor not like you very much?” I grinned, waiting for her snort-laugh, but it never came.
“Whooooo would throw out someone's lunch? And then joke about it? Who?”
I hung my head. “Just me. I'm so sorry. You can fire me, but please don't hate me. I'll run out now and buy you a whole new lunch. What do you want? Sushi? Pizza? Let me make it up to you.” I looked up at her with my most repentant expression.
“Never mind,” she said softly, turning away. “You have a patron waiting.”
I glanced over at the counter. A woman stood there, impatiently tapping her library card on the top of a stack of books. Card-tapping was the height of passive aggressiveness in a library, but, compared to other service-oriented jobs I'd had over the years, really not so bad.
After I'd finished checking out the patron's books, I popped my head into the staff lounge.
Kathy was in the Grumpy Corner with a blanket over her face.
My heart sunk. So much for my first day.
Monday had not been without its triumphs. I'd arrived on time and caught on to the library's organizational systems quickly. The patrons I'd met so far were wonderful, and I'd experienced the profound joy of reuniting an older gentleman with a beloved story he'd feared he'd never see again, its title forgotten long before the emotional resonance. With the book in hand, he'd practically skipped out the front door. I'd also introduced some juvenile readers to the perfect new series and seen unbridled excitement on their small faces.
But all of that felt hollow now that I'd upset my new coworker.
I wanted to throw myself at her feet and beg forgiveness. If she were my daughter, I'd know exactly what to do. I'd tickle her and wrestle her for the best beanbag chair. But Kathy Carmichael was an adult, a grown woman with between two and five full-grown sons—she'd mentioned them in passing but hadn't gone into detail.
After some deliberation, I decided to leave Kathy Carmichael alone and win her over the next day—assuming I didn't get fired in the meantime.
Besides, a new compulsion had taken hold of me. It had nothing to do with the items I'd jotted on my list, but I felt an overwhelming sense of urgency to acquire a very specific item. It felt like a magic spell was physically pulling on my guts, dragging me toward destiny.
Destiny awaited!
As soon as I punched out my timecard.
Chapter 6
I punched out my timecard at three o'clock. Despite having modern equipment to track books and circulation, the Wisteria Public Library used an old-fashioned, factory-style punchcard system for the librarians' hours.
The KERCLUNK of the loud stamp was a shock to my system after a day of hushed tones, mouse clicks, and whispering page-turns.
I gathered my coat and purse, said goodbye to Kathy and my other new coworkers, and walked out the front door.
After the dry air of the library, the outside world felt moist and breezy, spring's floral scents invigorating me.
The sense of urgency I'd been feeling for the past few hours doubled in strength. If it got any stronger, it was going to turn into a panic attack. I tapped my toes and looked around. The pretty town of Wisteria was all around me, charming with its old stone buildings and many downtown churches. I'd never seen so many churches in such a relatively small area.
Were the churches making me jumpy? They'd never made me feel this way in other towns.
Upon closer examination, what I felt was similar to hunger. I had a powerful craving for something. Fried chicken? Carrot cake? That Malaysian durian fruit that smells like rotten onions and pungent gym socks but tastes so good?
The feeling, which was near my stomach but not in my stomach, tugged me down the street.
I'd never experienced anything quite like this compulsion. Well, it did happen once a week back home, when my favorite bakery introduced a new flavor of cupcake. They always did that on Wednesdays, and my stomach quickly learned how to identify Wednesdays.
This was like the cupcake feeling, but stronger.
I started walking down the street, curiously following my compul
sion.
As I passed store windows, my reflection across the street kept catching my attention. When I turned to look, though, there was no window. Just people walking, including a woman who had long, light red hair like mine, and a long jacket like mine.
The scent of leather hit my nostrils, and I knew.
The precise thing I needed right at that moment was… a new pair of boots. What better way to celebrate my first day of work and not getting fired?
As luck would have it, I was approaching a charming shoe store. I pulled open the heavy door and went inside.
The store had wonderful boots, in every heel height and color imaginable. A friendly-looking man with a white mustache said, “We're having a special today, since it's Monday. You can try on every boot in the store.” He grinned to show me he was joking. “That's the special deal we run on days that end in Y.”
Smiling back, I asked, “Is everyone in Wisteria so delightful?” I pointed to some red-brown boots with dark laces. “I'd love to start with those if you have them in my size, which is—.”
He cut me off. “Don't tell me! I love guessing.” He waved me over to a bench. “Have a seat, please, and remove those horrendous things.”
I gave him a mock-indignant look as I started unlacing my shoes. They were black and comfortable, but I couldn't defend them. They really were horrendous, and we both knew it.
He kneeled before me, lifted one of my feet carefully, and placed it against his forearm. The fitting process was more intimate than I'd expected, but I didn't mind.
“Interesting,” he said. “You have a foot twin, and she's sitting right behind you.”
“Foot twin?” I glanced over my shoulder. There was another customer in the store, also trying on boots. I couldn't see her face, but her long hair was the same shade of red as mine.
The shopkeeper said, “I'll be back in a jiffy with your new favorite boots.”
When he returned, I discovered he wasn't wrong. The boots were, indeed, my new favorite boots, and the price was very reasonable.