I stared at the door handle, looking down the hall in either direction. Balancing my cookies precariously on top of my milk carton, I reached toward it. Before I could so much as touch the handle, I heard the click of the lock moving. The door unlocked, all by itself, as if someone inside was opening the door for me. The cookies hit the floor.
A month ago, I wouldn’t have believed it, but now I knew better. This was Gatlin. Not the Gatlin I thought I knew, but some other Gatlin that had apparently been hiding in plain sight all along. A town where the girl I liked was from a long line of Casters, my housekeeper was a Seer who read chicken bones in the swamp and summoned the spirits of her dead ancestors, and even my dad acted like a vampire.
There seemed to be nothing too unbelievable for this Gatlin. It’s funny how you can live somewhere your whole life, but not really see it.
I pushed on the door, slowly, tentatively. I could see just a glimpse of the study, a corner of the built-in shelves, stuffed with my mom’s books, and the Civil War debris she seemed to collect wherever she went. I took a deep breath and inhaled the air from the study. No wonder my dad never left the room.
I could almost see her, curled up in her old reading chair by the window. She would’ve been typing, just on the other side of the door. If I opened the door a little more, for all I knew, she might be there now. Only I couldn’t hear any typing, and I knew she wasn’t there, and she never would be again.
The books I needed were on those shelves. If anyone knew more about the history of Gatlin County than the Sisters, it was my mom. I took a step forward, pushing the door open just a few inches farther.
“Sweet Host a Heaven and Earth, Ethan Wate, if you’re fixin’ to set one foot in that room, your daddy will knock you clean into next week.”
I nearly dropped the milk. Amma. “I’m not doing anything. The door just opened.”
“Shame on you. No ghost in Gatlin would dare set foot in your mamma and daddy’s study, except your mamma herself.” She looked up at me defiantly. There was something in her eyes that made me wonder if she was trying to tell me something, maybe even the truth. Maybe it was my mom, opening the door.
Because one thing was clear. Someone, something, wanted me to get into that study, as much as somebody else wanted to keep me out.
Amma slammed the door and drew a key out of her pocket, locking it. I heard the click and knew my window of opportunity had slammed shut, as quickly as it had opened. She crossed her arms. “It’s a school night. Don’t you have some studyin’ to do?”
I looked at her, annoyed.
“Goin’ back to the library? You and Link finished with that report?”
And then it came to me. “Yeah, the library. As a matter a fact, that’s where I’m headed right now.” I kissed her cheek and ran past her.
“Say hi to Marian for me, and don’t you be late for dinner.”
Good old Amma. She always had all the answers, whether she knew it or not, and whether or not she would willingly give them up.
Lena was waiting for me at the parking lot of the Gatlin County Library. The cracked concrete was still wet and shiny from the rain. Even though the library was still open for two more hours, the hearse was the only car in the lot, except for a familiar old turquoise truck. Let’s just say this wasn’t a big library town. There wasn’t much we wanted to know about any town but our own, and if your granddaddy or your great-granddaddy couldn’t tell you, chances were you didn’t need to know.
Lena was huddled against the side of the building, writing in her notebook. She was wearing tattered jeans, enormous rain boots, and a soft black T-shirt. Tiny braids hung down around her face, lost in all the curls. She looked almost like a regular girl. I wasn’t sure I wanted her to be a regular girl. I was sure I wanted to kiss her again, but it would have to wait. If Marian had the answers we needed, I’d have a lot more chances to kiss her.
I ran through my playbook again. Pick ’n’ Roll.
“You really think there’s something here that can help us?” Lena looked over her notebook at me.
I pulled her up with my hand. “Not something. Someone.”
The library itself was beautiful. I had spent so many hours in it as a kid, I’d inherited my mother’s belief that a library was sort of a temple. This particular library was one of the few buildings that had survived Sherman’s March and the Great Burning. The library and the Historical Society were the two oldest buildings in town, aside from Ravenwood. It was a two-story venerable Victorian, old and weathered with peeling white paint and decades worth of vines sleeping along the doors and windows. It smelled like aging wood and creosote, plastic book covers, and old paper. Old paper, which my mom used to say was the smell of time itself.
“I don’t get it. Why the library?”
“It’s not just the library. It’s Marian Ashcroft.”
“The librarian? Uncle Macon’s friend?”
“Marian was my mom’s best friend, and her research partner. She’s the only other person who knows as much about Gatlin County as my mom, and she’s the smartest person in Gatlin now.”
Lena looked at me, skeptically. “Smarter than Uncle Macon?”
“Okay. She’s the smartest Mortal in Gatlin.”
I could never quite figure out what someone like Marian was doing in a town like Gatlin. “Just because you live in the middle of nowhere,” Marian would tell me, over a tuna sandwich with my mom, “doesn’t mean you can’t know where you live.” I had no idea what she meant. I had no idea what she was talking about, half the time. That’s probably why Marian had gotten along so well with my mom; I didn’t know what my mom was talking about, either, the other half the time. Like I said, the biggest brain in town, or maybe just the biggest character.
When we walked into the empty library, Marian was wandering around the stacks in her stockings, wailing to herself like a crazy person from a Greek tragedy, which she was prone to reciting. Since the library was pretty much a ghost town, except for the occasional visit from one of the ladies from the DAR checking on questionable genealogy, Marian had free run of the place.
“‘Knowest thou aught?’”
I followed her voice deep into the stacks.
“‘Hast thou heard?’”
I rounded the corner into Fiction. There she was, swaying, holding a pile of books in her arms, looking right through me.
“‘Or is it hidden from thee…’”
Lena stepped up behind me.
“‘… that our friends are threatened…’”
Marian looked from me to Lena, over her square, red reading glasses.
“‘… with the doom of our foes?’”
Marian was there, but not there. I knew that look well and I knew, though she had a quote for everything, she didn’t choose them lightly. What doom of my foes threatened me, or my friends? If that friend was Lena, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.
I read a lot, but not Greek tragedy. “Oedipus?”
I hugged Marian, over her pile of books. She hugged me so tightly I couldn’t breathe, an unwieldy biography of General Sherman cutting into my ribs.
“Antigone.” Lena spoke up from behind me.
Show-off.
“Very good.” Marian smiled over my shoulder.
I made a face at Lena, who shrugged. “Home school.”
“It’s always impressive to meet a young person who knows Antigone.”
“All I remember is, she just wanted to bury the dead.”
Marian smiled at both of us. She shoved half her pile of books into my arms, and half into Lena’s. When she smiled, she looked like she could have been on the cover of a magazine. She had white teeth and beautiful brown skin, and she looked more like a model than a librarian. She was that pretty and exotic-looking, a mix of so many bloodlines it was like looking at the history of the South itself, people from the West Indies, the Sugar Islands, England, Scotland, even America, all intermingling until it would take a whole forest of family trees to chart the course.
Even though we were south of Somewhere and north of Nowhere, as Amma would say, Marian Ashcroft was dressed like she could have been teaching one of her classes at Duke. All of her clothes, all of her jewelry, all of her signature, brightly patterned scarves seemed to come from somewhere else and complement her unintentionally cool cropped haircut.
Marian was no more Gatlin County than Lena, and yet she’d been here as long as my mom had. Now longer. “I’ve missed you so much, Ethan. And you—you must be Macon’s niece, Lena. The infamous new girl in town. The girl with the window. Oh yes, I’ve heard about you. The ladies, they are talking.”
We followed Marian back to the front counter and dumped the books on the re-stacking cart.
“Don’t believe everything you hear, Dr. Ashcroft.”
“Please. Marian.” I nearly dropped a book. Aside from my family, Marian was Dr. Ashcroft to nearly everyone around here. Lena was being offered instant access to the inner circle, and I had no idea why.
“Marian.” Lena grinned. Aside from Link and me, this was Lena’s first taste of our famed Southern hospitality, and from another outsider.
“The only thing I want to know is, when you broke that window with your broomstick, did you take out the future generation of the DAR?” Marian began to lower the blinds, motioning for us to help.
“Of course not. If I did that, where would I get all this free publicity?”
Marian threw back her head and laughed, putting her arm around Lena. “A good sense of humor, Lena. That’s what you need to get around in this town.”
Lena sighed. “I’ve heard a lot of jokes. Mostly about me.”
“Ah, but—‘The monuments of wit survive the monuments of power.’”
“Is that Shakespeare?” I was feeling a little left behind.
“Close, Sir Francis Bacon. Though, if you’re one of the people who think he wrote Shakespeare’s plays, I suppose you were right the first time.”
“I give up.”
Marian ruffled my hair. “You’ve grown about a foot and a half since I’ve last seen you, EW. What is Amma feeding you these days? Pie for breakfast, lunch, and dinner? I feel like I haven’t seen you in a hundred years.”
I looked at her. “I know, I’m sorry. I just didn’t feel much like… reading.”
She knew I was lying, but she knew what I meant. Marian went to the door, and flipped the “Open” sign to “Closed.” She turned the bolt with a sharp click. It reminded me of the study.
“I thought the library was open till nine?” If it wasn’t I would lose a valuable excuse for sneaking out to Lena’s.
“Not today. The head librarian has just declared today a Gatlin County Library Holiday. She’s rather spontaneous that way.” She winked. “For a librarian.”
“Thanks, Aunt Marian.”
“I know you wouldn’t be here if you didn’t have a reason, and I suspect Macon Ravenwood’s niece is, if nothing else, a reason. So why don’t we all go into the back room, make a pot of tea, and try to be reasonable?” Marian loved a good pun.