Reese
The following Wednesday, I leaned up against the door frame of Charlie’s classroom. I let my aide take our kids down to lunch a little early so I could walk down to the kindergarten wing. I hadn’t seen Charlie since Friday night, and when I finally did, I smiled.
She was bent down beside one of the small round tables where a group of four kids sat. Three of them were girls, all who were talking to each other as they dropped various objects into the little tub of water in front of them. They’d converse together, scream out sink or float, and then giggle in delight as they found out which it was.
But Charlie wasn’t tuned into them. Instead, she was talking softly with the boy at the table, one with dark hair and bright blue eyes. He was looking at a book of bugs, and Charlie pointed to each one, reading the description next to it as the little boy traced the pictures with his fingertips. He looked up at her from time to time, his little eyes wide and curious, and she smiled down at him with the same adoration.
As I watched her, I realized how much I’d missed her.
It had been a long, boring first weekend in Mount Lebanon. I met up with a few old friends in town on both Saturday and Sunday, all of whom I quickly discovered I’d grown apart from. I was so over the forced conversation and awkward looks of sympathy by the time Monday rolled around, all I wanted was to see the one familiar face that still actually felt familiar.
But Charlie hadn’t shown up for lunch on Monday, and I was disappointed by her absence on Tuesday, too.
Maybe she was just busy, but something told me there was a reason she was avoiding that café.
After a few moments, Charlie glanced at the watch on her hand and stood, smoothing her hands over her white skirt. “Okay, everyone. It’s time for lunch. Line up single file by Miss Robin.”
I laughed as they all jumped up, hurrying to find their places in line. Robin made sure she had them all in order before she held up one finger to her lips. They all mimicked her, stifling laughter, and then I swung out from the door frame to allow them to pass by. A few of them giggled when I made faces as they passed, which earned them a stern look from Miss Robin. I chuckled, and once they’d gone, I turned back to Charlie.
She was humming a slow tune, her back turned to me as she tidied up the tables. I couldn’t help but study her for a while. She seemed tired, her dark eyes tinged with a bit of sadness that matched the tone of the song she sang. Somewhere inside that thirty-year-old woman, there was a sixteen-year-old girl. I’d seen a hint of her Friday night. She was still there, but she was hiding.
I just didn’t know why.
“You know, you’re not supposed to have favorites,” I said with a gentle rap of my knuckles on the door frame.
Charlie jumped a little, pressing a hand to her chest with a small smile once she realized it was me.
“What’s his story?” I asked, nodding toward the table where the little boy had been sitting.
She shook her head, gathering a handful of colored pencils and dropping them into the box on the middle of the table. “I don’t have favorites,” she argued with a shrug. “Jeremiah just learns a little slower than the others, he needs a little more one-on-one attention.”
“What you mean to say is he’s one of the few who isn’t a complete brat?”
She smirked then, casting me a sideways glance as she pushed a chair in. “You’re a brat.”
“I’ve been called worse.”
“I’m sure.” She laughed, pulling a stray strand of hair up that had fallen at the nape of her neck. She tucked it back into place with a bobby pin. “Did you need something?”
“Just a lunch buddy,” I replied hopefully. “I know you were only forced into one week of lunch dates with me, but I’ve been pretty lonely this week. The other teachers said I smell.”
“Well, they aren’t wrong, are they?”
“Smelly teachers need love, too.” That earned me another smile, which I’d come to cherish from Charlie, so I took a few steps closer, sliding my hands inside my pockets. “Besides, I have something for you.”
Her doe eyes found mine then. “For me?”
I nodded. “Come on. Grab your lunch and let’s go. I’ll have you back before the kids, I promise.”
She chewed her thumbnail, shaking her head when she realized she was doing it and quickly drying it on her skirt. It was strange, like she didn’t trust me, or maybe like she didn’t trust herself. But I waited patiently. I wasn’t in a rush.
After a long moment, she grabbed her scarf from her desk and wrapped it around her neck. “Okay. But I only have thirty minutes.”
I smirked. “Deal.”
There were two libraries at Westchester — one for grades K through eight, and one for grades nine through twelve. Both were massive, two floors each, but the lower grade library was brighter, more colorful. We were hidden away in the back corner of the second floor, our lunches spread out on one of the private study tables. The library was quiet, save for our hushed conversation and the laughs coming from a middle school lunch study group a few aisles down.
“You’re good with them,” I said as I took the last bite of my soup. I licked the spoon clean, dropping it inside the Tupperware and popping the lid back in place. “The kids.”
Charlie smiled, twirling her own spoon around in her yogurt. She’d played with her food more than she’d eaten it, but I didn’t press her on it.
“It’s not hard to be. They’re so young. Creative. And it’s their first year of school. I get them at their happiest.”
“Not yet scathed by the rigorous Westchester curriculum, huh?”
“Exactly. Their homework is still fun at this age.”
“They’re going to hate it when they get to me.”
At that, Charlie laughed.
“They all really look up to you,” I added, tucking my empty Tupperware back into my bag. “I have some kids in my class who said they had you and you’re still they’re favorite teacher.”
“Really?”
I nodded, smiling at the tinge shading her fair cheeks. “Really. Quite the impression you’ve made on these little minds, Mrs. R—” I caught myself. “Pierce.”
She watched me for a moment before her eyes fell back to her spoon. “I love my job. It sounds silly, but I’ve always wanted to do this. I’ve always wanted to teach. It doesn’t feel like work to me, coming to Westchester every morning.” She smiled. “It’s where I’m happiest.”
My chest tightened at her admission. Part of me was glad for her, that she’d found what she loved to do, that she’d secured a job that wouldn’t ever feel like a job to her. But the other, stronger half of me wondered why her home wasn’t where she was happiest. In my opinion, it should have been.
“I didn’t know I wanted to teach until after I’d tutored for a while at Juilliard,” I admitted. “I always kind of thought performing for crowds was what made me happiest. But all the restaurant gigs I had, all the weddings and parties, even Broadway — none of that made me feel as good as it did when I taught a kid how to read music, or how to perfect a piece they’d been struggling with.”
Charlie finally took a bite of her yogurt with a smile. “It’s pretty magical, isn’t it? Nothing in the world like that feeling.”
“There really isn’t.”
“Do you still play?” she asked. “Outside of the classroom, I mean.”
My chest tightened, and I shifted in my seat. “I’ve thought about maybe finding something in Pittsburgh. It’s been hard, since… everything,” I admitted, catching her eyes. She understood what I didn’t have to say. “Playing doesn’t really bring me joy the way it used to. Before.”
Her face bent. “That makes me so sad. You play more beautifully than anyone else I’ve ever heard.”
“Yeah, well,” I said with a shrug. “My ability to play like that faded pretty fast after everything happened. Almost as fast as the inheritance my family left for me.”
“Blew it, huh?” Charlie asked.
I smirked like it wasn’t a big deal, but the memories of long nights spent doping and throwing my money away hit me like a fist to the chest. “Surprised?”
“A little.” She tilted her head to one side. “I’m sorry, Reese. I know it doesn’t help or mean anything, but I am.”
I watched Charlie dip the spoon back in her yogurt, both of us quiet.
“Some of the teachers are getting together for happy hour on Friday,” I said after a minute, changing the subject. “You should come.”
She shot me a look under one lifted brow. “Not really my scene.”
“What? Can’t throw down with the crew for a while?”
“I barely talk to any of the other teachers,” she confessed. “And besides, I have a date with Cameron that night.”
“Oh.”
It should have been easy to hear her say that. It should have hit me like common sense. She was going on a date with her husband, as she should on a Friday night.
But it sliced through me like a rusty blade on an old wound.
“That’ll be nice. I was bummed I didn’t get to spend more time with him at dinner this past weekend.”
Charlie paused, lifting another spoonful of yogurt to her lips. But she dropped it back into the tub without taking a lick. “Yeah, just bad timing, since there was a game that night. I’m sure he would have loved to get to know you more, too.”
“I’m sure. Next time,” I said, hoping to comfort her, but she just chewed her thumbnail.
Lunch was almost over, and it didn’t feel like the smoothest segue in the world, but I was running out of time. Swallowing, I reached into my messenger bag for the gift I’d brought her. It was wrapped in simple brown parchment paper with her name in neat script on the front. I slid it toward her with two fingers, watching as she eyed it before glancing up at me.
“What is it?”
“Well, open it and find out,” I teased.
She ran her fingers over the top of the paper as she pulled it closer, her nude nail polish nearly blending in with it. A strand of her hair fell out of place and over her eye as she ripped the first piece of wrapping, and that’s all it took for her to cover her mouth with a gasp.
“Oh my God,” she whispered, peeling the paper back slowly. “Is this…”
“It is. The one and only good thing I have to show from my inheritance.”
She shook her head, glancing up at me briefly before unwrapping the book all the way. It was an old copy of Anna Karenina, one that would have likely been thrown in a donation bin by the unsuspecting average American. The lower right-hand corner of the dark brown cloth cover was badly bent, the spine stretched and worn, and as she flipped through the pages, she revealed the various stains that riddled the pages within.
To someone else, it would have been trash. But to her, it was gold.
“It’s a first edition,” she said, almost as a question. “It’s beautiful. Where in the world did you find it?” She narrowed her eyes then. “Wait, is this one of your surprises? Please tell me you didn’t steal this from Juilliard.”
I barked out a laugh.
“Nope, actually bought this one. It wasn’t too long after the shooting, actually,” I said, voice softer as I watched Charlie flip through the pages as gently as she could. “I passed by an older couple selling books out of old boxes in front of a bookstore in Manhattan. They were closing their doors after ninety years. It was the woman’s father’s store before he passed it on to her.”
Charlie’s brows bent together. “That’s so sad.”
“It is. But they were in good spirits. They told me a lot of great stories, and I bought a few books from them, this one included.”
She shook her head, closing the book to run her fingers over the gold text on the cover. “This must have cost a small fortune, Reese.”
“They practically paid me to take it,” I lied. “Trust me, it would have been crazy for me not to buy it at the price they offered.”
The truth was it hadn’t even been in the boxes at all. It was one still locked behind a glass case inside the store, the most expensive book they still owned. I bought it off them for just under three thousand dollars.
And I’d buy it again if it meant I got to watch Charlie open it one more time in the back of an empty library.
“It’s too much,” she whispered.
“It’s a gift. I figured I’d run into you again someday, and you’d kill me if I told you that story and I’d walked away from a first-edition Tolstoy.”
She smiled, but it fell quickly, and her eyes were glossed over as she tore them away from the book and found my gaze once more. “You thought you’d see me again someday?”
“I hoped,” I answered honestly.
Charlie smoothed her fingers over the cover, her eyes sad. “It’s beautiful. Thank you, Reese.”
“You’re welcome, Tadpole.”
I wanted to ask her why she’d been avoiding me, why she hadn’t said a word to me since Friday night, but I didn’t get the chance before the alarm on her phone signaled it was time to walk back to her classroom.
We cleaned up the table, wrapping ourselves back in our scarves and coats for the walk, and Charlie talked the whole time about when she first read Tolstoy as we crossed campus. She told me she knew exactly where she’d put it in her library, and she loved it even more for the bumps and bruises.
“Books aren’t meant to be in perfect shape,” she said when we reached her room. “They’re meant to be read, to be inhaled like oxygen.” Her fingers ran over the spine again, and she smiled. “This book has been breathed. It’s been loved.”
That smile alone confirmed it was the best three grand I ever spent.
Charlie
I used to love my library.
That’s what I kept thinking as I slipped inside the beautiful room later that night, dark now that the sun had set, but still cast in a warm glow from my favorite reading lamp. I hugged the copy of Anna Karenina Reese had given me to my chest, walking over to a shelf on the far-left wall that held my classics. I eyed the spines, deciding where Tolstoy’s new home would be, and I wanted to love being in that room again.
But I just didn’t.
We’d had so many rooms in the house when Cameron and I first moved in. It was just the two of us. I remembered him carrying me like a new bride through each and every room when the house was still empty. He’d set me down, my bare feet on the polished wood as he excitedly showed me where everything would go.
We’d have our master bedroom, of course, and an office for him. We were both really into fitness at the time, so we saved one of the five bedrooms for workout equipment. There was the guest bedroom, and then there was the room closest to ours, with large bay windows and a beautiful view of the sunset at night.
It became my library.
It used to be one of my favorite places in the house. I’d come up after a morning of gardening and relax in the little reading nook Cameron had built me under the window. I’d re-read old favorites and discover new ones, too. One bookshelf grew to two, which quickly multiplied into four, and before I knew it, every wall was lined with books.
I thought there was nothing I could want more in the world.
And then, I got pregnant.
My stomach dropped at the memory, and I placed the brown cloth-covered book between my well-kept editions of Wuthering Heights and The Scarlet Letter. My eyes flicked to the closet in the corner, right near the window I used to sit under, and then back to the worn spine. It didn’t feel right, that it was so beat up and yet it sat next to two practically brand new books. So, I pulled it out again, running my fingers over the gold lettering as I surveyed other options.
Cameron and I weren’t trying to get pregnant when it happened, but we weren’t trying not to, either. We were just young and happy and in love. And in the blink of an eye, we were parents-to-be.
The morning sickness and my ultra-tender breasts were my first clues, but I’d kept quiet until two little lines on a store-bought pregnancy test confirmed my suspicion. That night, I’d cooked dinner for Cameron, and served the results on our good china right next to dessert. I still remembered everything about the way he looked the moment it hit him — the pinch of his brows, his mouth falling open, and finally, his wide eyes finding mine as tears filled them to the brim.
He fell to his knees and hugged me to him, pressing his ear to my stomach, and we both laughed.
Then, we wept.
It wasn’t too long after that night that the doctor confirmed what the test had said, and then when we went to find out what the sex was, we discovered we weren’t just having one baby, but two. Twins.
Both boys.
The euphoria that existed in our home after that day was inexplainable. We’d packed up all my books and moved them into his study, transforming the room closest to ours into a nursery most would dream of. There were two high-end cribs, ones Cameron had shopped around for months for to find the best of the best, and a rocking chair in the corner with a plush rug at the feet. We had a diaper changing station, a dresser for clothes and blankets, a high-tech stereo system with baby monitor controls, and more unnecessary baby gadgets than we needed.
Cameron wanted everything to be perfect for our boys. It was like he’d finally heard his calling, like he was born with the sole purpose of being my husband, and eventually, being their dad.
I read every single baby book I could get my puffy little hands on. They taught me how to eat properly when I was pregnant, and how to breathe during the birth. There were guidelines for how to nurse, when to expect first smiles and laughs and words, and what ages to start teaching colors and numbers. I discovered the science of childbirth, the signs of postpartum depression, and the small indicators that would alert me when our babies were sick or in need.
Those books taught me everything.
Except how to live my life when the babies we were so ready for never came home.
I sniffed, tucking my new book on the far-right edge of the shelf I stood in front of, right next to Great Expectations. That was one I’d read time and time again, and its spine had the same loving wear and tear as my new addition. I stepped back to admire them together, but my eyes drifted back to the closet over time, back to the place that hid thousands of dollars in baby furniture that we no longer needed.
Cameron had rebuilt my library a few months after the day we came home empty-handed. He was always so caring like that, showing me he loved me through his actions. He wanted to bring back some of the happiness I’d lost by rebuilding the place that was once my pride and joy. But my library wasn’t the same, not after I’d seen how that room had the potential to be so much more than a home for my books.
My library wasn’t the same. But then again, neither we were.
After one last longing look at the closet, I decided Anna Karenina was right where she belonged. I straightened the spines on my science fiction shelf and let my fingers linger there, remembering when it had once been a rocking chair that stood in its place. Then, I clicked off the reading lamp, stepped out of the darkness into the glow from the hall light, and shut the door behind me.