The bell sounded as the door opened. It was Grace leaving.

“Did you see the woman I was talking with?” Harry asked.

“When? Just now?”

“Yeah. She just left.”

“No. Why?”

Harry told John how she’d been looking for work. He found himself hoping John would say that an extra hire would be good for the store, but he just shook his head. “I don’t think so, do you? We can handle it, especially when Alice decides she wants to come back in and help.”

Harry walked slowly home from the store. He wasn’t sure he was up for another intimate dinner with Alice, and was relieved to see an unfamiliar car—a dark blue Jetta—parked next to his Civic in the driveway. The license plate read, CSHORE7. He thought maybe it was Alice’s friend Chrissie, who almost certainly would have a vanity plate. Harry went up to the front door, which was decorated with stained glass, and was about to enter when he peered, instead, through the one unstained piece of glass in the design. He could see partially into the kitchen, where an older woman was standing, her back to the door, but Harry could see that she was still wearing a raincoat and had a bright red scarf wrapped around her head. She was in profile, her lips moving as though she was talking rapidly. She wasn’t immediately recognizable. Harry stood for a moment, frozen on the front stoop, trying to decide if it was possible to enter the house and go straight up to his room. Maybe if he opened the door as quietly as possible. But, no, the strange woman was only twenty feet away in the kitchen. Harry would have to be introduced.

Instead of entering the house, Harry went around to the backyard, where there was an old, dilapidated barn on the property that had been one of the reasons Bill had originally been interested in the house. It was a small barn, unpainted, the wood weathered to the point where there were inch-wide cracks between the planks, but the roof was solid. Bill’s plan had been to restore it completely and eventually use it as storage for even more books. That had never happened, of course. Bill’s true passion had been the acquisition of books. Finding places to put them was a chore that he only got around to out of desperation.

The barn’s wide front doors were open, and Harry walked across the muddy yard and stepped inside, letting his eyes adjust to the dark, cool interior. He could hear the flutter of starlings high up in the rafters. In one corner was an old lathe, left by the previous residents. Harry remembered his father taking a look at it, telling him that maybe he’d take up furniture making and that way he could make his own shelves. “Can you imagine this place filled with books?” he’d said.