I stuck a broom under the bed to get at the dust bunnies and swept out a pair of my dad’s jockeys and one of my mother’s shoe boxes. I took a peek in the box, expecting to find a pair of heels, and was stunned to discover that it contained nearly two thousand dollars in unpaid parking and speeding tickets—there was an unpaid parking violation from the City of Boston that dated to 1993. There was also an unpaid dentist bill from 2004, a VHS copy of When Harry Met Sally . . . from Blockbuster Video, and a paperback titled Another Marvelous Thing. I didn’t understand how the book connected to the other items until I flipped open the back cover. It was a library book, and I knew at first glance that my mother had borrowed it in the last century and never got around to returning it. There was a lending card in the back, tucked into a stiff beige pocket, stamped with a return date. A relic from that ancient, fabled era before Facebook. At a dime a day, we probably owed the library our whole house. Or at least the cost of a replacement book.

The dentist my mother had stiffed retired in 2011 and now lived in Arizona. The local Blockbuster had long since been replaced by a cell-phone dealership. I figured my mom was off the hook for the parking tickets; you couldn’t try a dead woman. That left the book. I stuck Another Marvelous Thing into the pocket of my baggy army jacket and got moving.

It was the end of September but still felt like summer. Moths batted at the old-fashioned wrought-iron lampposts on the street corners. A trio of accordion players in striped shirts and suspenders entertained a sparse audience on the town green. Kids out with their parents crowded the patio tables at the ice-cream parlor. If you ignored the cars, it might’ve been 1929. The walk to the library was the first time I had not felt ugly with grief in weeks. It felt like I’d been paroled.

I climbed the white marble steps into the dramatic atrium of the library, beneath a copper dome eighty feet overhead. My steps echoed. I couldn’t remember when I’d last been in the place and regretted that it’d been so long. It had the soaring, tranquil grandeur of a cathedral, but, better than incense, it smelled like books.

I approached the great rosewood desk, looking for the slot to drop my book into, but there wasn’t one. Instead a sign on the desk read ALL RETURNS MUST BE SCANNED IN. There was a black laser scanner next to it with a pistol grip, just like you’d see at the supermarket checkout. I approached, thinking I would pretend to scan it and run—but the old lady behind the desk held out one quavering hand, gesturing for me to wait. Her other hand clutched a phone to her ear. She tapped one finger against the scanner and then drew her nail across her neck in a throat-cutting gesture. Broken. I thought maybe when she was free, I’d ask about renewing my library card—and wait for an opportunity to drop my mother’s late return behind the desk when no one was watching. I didn’t want to discuss her late fees and wanted even less to discuss her death.