“Her aunt killed your sister.”

I jumped up, leaves suddenly swirling around us on the sidewalk. “That is a lie.”

“You leave my mother alone.” Liz raised her finger to my face. “I’m not afraid of you or your parlor tricks.” She looked down to our feet.

“I’m sorry?”

“Don’t play dumb. I know you and your aunts aren’t right. Come on, Mom.”

Mary mouthed the words I’m so sorry as her daughter dragged her away.

• • •

I tried to shake off the lingering emotion from my encounter with Mary Coleman and her daughter on my walk to the library, but that was easier said than done. Now that I had met Liz, I was even more concerned about the upcoming town hall and what it might mean for my family.

I was also starting to worry going to the library was a waste of time. The most I could hope to find was a picture of Constance in the Evenfall Gazette. It was hard to imagine how that might help. And yet, despite my misgivings, I still felt like it was something I needed to do.

I hurried up the wide concrete steps of the library. It was a lovely deep red brick building. Not large by any stretch of the imagination, but it had been built around the same time as the B&B, and the architecture, which included some pretty impressive stained-glass windows, gave it a slightly gothic feel. The enormous gnarled oak tree on the front lawn didn’t hurt either.

All was silent when I walked in, just the way I liked it. Not that the Evenfall Library wasn’t popular. If I had come a little later in the morning, I knew the place would be packed with kids, which was wonderful in its own right, but there was something a bit magical about the silence of a room filled with books. You could almost feel the stories reaching out to you with romance and adventure. I smiled at the thought. I was getting carried away. But even if I was, I’d never reach the heights of carried-awayedness our town librarian, Christina, could manage when it came to the love of books.

I walked through the foyer, eyeing the walls decorated for Halloween with colored-in pictures of black cats, jack-o’-lanterns, and witches with warts on their noses. Rude. I then turned the corner and headed for Christina perched on a stool behind the front desk.

I couldn’t help but notice she looked extra bookish today. She wore a white button-down shirt with a navy crewneck sweater over the top, a tweed skirt, and brown tights. Her legs were crossed both at the thighs and the ankles, turning them into a pretzel, and she was chewing on the thumbnail of her left hand while her right held a book a few inches from her face. Her eyes were wide behind her oversized glasses. They were tracking the page in front of her at a furious rate.