Chapters (51)
- Cover
- Dedication
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Thirty-Three
- Thirty-Four
- Thirty-Five
- Thirty-Six
- Thirty-Seven
- Thirty-Eight
- Thirty-Nine
- Forty
- Forty-One
- Forty-Two
- Forty-Three
- Acknowledgments
- P.S. Insights, Interviews & More . . .*
- About the Author
- About the Book
- Also by Alison Gaylin
- About the Publisher
“I mean it. I’m a fan. Kentucky Crimes is my favorite. I’ve listened to it three times.” She picked up the smartphone on the desk in front of her, headphones dangling out. “I think I’d go insane in this place if it weren’t for my podcasts.”
“You’re interested in true crime.” He said it not to Melanie, but to the smartphone, its case designed after the cover of In Cold Blood.
She smiled. “How did you guess?”
Quentin smiled back. It was always so much easier when they turned out to be listeners. You hardly had to explain anything.
“Are you doing a podcast on April Cooper?” Melanie said, proving the point.
“How did you guess?”
She adjusted her glittering glasses. “You’re not going to do a hatchet job on her, are you? Treat her like she was whatsherface in Natural Born Killers?”
Quentin looked at her. “Any reason why I shouldn’t?”
Melanie gave him a long, appraising look. “Come with me.”
Quentin followed her down a hallway full of empty lockers, her heels clicking on the floorboards and echoing. A janitor nodded and grinned at her as she passed, clearly an object of interest to him in all her youth and red lipstick and costumey attire. “Hey, Bob,” she said, unfazed. Used to the attention.
Near the end of the hallway was the library, which Melanie opened by key. “Librarians get summer vacation.” She sighed, switching on the lights. “Unlike Bob and me.”
Quentin inhaled the smell of books and plastic and carpet cleaner, memories snaking through him.
When he was a kid, his mother would drop him off at the public library after school and pick him up at closing. It was cheaper than day care, and Quentin never complained. At that age, before he grew tall and came out and learned how to fight, he’d spend full days getting tortured by bullies, then full nights at home with his mother, neither one of them saying a word. But at the library, he could escape. He could sit on the floor between the stacks and read for hours without feeling hassled or ignored.
He used to daydream about staying there past closing, reading all night, the night turning into morning and that morning to weeks, months. He dreamed of living at the library, amongst the Harry Potters and the graphic novels and the grown-up books he was just starting to discover. Shirley Jackson. Edgar Allan Poe. Joyce Carol Oates.