I tried not to look as puzzled as I felt. Why did they care? “He told me to text or call him if there’s an emergency.”

His actual words upon departure had been a laughing “Call me only if the building is burning. On second thought, don’t. Call nine-one-one instead.” But I wasn’t about to say that to the board. Graydon hadn’t been serious and Trent might take it the wrong way.

Linda tapped her glasses on the table. “So he’s responsive if you have to contact him outside of normal working hours?” Tap-tap-tap.

I stiffened. Why was there suddenly an anti-Graydon feeling in the room? If a majority of the board was unhappy enough, they could vote to fire him, something that didn’t bear thinking about. “Yes,” I said. The short word didn’t seem like enough, so I added, “He’s always there when I need him.”

Bruce nodded. “If you’d taken on the position of library director, what would you be doing differently from Graydon?”

I desperately wanted to laugh and say, Buy more bookmobiles, but I had a feeling that in this situation humor wasn’t the card I should be playing. What could I tell them but the truth? “Absolutely nothing major,” I said. “And hardly anything minor, either. Just the other day the staff was saying he’s the best director we’ve ever had.”

“Hmm.” Trent looked at me over the top of his steepled fingers, then past me. “Good morning,” he said to the final two board members, who were just coming in the door. “Nice to see you both.”

The meeting started exactly on time—something that Trent insisted upon—and they went through the agenda item by item. But even as I fielded their various questions, a question of my own kept running through my head.

Were they going to fire Graydon?

*   *   *

The next day was a bookmobile day, and Julia was scheduled to ride along. Hiring her as a part-time clerk had been an idea of my aunt’s, and like most of her ideas, it had been a fantastic one.

Julia Beaton, mid-sixties, typically had her long enviably straight strawberry blond hair in a braid that she slung over one shoulder when she wasn’t using it as a prop for whatever persona she happened to be inhabiting. There were days when she was Julia from dawn to dusk, but thankfully those days were few and far between because her former life as a Tony Award–winning Broadway actress had given her the ability to be the best-ever story reader the library was ever likely to see, and a deep well of roles to draw from.

She also had a penchant for making up personalities to suit her mood. I was never sure which was which and I’d decided long ago to stop trying and enjoy the ride.

“They’re not going to fire Graydon,” Julia said.