Софи Келли - Final Catcall

“I’m a little jealous that you get to work here every day.” She looked toward the stacks. “Would you have a minute to help me find something?” She loosened the black scarf at her neck. “I’m looking for a copy of John Donne’s Holy Sonnet 10.”

“‘Death, be not proud.’”

She smiled again and shook her head. “I should have guessed you’d know it. I heard your dad quote Donne once.”

I led her over to the poetry section. “When did you work with Dad?” I asked.

“My very first job,” she said. Her cheeks turned red. “Promise you won’t laugh?”

I put my hand over my heart. “Librarian’s honor.”

“It was a cereal commercial.”

I shook my head and grinned. “You were in the raisin bran commercial. Were you a raisin or a flake?”

“I was a flake. John was a raisin.”

“A dried-up, wizened raisin with no sense of rhythm.”

Chloe laughed at the memory. “You know those commercials have a cult following online.”

I rolled my eyes. “I’m not surprised. I was at college when the first two aired and that Halloween everyone I knew dressed up as a raisin.”

“Now that they’ve revived the whole campaign, get ready for lots of dried-up raisins running around this Halloween, too.”

“What is it about those ads that people like so much?” I asked.

She frowned, narrowing her eyes as she thought about my question. “I don’t know. I think it’s because they’re funny even though they weren’t intended to be—at least not the first one.” She smiled again. “Ben said your mother’s coming to fill in for Hugh.”

“She is.”

“I’m looking forward to seeing her. We did a benefit reading together a couple of years ago for the Coles Island Theatre. She told a story about doing summer stock, outside in a public park.”

“The raccoon story.” I scanned the shelves looking for the book of poetry Chloe wanted.

She laughed. “That’s it.” Her expression grew serious again. “It’s really kind of her to offer to come like that, especially at the last minute.”

“She’s been friends with Ben a long time,” I said. “Ah, there it is.” I bent down and pulled the book I’d been looking for from the bottom shelf. “And we get to spend some time together, too,” I said, straightening up and handing her the book.

“Thank you,” Chloe said, turning it over in her hands. “Ben’s having a little . . . remembrance for Hugh this afternoon. I wanted to read ‘Death, be not proud,’ and I know it sounds silly, but Hugh would have hated it if I’d just printed the poem from somewhere online. He loved books.”

There was genuine sadness in her eyes and the set of her mouth.

“You were friends,” I said, reaching out to straighten the shelf of books closest to us.

“For a while we were more than friends.” She played with her scarf. “My life went in a different direction, but I’m always going to have a soft spot for Hugh.” She shook her head. “I wish I could have gotten here sooner. He worked so hard to convince me to take this job and we didn’t get to work together in the end.”

“Ben has some of Hugh’s notes,” I said. “They seem to have survived the fire. Once he gets them all sorted out maybe he’d let you read them to get an idea of what Hugh had in mind for your character.”

Chloe held the book of poetry against her chest. “That’s a good idea. I think I’ll do that. I don’t mean I won’t follow your mom’s direction, but I’d like to know what Hugh had been thinking. The play is about star-crossed lovers. Not the kind of part I usually play.”

“He must have thought you could handle the part or he wouldn’t have pushed you to take it.”

“He pushed so hard that I was starting to think maybe he was hoping we could get back together again.” She brushed her hair back behind one ear and pasted on a smile. “So thank you for this. It means a lot to me.”

“I’m glad I could help.”

“How do I check this out?” she asked.

“I’ll take you over to the desk and Susan will get you a temporary card,” I said.

We walked to the checkout desk and I introduced Chloe to Susan. “It was good to meet you, Chloe,” I said.

“You too, Kathleen,” she said. “I hope I’ll see you again.”

I nodded. “Me too.”

Abigail came in early for her shift. I went down to the staff room for a cup of coffee before I started in on the budget figures and found her leaning against the counter with a mug in one hand. She was rubbing the back of her neck with the other hand. She looked tired. There were dark circles, like smudges of soot, underneath her eyes.

“Hi, Kathleen,” she said. “I forgot to tell you—Ben is going to pick up your mom at the airport tomorrow.”

“Are you sure?” I asked, reaching for the coffeepot. “I can rearrange the schedule and get her myself.”

“Thanks, but I think Ben wants to use the time to bring her up to speed.”

“How are things going?”

“The police took four boxes of Hugh’s notes, but they let us keep the costumes. And somehow Ben managed to organize a rehearsal for every one of the plays without resorting to cloning himself. And he’s planned a memorial for Hugh this afternoon.” She handed me the sugar, which was on the counter beside her. “I don’t know when he sleeps.”

“That sounds like Ben,” I said, adding milk and sugar to my cup. “What about you? Is everything okay?”

She smiled and I thought it looked a little forced. “I could use a bit more sleep and probably a lot less coffee, but I’m okay.”

“You sure?”

She nodded, but her smile wavered just a little.

“Abigail, what was going on between you and Hugh?” I said quietly.

It wasn’t a surprise to see her face flood with color.

She took a deep breath and let it out. “We were married.”

But that was.

16

I stared at her. “Married?”

“Yes.”

“You were married to Hugh Davis?” Of all the things Abigail could have said, this was the last thing I would have expected. “When? How? How? ”

She pulled out a chair and sat down at the small table in the middle of the room, and I did the same because I had a feeling this was going to take a while.

“We were married when we were in college. It’s a lot of years ago.”

“You never said anything.”

Abigail stared into her cup. “It wasn’t my best moment.”

I waited until finally she met my gaze. “I was nineteen. We met on a Friday night in a script-writing workshop. Sunday afternoon when the workshop was over I moved my things into his apartment.”

“Love at first sight.”

She gave me a wry smile. “Or something like that.”

“So what happened?”

Abigail shook her head. “I guess you could say real life happened. Practicality intruded.” She laid both hands flat on the table. “I was already committed to doing a semester abroad in England. Hugh asked me to marry him before I left. By then my father had found out about the two of us. He said that if I married Hugh he’d take away his financial support. I would have had to drop out.”

“That was an awful choice to have to make.”

She nodded. “It would have been better if I’d actually made a choice.”

“What do you mean?”

“I didn’t want to lose Hugh and I knew my father would follow through on his threat. So I found a minister who wasn’t licensed to marry us and then I left for London.”

“What happened?”

She shrugged. “The whole thing blew up in my face. My father found out that I had gotten ‘married.’ So I confessed it was a sham. He said I was too immature for college and stopped paying my tuition.”