In the novels, it always seems to rain at funerals, and my mother's was no exception.  It felt as though Heaven was trying to wash us all away.  The raindrops fell heavy down upon our black umbrellas until there was not a dry person among us.  The sheer number of waterlogged mourners was a testament to my mother's memory.

    Oliver huddled beneath my umbrella, his arms circled around my legs, even as his own umbrella lay in the mud.  He was worried about our her grave filling with the rain water and sweeping her away from us.  We leaned together as she was interred. 

    At home after the funeral, Corina was bustling between the kitchen and the great room, setting out new plates of food and removing the old, taking coats from guests, and keeping a close eye on my father.  At one point, he started up the stairs, but Corina steered him to a leather chair near the fireplace and set him up with a glass of some viscous liquor.  There he remained, sullen and silent as various acquaintances of my mothers expressed their utmost condolences.  

    I watched all of this in a haze.  It didn't seem true that we'd never see her again.  I kept thinking I see her come down the stairs in one of her lacy white dresses, barefoot and breathless with excitement.  I kept expecting to walk into the kitchen and find her dancing with my father and Oliver, Corina watching from the corner with a mix of exasperation and amusement on her face.  

    The doctors diagnosed her with pulmonary tuberculosis after it was already too late to pursue any treatment.  I watched helplessly as she deteriorated away, coughing until she had no more strength left in her and she wasted away to nothing.  They call it consumption for a reason -- every single ounce of her was eaten away.  

    Whenever she succumbed to a terrible coughing fit, I took Oliver away to his room.  I was convinced I could feel her coughing in my own lungs, filling them with an agonizing burn.  I agonized over if I were doing the right thing, whisking him away from her during her last days, but I wanted Oliver to remember her healthy and vibrant, not a hollow wraith of what she'd once been.

    She passed away in the night as Oliver and I were sleeping.  During the entire illness, my father never strayed from her side, putting himself at risk for catching it too.  He slept in a threadbare chair next to her bed and cradled her hand in his.  Her death marked the first and only time in 18 years that they were apart.  They had met shortly after the war.  And, as wars tend to do, it inspired a period of desperately passionate love affairs, and my parents were no exception.  They were engaged within a month of meeting, and I followed just a short year after they were wed.  Oliver was born nearly ten years later, my father's pride and joy.

    

    Eventually, I grew weary of the mourners and took Oliver up to his room and tucked in him into bed.  I stroked his hair and tried to not hear the commotion below.  

    "Amelia?" he whispered after a while.  "What if I can't remember her face?"    

    "I'll remember it for the both of us.  If you ever start to forget, I'll fill in the details."

    It struck me then for the first time how much he still need our mother.  I stayed with him until he finally fell asleep, snoring softly.

 

    The next morning I was awake early enough to watch the sun break out over the city.  There was no trace left of the rain except for a few lonely puddles and the clean earthen smell that it always leaves behind.

    I stole quietly out of the house while my father, Oliver, and Corina were all still asleep.  The city streets were eerily quiet, but I relished the feeling of solitude.  For the first time since my mother died, I felt a little better.  Her absence was a gaping hole in my life, but walking down a deserted alley after the rainstorm felt oddly liberating.  Everything in the house reminded me of her -- I couldn't turn around without seeing a piece of furniture she'd agonized over purchasing or a chip in the floor where she'd dropped something. 

    I went down the neighborhood where she'd spend nearly all of her time.  My mother wasn't one to sit idly; boredom would eat away at her until she paced restlessly in front of windows like a house cat.  She had finally found her niche among a literary circle that met in a cafe in this neighborhood.   It was in this book club of sorts where she debated the merits of Dumas and Cervantes or Shelley and Stoker.  After a meeting, she always came home renewed, laughing, bursting to tell my father all about her scintillating conversations.  When I got older, she used to take me along, as long as I promised to be good and sit quietly.  It wasn't hard to do, even when I was Oliver's age.  I was entranced by the mysteries and romances and tales of derring-do and drank up every ounce of the stories I heard there.  For better or worse, I inherited my mother's love of literature, and sent myself into a self-imposed exile, retreating away from schoolmates into books.

    The neighborhood was nestled in the older part of town on the riverfront.  Although, the buildings were old, they were charming despite peeling paint and fading facades.  The cafes had quaint little ironwork tables sitting on the sidewalks, adorned with a single flower.  Florists' bouquets spilled out from over-full baskets and the smell of fresh baked bread filled the streets.  I walked along the street overlooking the river, enjoying the water's sound as it lapped against the bank.  

    As mission bells started to ring, I reach the end of the boardwalk.  The river veered away, winding through wetlands and marshes before creeping into the foothills.  

    But at the end of the street, perched between a small, unmoved park and the river was a hulking Victorian mansion.  In places the paint was peeling away and the flower beds were overgrown with weeds, but it retained its former majesty.  

    I almost missed the small wooden sign hanging from the door: Carraway Library - Open.

    Surely the sign was wrong.  It was far too early in the day for a library to be open at this hour.  I stood transfixed in the street, debating.  Logically, I knew it had to be closed, but I just couldn't walk away.  

    I tried the doorknob slowly.  With a creak, it swung open.  I screwed up my courage, telling myself that if the sign said open and the door was unlocked, then it must surely be true.  Inside, the air was heavy with dust, but the windows had no shutters or curtains so rods of sunlight cut through the musty air.  From wall to ceiling were shelves of books, and I was awed by the sheer volume of tomes.

    I nearly walked straight into the circulation desk.  The agitated librarian glared at me over his half-moon glasses.  He looked older than dirt with the papery skin and wispy white hair that comes with advanced age.  He said nothing, but shooed me away with a wave of his hand and went back to repairing a book's broken spine.

    I retreated deep into the stacks.  The smell of musty paper and leather covers permeated my senses, filling me with a longing to disappear into the rows of books that felt like home.  The stacks were labyrinthine -- the shelves created narrow aisles that crossed back and forth over themselves with no rhyme or reason.  The books weren't shelved by author or even genre.  

    Most of the home's interior walls had been removed to make room for all the shelves.  Where the librarian had run out of room on the shelves, he'd stacked books haphazardly in the aisles.  

    I went up the creaking stairs, where it was inconceivably even more disorganized.  Books were shelved as many as three times deep.  They were piled on tables, chairs, and in the aisles.

    With an armful of books I'd gathered along the way, I settled into a rickety chair next to an east-facing window.  I lost track of time as I lost myself in the stories.  The library dissolved away as the worlds of the novels materialized around me.  By the time I emerged, the sun had risen beyond eyesight from the window.  I had a small collection of my feet to take home with me.  My stomach grumbled, a sure sign it was time to leave.

    Back down stairs, I set up a card with the crochety librarian, Alexander Heyl.  I soon realized that Heyl was more bark than bite.  Like all librarians, he liked his quiet, but didn't run his ship as tightly as most.  I returned home with five novels Heyl graciously granted me two weeks to get through.

2: Chapter II

Chapter 2

 

Little did I know that two weeks would be plenty of time to read them.  Father retreated into his room in the days following her funeral, and we didn't see him again for nearly a month.  His secretary called the house over and over again for three days until Corina finally unplugged the phone all together. 

"Hun, you'll need to find something else to do today," Corina said to Oliver one day.  She was at the end of her rope with him.  Oliver had attached himself to Corina, sitting at a stool while she prepared breakfast or tailing her about the house as she cleaned up after us. She couldn't get a thing done without him underfoot.

Breakfast that morning was some softening fruit and a few stale biscuits Corina had whipped up.

"It's not much, but until Mr. Pettibone gets back to work, it's all we have."

"When do you think he'll go back, Corina?" I asked quietly. 

She frowned, wiping flour dust off her face.  "I don't know.  He hasn't opened that door for nearly four weeks."  She nodded upstairs in the general direction of his bedroom. "I can't hardly get him to eat at this point.  Everything I leave outside the door just end up stone cold in the hallway."

"I miss him," Oliver piped up, tearing his biscuits to pieces.

"He hasn't gone anywhere, Oli.  He's just missing Mama and grieving in his own way."

"Well, he needs to be going to work or we'll all starve," Corina muttered so only I could hear.

 

Corina was wrong for once.  Another month went by, but finally Father emerged skinny and haggard.  His hair had gone gray during his exile.  With a look of distaste, he swallowed down the breakfast of gruel Corina had been feeding us.  Two months without any income had left the cupboard bare.  Corina had resorted to begging and borrowing on account of his good name to keep us fed.  She was working for free herself.  Anyone else would have found themselves a new job, but Corina regarded it a matter of honor to raise us in our parents' absence.

Oliver and I sat quietly at the table eating the tasteless meal.  Father felt like a stranger to me; he was "Father" now instead of my papa.  But Oliver chatted excitedly about the mole he'd seen out in the yard that morning even though Father was distracted and disinterested.  Before our mother's death, he would have been out in the yard with Oliver in a heartbeat, digging in the holes for the little critter.  Now he hardly seemed to hear a work Oliver said.

Abruptly, he stood up, wiping crumbs off with his cloth napkin.  "I'm headed back to the office," he announced.  "I'll be back for dinner."

"Can I come?" asked Oliver.

Father's face softened.  Oliver used to tag along with him to the office, where'd he would set up his own little mock office, complete with stacks of legal tomes.

"Maybe next time."

 

For my part, I spent an increasing amount of time in the Caraway Library.  Heyl stopped looking up from his pile of books after a while.

"Good morning, Mr. Heyl," I'd chirp as I entered.  It made me feel less conspicuous if I did.  For a long time, he'd just grunt back at me.

Finally, one drizzly morning, he said hello back.

"You spend a copious amount of time in a battered old library."

Taken aback, I didn't know what to say.  "Libraries are meant to be used," I answered finally.  "I'd live here if I could."

Heyl peered at me over his glasses with a sneer.  "No, no…there isn't enough room for the two of us here."

"Do you really live here?"  In retrospect, it made sense -- a library opened at the crack of dawn must be inhabited by its librarian.

"I do,"  he said as if it were the most natural thing in the world.  I had a sudden image of him sleeping in my favorite upstairs armchair with his gnarled toes sticking out from a moth-eaten blanket.  "As does my Hugo.  My cat."

Of course Heyl had a cat named Hugo.

"Tell me, Amelia," he said, picking up the book I'd just returned.  "Did you find Dumas to your liking?"

"Yes.  It was a fun adventure story, and I liked the characters.  I preferred Aramis, really."

"He wrote sequels and other tales.  Of course, this one gets all the glory." Heyl scribbled down a set of titles for me to read.  That night I went home with the rest of the stories about the musketeers.  I moved on later to read Cervantes and Malory before an unfortunate excursion into dry Russian literature.  Eventually, I became acquainted with Hugo, while holding a copy of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, no less.

Before long, Heyl was expecting me each week.  He'd cleared off a corner of his desk for me, and each morning there were two steaming mugs of coffee for us to sip on while we conducted our informal book club.  I felt that Heyl and Hugo were starting to warm up to my visits.  

Of course, there were other regular visitors to the Caraway Library, but none of them spent more than the customary amount of time at the circulation desk.  I suspected it had something to do with Heyl's thorny disposition, but library patrons being who the way they are, weren't overly friendly themselves.  I was the recipient of a few suspicious glances, which I ignored over the pages of my book.  

 

"You're especially quiet today," Heyl said without looking away from the hardcover he was perusing.  He never padded his words and was always straight to the point.  

"Am I?"  I hadn't really noticed, but he was right.  I had come in with not much more than a tight smile and went right to sorting the card catalogue.  It was a task I had adopted when I realized how overwhelmed Heyl was with running the library, though he'd never admit it.

"Well?" he demanded when I didn't elaborate.  "What's bothering your sunny disposition?"

"I guess I'm just feeling guilty about Oliver, my brother."  Heyl's interest in my personal life was unexpected, but his concern was genuine and I found myself opening up to him.  "Ever since our mother died, my father went from being a hermit to completely immersing himself in his work.  We hardly see him except during meals, and even then he's sullen and unapproachable."

In fact, he hardly said anything to either of us, except to tell Oliver "maybe next time."  Corina was the only person able to extract more than a few words from him, and only then related to controlling the family's finances.  

"What does that have to do with your brother?"

"Well, with Father working as much as he does, Oliver is left to his own devices, except for when Corina lets him tag along.  I've haven't been much of a sister, really.  I spend all my time here.  I should be taking care of him," I said dejectedly.

Heyl was quiet for a few moments while I stewed in my guilt.  A hard knot formed in the pit of my stomach.  

"Has it ever occurred to you, that young, impressionable boys enjoy a good adventure story as much as their older sisters?  Go find a classic -- like a Stevenson -- and read it aloud to him." 

I searched the library over twice looking for the perfect book for Oliver.  Our mother always had the perfect story to read to us, and I just couldn't settle on one.  I finally took Heyl's advice and took home Treasure Island.

Oliver had never been a strong reader, despite our mother's deep passion for it.  He struggled with the mechanics of it, tripping over the syllables of words of missing their natural rhythm.  I hadn't seen Oliver open a book since her death.  

I thought that Treasure Island would be something he'd enjoy.  It was an easy enough book with simple prose and enough swashbuckling action to keep a young boy riveted to the plot.  

I waited until bedtime before bringing it up.  I didn't like bringing up anything that might remind Father of Mama, lest he descend back into one of his black moods.  Going back to the office was a vast improvement over sulking about the house, and I didn't want to risk a regression.  Instead, we talked about the weather at dinner that night.  Corina tutted about the mud Father and I dragged into the house, adding to her already insurmountable housework.

"Well, surely it can't all Amelia's and my fault - what about Oli?  A young boy like him must be bringing in slews of mud," Father said.  I knew that he meant it as a joke, but his tone was hollow.  Oliver pushed his peas around his plate, not daring to raise his eyes.  Oliver seldom left Corina's side during the day, but Corina didn't dare tell Father this.  After dinner, Oliver went up to his room without a word to any of us.  

I knocked and let myself in.  "Can I come in, bud?  I got this book at the library, and I thought we might read it together."  

Oliver passed the book back and forth between his hands, looking at the front and back covers.  He flipped through the musty pages, releasing the antiqued smell of the ink and paper.  "Mama always read me bedtime stories," he said finally.

"I know.  That's why I thought we might read together too.  It'll be a way to remember her… It might be fun to read something together.  Maybe one day, Dad can come read with us too."

"That's alright," he said a little sadly, but he scooted into the corner of his bed, making room for me on the edge.  I sooted under the covers with him, putting my left arm around his shoulder so he could see the illustrations while I read.

It took us about a week of reading at bedtime to get through Stevenson's tale.  Oliver squirmed with pleasure at the tales of derring-do and the antics of the pirates.  He gasped and pulled the covers up to his chin when even the most minor of characters died.  It was the most animated I had seen Oliver in months.

"What are we going to read next?" he asked when we were through.