Ingrid tried to give each author a fair shake by placing less-popular books by the front desk, suggesting little-known titles to those who asked, and borrowing each book at least once. But one could only do so much. The author, one J. J. Ramsey Baker (good lord, what was that, four names?—certainly two initials too much), author of Moribund Symphony, The Darkness at the Center of the Essence, and his latest, an obvious desperate grab for a book club pick, The Cobbler’s Daughter’s Elephants, would have just another month to tell his story of a blind cobbler in Lebanon in the nineteenth century and his daughter’s pet elephants until out it went. Ingrid thought that not even a little magic could help move that product.
It was really too bad none of them were allowed to practice magic anymore. That was the deal they had made after the judgment had been handed down. No more flying. No more spells. No more charms and powders, potions or jinxes. They were to live like ordinary people without the use of their ferocious powers, their magnificent, otherworldly abilities. Over the years they had each learned to live with the restraint in their own way. Freya burned through her energy through her manic partying, while Ingrid had adopted a severe personality in order to better suppress the magic that threatened to well up from inside.
Since there was nothing she could do to change it, Ingrid found she could not quite resent their present reduced circumstances. Resenting and regretting only made things worse. Why hope for what could not be? For hundreds of years she had learned to live like a quiet mouse, tiny and insignificant, and had almost convinced herself that it was better that way.
Ingrid patted the bun at the back of her head and put the cart back against the wall. On the way to the back office, she saw Blake Aland perusing the new releases. Blake was a successful developer who had given the mayor the idea of selling the library in the first place, offering a handsome bid if the city ever decided to take it on the market. A month ago he had dropped off his firm’s documents and Ingrid had had the delicate task of telling him their work was not aesthetically important enough to keep in their archive. Blake had taken it well, but he had not taken her rejection of his invitation to dinner quite as graciously. He had continued to persist until she had finally agreed to dine with him last week, on an evening that had gone disastrously, with hands fending off hands in the front seat of the car and hurt feelings all around. It was him she had to thank for giving her the odious nickname “Frigid Ingrid.” How unfortunate that in addition to being despicable he was also clever.
She hurried away before he spotted her. She had no desire to wrestle with Octopus hands any time soon. Freya was so lucky to have found Bran, but then again, Ingrid had known for a long time that one day Freya would meet him. She’d seen it in her sister’s lifeline centuries ago.
Ingrid had never felt that way about anyone. Besides, love wasn’t a solution to everything, she thought, patting a cache of letters that she kept folded in her pocket.
In the back office, she checked on her blueprint: almost all the creases were out. Good. She would put it in its flat box and then put the next drawing under the steam. She made a note on an index card, writing down the architect’s name and the project, an experimental museum that had never been built.
When she returned to her cubicle there was a sniffing noise from the next desk, and when Ingrid looked up, she noticed Tabitha was wiping her eyes and setting down her mobile phone. “What happened?” Ingrid asked, although she had a feeling she already knew. There was only one thing Tabitha wanted even more than getting Judy Blume to visit their library.
“I’m not pregnant.”
“Oh, Tab,” Ingrid said. She walked over and embraced her friend. “I’m so sorry.” For the past several weeks Tabitha had been resolutely optimistic following yet another in-vitro procedure, expressing a manic certainty that it had worked mostly because it was their final attempt at parenthood. “Surely there’s something else you can do?”
“No. This was our last shot. We can’t afford it anymore. We’re already in debt up to our ears for the last one. This was it. It’s not going to happen.”
“What happened to the adoption process?”
Tabitha wiped her eyes. “Because of Chad’s disability, we got passed over again. Might as well be a dead end. And I’m sorry, I know it’s selfish, but is it so wrong to want one of our own? Just one?”
Ingrid had been there since the beginning of Chad and Tabitha’s journey: she knew all about the turkey basters (the IUI treatment), the hormone pills, the infertility cocktail (Clomid, Lupron); she had helped push syringes as big as horse needles into Tabitha’s left hip at the designated hours. She knew how much they wanted a baby. Tabitha kept a photo on her desk of her and Chad at a luau during their honeymoon in Kona, goofy in Hawaiian shirts and leis. It was fifteen years old.
“Maybe I’m just not meant to be a mother,” Tabitha cried.
“Don’t say that! It’s not true!”
“Why not? It’s not as if there’s anything anyone can do to help.” Tabitha sighed. “I have to stop hoping.”
Ingrid gave her friend another tight hug and walked out of the office, her cheeks burning and her heart thumping in her chest because she of all people knew that what Tabitha said wasn’t true. There was someone who could help, someone who could change her life, someone much closer to Tab than she thought. But my hands are tied, Ingrid said to herself. There’s nothing I can do for her. Not without breaking the bonds of the restriction. Not without putting myself in danger as well.
She went back to her station behind the front desk, just another small-town librarian immersed in her daily task. Her sweater was still damp from her friend’s tears. If Ingrid had never resented their situation before, had never chafed against the restriction that was placed upon them before, well. There was always a first time for everything.
chapter three
Home Fires
Old houses had a way of getting under your skin, Joanna Beauchamp knew; not just your skin but into your soul, as well as deep into your pocketbook, defying reason or logic in an ever-elusive quest for perfection. Over the years, the Beauchamp homestead, a stately colonial built in the late 1740s with pretty gables and a saltbox roof located right on the beach, in the older part of town, had been refashioned in many ways: walls torn down, kitchens moved, bedrooms redistributed. It was a house that had weathered many seasons and storms, and its crumbling walls echoed with memories—the massive brick fireplace had kept them warm for countless winters, the multitude of stains on the marble-topped kitchen counters recalled various cozy repasts. The living room floors had been stripped, redone, then stripped again. Now oak, then travertine, currently wood again—a gleaming red cherry. There was a reason old houses were called money pits, white elephants, folly.
Joanna enjoyed putting the house in order on her own. To her, a home renovation was constantly evolving and never quite finished. Plus, she preferred doing it herself; the other week she had personally retiled and grouted the guest bathroom. Today she was tackling the living room. She dipped her roller back into the aluminum tray of paint. The girls would laugh—they teased her for her habit of changing the wall colors several times a year on a whim. One month the living room walls were a dull burgundy, the next a serene blue. Joanna explained to her daughters that living in a static house, one that never changed, was stifling and suffocating, and that changing your environment was even more important than changing your clothes. It was summer, hence the walls should be yellow.