"Thank you," he says. "For protecting her."
I lift my gaze. He's looking at me. Not at the shelves, not at Lily's empty chair by the window. At me. And his face is different—softer, the distance gone, his eyes holding mine like he forgot to look away.
"She doesn't need protecting. She needs to know the adults around her aren't going to look the other way."
He adjusts his glasses and smiles at me.
My hands grip the edge of the desk. I don't know what to do with him looking at me like that. Like I'm not just Lily's librarian.
"I should get Lily," he says. His voice comes out rougher than usual. "She's in the parking lot. Holly let her take some shots outside."
"Oh, I almost forgot—Garrett dropped off a gift for Lily. He carved her a bookend."
"Garrett made her a bookend?"
"Yes, two horses, carved out of walnut."
He exhales through his nose. "That man." He taps the paperback against his palm. "See you Saturday, Miss Frost."
"See you then, Mr. Rivers."
He ducks through the door. I stand behind the desk and press my palms flat against the wood and breathe.
The library closes at five. I do the walkthrough. Lights, locks, thermostat, returns bin. On my way out I stop at the community board by the front entrance to check the flyers I pinned last week.
New ones sit on top of mine. Glossy stock. The Humans First logo in the corner, the H and F intertwined, clean and corporate, designed to look reasonable.
CONCERNED ABOUT YOUR CHILDREN'S SAFETY?
The first paragraph talks about "ensuring appropriate environments" and "community-led oversight of youth programming." No slurs. No threats. Just the same bigotry in nicer fonts, printed on cardstock that cost more than my monthly supply budget.
I tear them down. All four copies. Fold them in half and drop them in the recycling bin by the door. Then I pull some of Holly's photographs from the display inside—kids with cameras from last month's workshop, the harbor in afternoon light, Lily's shot of the library at dusk—and pin them to the board where the flyers hung.
The board looks better this way.
I drive home. The apartment is exactly how I left it this morning. Clean counters, sorted mail, books on every surface. Ibuilt this life on purpose after Derek left. Five years of coming home to quiet, and I liked it until tonight.
Tonight it feels empty.
Colt's voice replays on a loop. Lily's mother would have done the same thing. He compared me to his dead wife. Not to replace her. Because he thought I'd have done what she did. My chest aches, I press my hand against it but it doesn't help.
I pick up my phone. Open my contacts. Scroll past the As and the Bs and find the Cs, where Colt Rivers sits in my phone under the contact I created from Lily's emergency form back in September. I've had his number for months. I've opened this contact four times and closed it five.
I type:Lily left her notebook at the library. Want me to hold it at the desk for her, or do you want to swing by and grab it?
The notebook is in Lily's backpack. I watched her zip it in there two hours ago. This is a lie, a small and deliberate one, the kind of fiction I tell myself I'm above because I deal in facts and organized systems. But I need a reason to see him that isn't the real reason. I need one thread I can hold.
My thumb hits send before I can talk myself out of it.
The phone sits on the counter. The apartment stays quiet. I stare at the screen until it dims and then at the dark glass reflecting my kitchen back to me, and I wonder when I became a woman who invents excuses to text a man she's spent half a year pretending she doesn't want.
I think I've always been her. I just didn't have anyone worth making up excuses for.
Chapter 4
Colt
Lily has taken over the kitchen table. Library books in overlapping stacks, her notebook open to a color-coded timeline, index cards pinned under her elbow with locations and dates she's pulled from the internet. She's building a photo essay on Nightfall Cove for her spring break project, and she's treating it like a dissertation.
