Page 5 of Library or Lattes?

Dear Ms. Willa Taylor,

I hope this email finds you well during what must be a difficult time. My name is Fred Ray, and I am the attorney handling the estate of your late aunt, Ms. Lisa May Vaughn.

I am writing to inform you that you have been named as a beneficiary in your aunt’s Last Will and Testament. You are to be the beneficiary of the sum of $25,000, along with a personal letter from your aunt, which I will forward to the address we have for you on file.

I will flag here that there is a specific condition attached to this bequest. In your aunt’s own words, “This money is to be used for ‘seeing the world beyond Oak Falls.’ “

I understand that this is unusual, but your aunt was quite insistent. She believed strongly in the transformative power of travel and wanted to give you this gift, as she makes quite clear in her letter.

Please contact my office at your earliest convenience to arrange a time to discuss the details and complete the necessary paperwork. My condolences for your loss.

Sincerely,

Fred Ray, Esq.

Ray & Black Associates

I stared at the email. Was this a joke? I mean, Aunt Lisa and I hadn’t been close. Pop and I had gone to the funeral, not known anyone there, and slipped away quietly.

I closed the email and shook my head, swiping to Lennie’s messages instead. Of course it had to be a scam …

I let the email stay in my head for a few moments, the same way it did when Pop and I would talk about our “winnings” after we’d just played the lottery. Imagine! Twenty-five thousand dollars to leave Oak Falls? I mean, traveling the world was the kind of thing dreams were made of. The kind of dreams I’d secretly always had.

But living somewhere like Oak Falls … wasn’t that a different kind of dream?

This was it. The moment everything changed. Or the moment everything stayed the same. Accept the money … or don’t. Two different futures. Two different lives. Two different versions of me.

Which one did I want to be?

2 Library

I’D ARRANGED TO MEET LENNIE in the town square for pizza after my haircut. Yeah, I’d decided to go for it. I mean, after a lot of discussion with Lennie, Krista, and Avery, because I had the kind of friends who liked to be seriously involved in big decisions. I couldn’t wait to show them now! I’d asked Mindy to go even shorter than the picture I’d shown her, so now my hair sat just under my chin instead of halfway down my back. I hadn’t had hair this short since second grade, and I loved it.

I put up my hood so I could do a big reveal when I saw Lennie, and I wove down Main Street, trying to avoid large groups of people. It was weird, having so many visitors in Oak Falls these days. Sure, it was great for the local businesses, but I was so used to walking down the street and knowing everyone that now it almost felt like I was the tourist here.

Sometimes I wondered what it would be like to be the one passing through. To see new places, to meet new people, to be somewhere nobody knew my name. Don’t get me wrong, I loved Oak Falls, but sometimes I daydreamed about living somewhere with more than two restaurants and more than one coffee shop to choose from. Somewhere I could see a movie the week it came out, not three months later …

“Hey, Willa!” There she was, surrounded by a small crowd on the edge of the square. Lennie was waving me over, and I recognized that her grin was far too big to be real. My reveal would have to wait.

The woman next to her spoke urgently. “Hello, do you live here too? Your friend … she tell us that Oak Falls is four hours away, right back down the highway?” She had a European accent. German? How awesome that they’d come all the way from Europe. I was about to jump in and ask some questions about where they were from when Lennie spoke again.

“Could be even farther than that,” Lennie said, shaking her head sympathetically. “I’m so sorry you’ve come all this way, ma’am.”

The poor woman looked so upset. I was about to have mercy on her when a man in the group stepped toward us.

“Maybe we could stay here? It looks like a nice town, what is it called?” he asked, clearly hoping for some advice.

Lennie pushed in front of me with a fierce stare. “Lenniville …” she said, deadpan. “But you wouldn’t want to stay here. Do you see that building over there?” Lennie pointed at the doctor’s office. She cupped her hand over her mouth. “That’s the murder house …”

The group gasped.

“Murder … house?”

Lennie nodded. “The Peterson murders—1994,” she said solemnly. “They never found the …”

I elbowed her and she coughed.

Then she pushed me forward. “This is Mary. Mary Peterson, if you have any questions. But she doesn’t talk much, not since she found out what really happened … the hood … you can see … she doesn’t like to be recognized.” Nobody knew how to react.