Check Me Out by Becca Wilhite

Author:Becca Wilhite
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Shadow Mountain Publishing
Published: 2017-11-24T16:00:00+00:00

He replied instantly.

I put my phone away.

Wrong. Wrong wrong wrong. I should have done every single thing differently.

Big surprise.

Chapter 17

The latest Monthly Anonymous Donor check came with this typewritten note:

I’m pleased to see the library’s efforts to work both with and around the system. Keep up the good fund-raising work. And maybe check out Dr. Howard Lampoor’s book Effective Moneymaking—it might give your team some ideas.

Bossy. I laughed. And ordered the book.

Pulling boxes of local history from the basement to the periodicals room had become something of a routine for me. I was getting adept at grabbing a box, running things through the scanner for a couple of hours at a time, and clearing things up when I was done. Occasionally even clearing up before I was done, on the rare chance that someone would come in and want to use the room.

One afternoon, I sat in a patch of sunlight coming in through a long and narrow window and sorted piles of handwritten letters into two scientifically ordered stacks: readable and totally unreadable. The unreadable pile grew faster than the other one.

One bundle of letters was tied with a faded ribbon. When I untied it, I discovered it had once been pink, but now it was mostly dust-brown. The letters were written to someone named Evelyn (sometimes Evie) from someone named Walter (sometimes Walt). Walt(er) had lovely handwriting, and for about one minute, I regretted the impersonal device I used to communicate with men. I unfolded the beautiful envelopes to discover gentlemanly words of affection and tenderness. Evelyn had saved all these words. Cherished them. I would have cherished them, too. Whoever cherished a text message? Then I remembered that I was completely unwilling to live without the internet and decided that I’d be fine without handwritten letters.

But Walter was a charmer. I read through the one-sided conversations and wondered if he’d kept all her letters. Where were those letters now? The envelopes didn’t have addresses written on the fronts—at least nothing still readable—but the letters inside held clues that pointed to pieces of my town that had been sites of intrigue and romance in 1930. Their story unfolded one envelope at a time, and before long, I realized that Evelyn lived in the Greenwood house. Evelyn Greenwood. I wished for a photo, but I was unwilling to set down the letters to go digging for one.

In one letter, Walter mentioned “sparking” behind Evelyn’s parents’ house. Sparking! Like antique making out. He said he was sure that the Simmons Spinsters were watching from the second floor of the tall house next door.

The tall house next door to the Greenwood place? That was my library. I was inside that very house this very minute. I felt shivers run through my whole self. I wanted to know who the Simmons Spinsters were. Old sisters? Here? Had a pair of old ladies watched Walt and Evie sparking from the picture book window?

It became easy to understand how someone could get intricately involved with the history of strangers’ lives.

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