Ghosts & Gravity by Jennifer Locklear

Author:Jennifer Locklear
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Locklear Books
Published: 2022-08-01T00:00:00+00:00

“Learning does not make one learned; there are those who have knowledge and those who have understanding. The first requires memory and the second, philosophy.”

She slowly closed the book and placed it on the table. “Learning does not make one learned…” Elizabeth had always thought so. In spite of her education, she felt she had miles to go before understanding people or cultures or any of the fundamentals of humanity, or even herself. She had tried to gain on those miles by moving from Pennsylvania to Texas and then New York, but she still had some distance in front of her.

Nonna had known so much about almost everything in spite of only having a sixth-grade education. She’d been a skilled seamstress for most of her life. Nonno, Elizabeth’s grandfather, had been a plumber. Each was brilliant in what they knew about life, love, and family. Nonna in particular was a born philosopher with an inextinguishable love for people that Elizabeth deeply admired but despaired of attaining. She wished she’d asked her grandmother how she’d lived for so long in New York without becoming cynical.

Elizabeth took The Count of Monte Cristo, its colorful cover barely protected by yellowed cellophane, and returned it to its proper place on the shelf. She folded the paper, noted the page again, and wondered who’d stuck it in the book and wrote the title on the bulletin board. Those words were important enough to someone to quote. Why choose those lines out of millions of books? What was happening in their life that inspired them to stick an anonymous bookmark inside a classic novel? Who did they want to see it?

A plot like this could make a great story. Elizabeth’s mind raced with possibilities. The murder of a prominent beloved citizen remains unsolved. A detective who won’t let the case get cold works on it relentlessly. He has the victim’s small notebook but the sole entry is frustratingly meaningless. The detective finally figures out that the words are anagrams. He goes to the library where a dedicated and very smart research librarian figures it out, it’s a book! She finds it in the library’s archives. They fall in love.

She sighed heavily, the soft sound fading below the room’s curved arches and high ceiling. If she ever thought she’d find love in the stacks, she was gradually seeing how mistaken she was. It seemed the available men who came here were either eighty years old and complaining that no one knew how to write any more, or twenty-year-olds who checked out D. H. Lawrence and claimed they only read his books for the literature.

Anyone who caught Elizabeth’s eye didn’t seem interested in a woman of average height and average weight with long dark hair that wasn’t curly enough to be radical or straight enough to be cool. She knew her eyes were her best feature; they were a striking blue, almost as dark as the blue in the American flag. Few seemed to notice.

She tapped her fingers against her right leg, lost in thought, as she headed back to her desk.

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