Page 110 of Checking Out the Librarian

Connor

Grandpa was big John Wayne fan. Dad was big Grandpa fan.

Jonathan

You are lying.

Connor sent a link that Jonathan followed to the elementary school website’s picture of Connor D. McMillan, second grade teacher, wearing a dark blue polo shirt and a suitably professional grin.

Jonathan

It’s David; it has to be David.

Connor?

WTF Connor you’re middle name is not DUKE

Connor

Proofread!

Sorry. You’re dating a dcik

Duck

Dick

Duke

Jonathan

Where is the box I can check for all of the above?

That put boxes on his mind. He’d brought the copy paper box home to use as a nest container, but one that was more square-shaped would allow the warming pad to lie flat.

In the back of his closet where the sliding door made things hard to reach, he’d stored three boxes, taped closed from his move. If he emptied the top one, it would hold the warming pad much better than the copy paper box did.

The closet door squeaked as he pushed it all the way to the right, and Kitten mewed in response. The top box was unlabeled, giving him no idea what it contained, so it must have come from his parents’ house in California because he’d marked all his New York boxes. He heaved it to the floor and slid the open side of the scissors through the tape.

Skating memorabilia, of course.

He touched a fingertip to the photo on top of the papers, plaques, magazines, and ribbons. It even looked like an old costume was crammed in here. A different life, a different boy, squeezed into a box.

Breathe, that’s what he always told Connor.

The photo showed the three of them, his mother, his coach, and himself, clustered around an outdoor café table littered with glasses. An ashtray overflowed with Mikhail’s cigarettes. With time and knowledge, he could see that his mother sat too close to his coach, and her head tilted toward Mikhail, not Jonathan.

Jonathan didn’t know how to describe her expression other than replete. She looked like she’d eaten gluttonously, even though the plate in front of her had most of a meal on it.

He couldn’t read the expression on his own face and honestly didn’t recall if that competition had been before or after he’d asked his mother about moving to a different coach to get a different push.

Everyone switched coaches when they plateaued, everyone, but she’d convinced him to stay with Mikhail. The photo was an echo from that time, before he’d realized his mother was choosing her affair, his coach was choosing easy money, and his father was choosing the path of least resistance. Before he’d realized no one had been choosing him.

No, he didn’t think he’d packed this.

His mother must have printed the photo and deliberately placed it on the top of the box, because he wouldn’t have included it even before he discovered their affair. He’d listened to Mikhail’s guidance, respected the man’s skating history, and been afraid of him as a person; he’d never liked him enough to keep a candid photo.

He didn’t even want to lift these things out of the box and definitely didn’t want them loose in his apartment.