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“The council will vote,” she says, and then she stops. She’s looking at her paper, and she’s crying too hard to read it.

From the alphabet rug, Ivy Pruett says, at full volume, “Turn the page!”

The whole room cracks up. Fran laughs and wipes her face with the back of her hand. Then she turns the page. The council votes five to nothing to take the building from the county and keep the library open, with the program’s archive in it and the condition that it stays free to all. Fran bangs the gavel when the vote is done.

Carol Hayes closes her folder. “The letter will follow,” she says to me. Then, more quietly, “Every woman says the same thing about that pamphlet.”

By nine, the chairs are back in the grange basement, and the reading room is mine again.

Fran hugged me on the steps. She has never done that in my life. Now the lamps are on at the tables, and the alphabet rug is crooked. I straighten it because I need something to do with my hands.

Yorrel is standing by the card catalog. It has sixty small drawers with brass pulls, and nobody has bothered opening them since the library got computers.

“Come here,” he says.

I raise an eyebrow and stand next to him.

“Open the drawer with the K.”

I slide it out. The drawer is empty except for one card standing up at the front.

It’s an old catalog card with ruled lines. It says PAIGE SUTTON. The letters lean every which way. Some of them are backward, and the G is huge.

I taught him every one of those letters. It’s the first thing he has ever written on paper, and it’s my name. This is the third gift. The pamphlet says it’s something made for her alone, and for once the pamphlet got it right.

“Why drawer K?” I ask.

“For kept.”

I stand there with the drawer open. For the third time in two days, I have nothing to say. I’m not going to make a habit of it. I take the card out and stare at it for a moment before I put it back and slide the drawer shut.

“That’s where it goes.”

“Yes.”

“When did you make it?”

“On Saturday. Sadie helped with the G.”

I laugh, and the mark goes warm. He’s happy with himself, and just as happy with me. I put my hand over the mark, and he feels that too.

“Kel’mora,” I say.

He doesn’t correct me, so I must have gotten it right on the first try.

Epilogue

The first of January. Venn’s Crossing.

Yorrel lives at my place now. Carol sent a form for that too. I found out he hums in the shower. The water glass on my nightstand rings every morning at six, and that’s my alarm now. During breakfast, he reads the cereal box out loud. He gets about half the words, and he makes up the rest. I love him more for it. When we bought the bigger bed, Brannok helped us get it home, and he had to take the bedroom door off to get it in. Worth it.

The library is open on Mondays again. I wrote the new hours on the sign by the door with a marker. We should get a new professional sign, but I know we probably won’t.

The library belongs to the town now, and the archive belongs to the program. The librarian is paid and has a pension. She’s me.

Story hour on Thursdays is up to seven kids and two dogs. Sadie talks a little now, to some people. When I stop where I always stop, she’s the first one to yell.

We didn’t go to Arizona for Christmas because I was busy with the library changes. My mother calls this morning instead of waiting for Sunday. She knows about the archive. Birdie told Doris, and Doris told her. She asks about Portland anyway, because that’s what she does. I don’t say I’ll think about it. I say no. I say I’m claimed, I like it here, and the orc is sitting right next to me. She asks if he can hear her. He can. My father says, “Good.” It’s the first thing he’s said on a call in years.