Always Right (16 page)

“Turn it into….” I trailed off, bracing myself for the hit.

“Yes!” Evelyn exclaimed, with the enthusiasm of a parent explaining the joys of drilling and filling cavities. “We’ll wear
costumes
!”

“You have got to be kidding,” I said before I could stop myself. I felt guilty, though, when Evelyn’s face dropped. “Costumes?” I glanced toward Jason’s now-empty table. What sort of Imaginary Boyfriend would be attracted to a woman in hoops, a bodice, and a mob cap?

“The coffee bar just isn’t enough, Jane. We still don’t have the foot traffic that the board wants. Dr. Bishop has already made arrangements with the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation; they have some extra stock just sitting in a warehouse. The costumes will arrive by next Monday. You’ll see. This will be so much fun!”

Fun. Evelyn might look forward to new clothes. She could set aside that boxy pink and brown suit that was designed for a woman two decades younger. Me, though? I’d feel like I was dressing up for Halloween, every day of my working life. Where was that magic wand when I needed it?

I settled on a logical argument: “Evelyn, we’re supposed to support serious scholarship!”

“And we do. We will. But there’s nothing that says we have to be sticks in the mud while we’re doing it. After all, we don’t want anyone to think of us as ‘Marian the Librarian,’ do we? We don’t want to be boring and fussy and….” She trailed off, searching for a suitably terrible word.

I swallowed hard and realized that the worst bit of news remained untold. After all, the costumes had been the
good
news. I braved her gaze. “And the bad news?”

Evelyn answered in the grave tone of a physician diagnosing a fatal disease. “The board discussed salaries.”

No one became a librarian because they wanted to be rich. And absolutely no one took a job at a small private library—a library that had to dress its librarians in eighteenth-century embroidered silk just to get patrons through the door!—because they thought they’d retire early. I’d originally come to the Peabridge on an internship while I was studying to get my masters’ degree, and I’d stayed because I liked the people—Evelyn, the rest of the staff. The patrons. I wasn’t expecting to become a millionaire.

Still, I wasn’t prepared for Evelyn’s next words. “We’re going to have to cut your pay by twenty-five percent.” She rushed on. “I argued against it. I really did. But you know that there are still board members who don’t think that we need a reference librarian at all, that we only need an archivist.”

I couldn’t say anything.

I’d already reduced my vacation budget to a one-week car trip to the beach. I brought my lunch every day (or snuck a gigantissimo latte from the bar). Breakfast was a Pop-tart when I bothered at all.

Well, at least I wouldn’t need to waste money on a professional work wardrobe any more. But twenty-five percent? Not possible. Not even in my worst nightmares.

“Rent,” I croaked. “If you take a quarter of my pay, I can’t pay my rent. I’ll be out on the street, Evelyn. I’ll be living beneath Key Bridge, pushing a shopping cart to the library’s front door every morning.”

“Now, Jane,” Evelyn said, moderating her tone as if she were talking a jumper down from the top of the Washington Monument. “I told the board that twenty-five percent was too much, that we couldn’t do that to the staff. We especially couldn’t do that to you—I know that you’re already relatively underpaid, even in our field.”

Well, it was nice to hear her say that, at least. In fact, she actually looked pleased as she prepared to make her grand announcement. “Jane, I came up with something better. I’m offering you a
home
. Free of charge, for as long as you work at the Peabridge.”

“A home?” I blinked and wondered if I’d slipped into some alternate universe. I resisted the urge to glance around for hidden cameras, for some signal that this was a wacky new reality show.

“It’s perfect!” Evelyn raised her chins from her chocolate-colored blouse and gave me a broad smile. “You’ll continue to work for us, we’ll make the salary cut, but you’ll live in the guest house, in the garden out back!”

The guest house. What guest house? The Peabridge gardens were extensive, but there was no guest house. There was a gazebo, and a pagoda, and an obelisk, and…. Then it hit me, like an icepick to my belly.

“Do you mean the old caretaker’s shed?”

“Shed?” Evelyn’s laugh was a bit forced. “You’ve obviously never been in there. It’s practically a mansion!”

Sure. In someone’s sick nightmare. Every time I walked by the ramshackle building, it gave me the creeps: The hair on the back of my neck literally stood on end, and the walls seemed to create their own clammy drafts. “Evelyn, I can’t live in a dusty tool shed.”

“It’s not a tool shed! It used to be home for a gardening professional, for a trained specialist in colonial horticulture! It has a kitchen. And a separate bedroom.”

“And a toilet? Is there even running water out there? Electricity?”

“Of course! Do you think that we’re barbarians?”

I stared down at my black slacks and my favorite silk blouse, cut to show off my, alas, minimal décolletage. The outfit was my “Monday best,” chosen to lure Jason’s attention right at the start of the week. This would be the last time I’d wear it to work. Starting next week, I’d be dressed like Martha Washington.

Barbarians? No, but I thought the Peabridge board was entirely out of line with reality.

What else was I going to do, though? Move back in with Gran? Park myself on the floor of Melissa’s one-room apartment? How was I ever going to move Jason from the Imaginary Boyfriend category to the Real, if I lived in a cardboard box under Key Bridge? If I was arrested for defaulting on my student loans?

“Rent free?” I asked.

“Rent free.”

“Utilities included?”

“Utilities included.”

I
was
tired of fighting with my landlord to fix the leaky ceiling in my current apartment. Thieves had broken in twice in the past year (not that I had anything worth stealing). My commute by public transportation was nearly an hour, each morning and each afternoon.

A one-minute commute.

I could sleep until 8:00 and still make it to work on time. I could dash home during the day and whip up a quick lunch. I could offer to help Jason with a research project, stay up late working beside him at my kitchen table, then suavely offer him a nightcap.

I could have it all—a
real
boyfriend, a successful library job, a home of my own, Scott Randall and missing magic wand be damned. I held out my hand, smothering my flash of embarrassment when I saw my chewed fingernails. Hmmm… Another goal, breaking that lifetime habit. “Done,” I said.

Evelyn’s fingers were cool on mine, and her smile was encouraging. “Done.” She smiled.

There. My job was secure. I had a new home. I was going to be spared wear and tear on my admittedly-limited wardrobe.

Then why did it seem as if I was about to tumble headlong over a precipice?

~~~

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