Then, out of nowhere and to no one in particular, she says, “Do you guys remember when the stained glass was put in the library window?”
“What, all the people reading books?” says Zach.
“Yeah.”
“Hasn’t that always been there?”
“No, no, remember it used to be a house?” says Tom.
“What kind of house?”
“For rich people.”
“Obviously.”
“Remember when there used to be money in Bourne?”
“No.”
They’re a chorus of memory, talking too fast for me to keep track from the corner of who’s saying what, overlapping and talking on top of one another, remembering together, misremembering together, correcting, hole plugging, tall-tale-ing. It’s not often these guys get to remember Bourne before. It’s not often they get to revel in recollection: of their childhoods, growing up, being teenagers then young adults, full of promise and in love and having children of their own, their whole lives in front of them, hope and dreams and all that. It’s another cruelty you never think of, almost incidental it’s so far down the list, but the bad memories paper over the good until the good ones are gone or so buried they’re forgotten. Today’s Bourne is less upsetting if you don’t remember the idyllic Bourne that used to be. I imagine once you’re an adult your childhood seems remote no matter where you live, but when your life and that of everyone you know blows apart, everything before isn’t remote. It’s gone.
“Remember when the library was just a room in the church basement?” says Tom.
“There was also the one at Bourne High”—Hobart laughs—“if fifty-year-old encyclopedias met your research needs.”
“Donating a library is serious philanthropy,” Frank says. “I mean, I love you guys, but I’m still not donating my home to you. ’Course mine wouldn’t hold a library.” Frank lives in a storage room above the bar. I live in a house which is nowhere near big enough, though it is, in fact, a library, but I take his meaning.
“Point is, it was a home,” Nora says. “A family residence. So they must have put the stained glass in sometime later.”
“How do you figure?” Hobart says.
“Because a family home doesn’t have a wall of stained glass on the front. And even if it did, it wouldn’t be of people reading.”
“Is that what they’re doing?”
“What do you think they’re doing? They’re all holding books.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t realize they were reading them.”
“What else do you do with books?”
“I dunno. Even the mountain lion has one.”
“Mountain lion?”
“Man, that’s a dog.”
“It’s not a dog.”
“It’s a dog.”
“Fine, it’s a dog. Mountain lion, dog, either way, it can’t read.”
They’re so happy reminiscing. They’re so happy debating something that couldn’t matter less. They feel forgiven maybe, or their sins at least forgotten. Their chatter makes a soft hum, and I might be falling asleep when the door opens and Omar comes in.
Nora takes him in, takes a deep breath. “Omar. You’ll be able to answer this question.”
For a beat, a look of pure gratitude sweeps his face—something changed when he told her he signed on to the lawsuit, and it’s stayed changed—then he wrestles his expression back to blasé, everyday; he’s just a guy in his hometown bar, shooting the shit with the bartender.
She pours him a beer. “Do you remember when they put the stained-glass window in the library?”
He thinks about it. “Was it right when they converted it or later?”
“None of us can remember.”
“Me neither.” He’s trying to think but having trouble concentrating because he’s so happy she’s talking kindly to him. “Must have been expensive.”
“Must have been,” Frank agrees.
“So I bet it was part of the original agreement.”
“What original agreement?” Nora asks.
“I don’t know the details—it was before my time—but I think the machinations were pretty complex. A lot of money changed hands, and I can’t imagine it was all on the up-and-up.”
“You think someone was bribed with a stained-glass mountain lion?” This is beyond Hobart’s imagining.
“It’s a dog!”
“I think a stained-glass mural like that cannot have been cheap and is not Bourne’s usual … aesthetic,” Omar says.
“Agreed.” Zach signals Nora for another.
“So I wonder if it wasn’t part of the terms to begin with, whatever they were.”
“That’s real weird,” says Tom.
Omar shrugs. “So is local government. You know who you should ask, though?”
“Who?”
“Apple Templeton.”
Nora takes in a hard breath and holds it.
“Apple Templeton?” Frank has obviously never heard this name in his life. It’s not a huge surprise Apple hasn’t made her way in here.
“Nathan Templeton’s wife,” Omar explains.
“Why?” Nora’s still holding her breath.
“Before it was a library, it was her family home.”
Her family home? My mother and I exchange a confused glance.
“How?” Nora asks. She exhales finally but can’t seem to manage the inhale. Then she revises her question backward a step. “Who?”
“Her family is the Groves,” Omar says.
The Groves? Whose name is on the bridge over the ravine? And half the fancy graves in the cemetery?
“No.” Nora can’t make this make sense. Me neither.
“Yup. The library’s the old Grove place.” Omar makes his voice sound like the house might be haunted. He’s joking, but Apple said the same and she wasn’t. This must be what she meant, though. Not ghosts, at least not literal ones. Haunted by memories and old relatives and the past, her family’s history and legacy. That makes sense now, but nothing else about this does. Apple said she met Nathan in Boston. It must have been years before the Templetons darkened our doors, and the Groves have nothing to do with Belsum.
“They’ve been gone a long time,” says Frank.
“Well, right, she never lived here,” Omar says, “but her grandparents did, her parents for a while maybe before she was born, an uncle, some stray aunts and cousins I think. You should wait a couple days before you ask her, though.”
“Why?” The crease between Nora’s eyes could grasp a spoon.
“She came by my office this morning. She was pretty worked up.”
“What did she want?”
“Boxes she thought I might have. Said they weren’t in the library attic so I must have them like there’s a law of physics that says anything not in the library is with me. She wasn’t making sense. Wouldn’t tell me what was supposed to be in the boxes, so how am I supposed to help her find them? Ranted on and on about somebody’s father and somebody’s family. I couldn’t follow it, but honestly, I wasn’t trying that hard.” Tom grins and clinks glasses with him. “I finally turned her loose on the filing cabinets and let her see if she could find whatever she was looking for, but I wanted to say, ‘Ma’am, do we seem like the kind of town that keeps cataloged archives?’” A warm laugh from everyone. “I haven’t had a secretary in ten years. Some stuff got thrown away long ago. Some was in the library but—”