Book 'Em, Eddie

Chapter 1

I propped my elbows on our kitchen island's counter. "Different," I said.

My husband looked at me over the bowl of oatmeal he was sliding in my direction, and his expression was easy to interpret: confusion overlaid with a clutch of anxiety that he hadn't actually been paying attention to what I was saying and that our conversation was about to take a hard turn in a negative direction. His mouth opened and shut a couple of times before he managed to say, "Uh, that's, um . . ."

I quelled a shameful urge to take advantage of the situation and waved my free hand-the other being occupied with eating breakfast-and said, "I thought I'd feel different."

"About?"

His cautiously questioning tone, the verbal equivalent of taking sliding steps on a just-frozen lake, made me take pity on the poor man. "Being married," I said. "It's been, what? Just over a month?"

Rafe glanced at the microwave clock, squinted at the ceiling, then came around to sit on the stool next to me. "Four weeks, two days, and fifteen hours."

Math. Before eight a.m. The man was cruel. "Like I said, just over a month. How long is it going to take to sink in?"

"What? That you're stuck with me for the rest of your life?"

He grinned, the slightly crooked version that always made my heart go mushy. Rafe Niswander, tallish but not so tall that his height overwhelmed my efficient five foot zero, with dark hair almost the same shade as my black (but straight against my annoying curls), had an uncanny knack for making me feel better, even when I wasn't feeling all that bad to begin with.

It was just one of the zillions of reasons that I'd married him, and the fact that it had taken me umpteen years to recognize how much I loved him was something I put down to his regrettable predilection to pretend he was far stupider than he actually was. Mostly to get out of doing something he didn't feel like doing, which might have explained the habit when he was seven, but not so much as an adult, let alone principal of our town's middle school.

"Mrr!"

Rafe and I looked at the source of the sound.

Eddie, the black-and-white tabby cat who'd followed me home one fine spring day three and a half years ago and was now my buddy for life, was sitting on top of his carrier and staring hard in my direction.

"He thinks you're late," Rafe said.

The Chilson District Library bookmobile wasn't scheduled at its first stop for almost two hours. There was plenty of time for me to finish eating, do the dishes, catch up on work e-mail, and even start the pointless task of picking cat hair off my clothes before Eddie and I headed up to the library.

I narrowed my gaze at our furry friend. "Just because you're eager to meet your adoring fans doesn't mean I need to skip my breakfast."

He gazed back, won the staring contest because cats always do, then sighed and curled himself into what might have been the most uncomfortable cat ball ever, right on top of the carrier handle.

"Anyway," I said to Rafe, "it's not that I expected to be a different person or anything now that we're married."

"But, Minnie, you are different."

I squinted at my blurred and distant reflection in the refrigerator, blurred partly by distance and partly because it was my self-appointed chore to clean the stainless steel. "Looks the same to me."

Rafe pointed his chin. "Left hand. Finger between the pinky and middle."

Oh. That. Nodding, I admired the wedding band that had recently been soldered to my engagement ring. "One thing. What else?"

"Have you taken a look at your driver's license?"

In truth, I had two driver's licenses. The normal operator one and a commercial driver's version. The State of Michigan didn't actually require that drivers of the thirty-one-foot-long, twenty-three-thousand-pound (when loaded) bookmobile get a CDL, but it was the library's policy, and since I'd written the policy, I'd had one more thin rectangular piece of plastic in my wallet for the last few years. Both now noted yours truly as Minerva Joy Niswander instead of the Minerva Joy Hamilton that had been my name for more than thirty-five years, and the change hadn't quite sunk in yet.

I nodded again. "Keep forgetting. But all those extra letters are a lot, you know."

"You do realize Niswander is only one more letter than Hamilton."

"It's not the count so much as the shapes. That W is exhausting. And don't get me going on having an R at the end of the name. How am I supposed to deal with that?"

"No idea." Rafe used his spoon to give his oatmeal bowl a final scrape. "But I have great confidence that you'll figure it out. You always do."

He flashed a grin, and two minutes later, after depositing his breakfast dishes in the sink, dropping a kiss onto my upturned face, and giving Eddie a light thump on the head, he was out the door and in his truck, headed up to the middle school. My husband-husband!-was the most popular principal the school had had in years. Popular in that the students actually said hello to him, that the teachers had real conversations with him, and that the school board treated him like an actual human being. All in all, he had a good gig going, and unless something shifted dramatically, I couldn't imagine he'd ever leave.

"Then again," I told Eddie as I buckled the now cat-filled carrier into my car's passenger's seat, "the gig I have going is pretty sweet, too."

He ignored my conversational sally, so I felt obliged to continue to talk as we drove to the library.

"Take Chilson." I twiddled my fingers at the passing buildings. "Oh, wait. You can't see, can you, being inside the carrier and all, so you'll have to trust me that this is the quintessential small resort town."

Our permanent population of about three thousand swelled to more than twice that in the summer, and if you added day-trippers, it went to three times the September through May size.

"Maybe October through April," I murmured. Thanks to the many national and even international Top Ten lists that proclaimed northern lower Michigan as a tourist destination, the shoulder seasons were getting busier and busier. Though this was good news for the region's economy, our recent popularity was also resulting in more traffic, more parking problems, more crime, higher housing prices, and a slight but significant shift in culture. We were no longer the out-of-the-way place no one had ever heard of. We were becoming a place to See and Be Seen In, and not all locals were loving it.

I had divided feelings about the changes. For one thing, I was a transplant myself. I had the classic story of youthful summers spent in Chilson, and as an adult realizing that the quieter life of Up North suited me better than the bright lights and activity of downstate.

Soon after getting my master's in library and information science, I'd had the great good fortune to be offered my dream job. Assistant library director? At the Chilson District Library? What could be better than that?

My aunt Frances, the person I'd stayed with during many long teenaged summers, had offered me an off-season room in her boardinghouse. I got creative for my summer housing and scraped up enough money to buy the cutest little houseboat imaginable. For years I'd moored it on Janay Lake, at Uncle Chip's Marina, and only abandoned that seasonal double move when I got engaged.

We now lived in the large Shingle-style home that Rafe had spent eons restoring from its previous life as multiple tiny and not overly functional apartments. Our house, though not on the water, was a mere stone's throw away from Uncle Chip's and Janay Lake, and so not far away from Lake Michigan itself.

"Anyway," I said to Eddie, "Chilson is my favorite downtown ever. I mean, over there on our right is Benton's, a genuine general store. And it's still owned and run by the Benton family, if you can believe that."

"Mrr."

"I know, right? The candy store is about to reopen, thanks to Corey and Isabella Moncada, and their upstairs apartment is super nice. Plus, Gennell Books & Goods is having a great first year, we have a bakery, a brewpub, a deli, a coffee shop, a jewelry store, the ubiquitous T-shirt and gift shops, a wine store, a toy store, a-"

"Mrr!"

"What kind of architecture? So glad you asked. It's a mix of old and new. The toy store is fieldstone and is one of the oldest buildings downtown. Others are brick, some are clapboard, and the brewpub is corrugated metal." I looked around and saw Older Than Dirt, the eclectic store owned by my friend Pam Fazio that was a mix of antiques and new products. "Pam's is mostly glass, and that one is, um, stucco, I guess." I squinted at the insurance company, wondering at the choice, then shrugged. Tomato, tomahto.

By this time we were through downtown, into the residential part of town, and headed up the hill through tree-lined streets to the library. Only a few leaves still hung on to their trees. The fall had been a spectacular one, with maple trees blazing bright red, orange, and yellow, but most all the leaves were now raked into gutters and hauled away by the city.

With leaves gone, the naked trees revealed what had been hidden for months: homes built more than a hundred years ago, primarily for Chicago-based summer people who steamboated up Lake Michigan with massive trunks and live-in staff. That way of life was long gone, but we'd been seeing a shift back in that direction. Many of those large homes had been purchased by out-of-area companies and turned into vacation rentals. Instead of a single family using the home for the entire summer, there were now new residents every week, sometimes twice a week.

Eddie and I rolled past the houses and I consciously pushed away my concern about Chilson's changing nature. There was little I could do about it, and as Aunt Frances often said, worrying didn't change a thing, so why waste the time and energy?

I drove past the library, pulled into the back parking lot, and stopped next to the bookmobile. "Ready, Eddie? We're here."

"Mrr!"

"In a talkative mood today, I see. So I have that to look forward to," I said. "Well, at least you and Julia will have a great time."

The bookmobile, on the road three to four days a week, was staffed by me and two part-timers. Julia Beaton, one of my favorite people in the world, was a sixty-something native of Chilson. She'd bailed on the small town, left the day after graduating from high school, and headed off to the Big Apple to make her fortune as a model.

That hadn't worked out, so she'd turned to her second choice of acting. That had worked and she had a shelf of Tony Awards and a phone contact list that included actors, directors, choreographers, and producers, some of whose names even I recognized.

Julia had retired from the stage a few years ago and had brought her husband back home with her. Five minutes into retirement, she was bored silly. Part-time work on the bookmobile got her out of the house, supplied us with the best storytime teller in the world, and gave Eddie someone else to talk to.

"Daaah-lings!"

I grinned. Julia put on accents like most people put on socks. On any given day, you never knew who she was going to be, and you never knew how long any given persona was going to last since she could switch personalities in the blink of an eye. Sometimes I knew what character she was quoting, other times I had no clue, and sometimes she made things up. Just now, she'd sounded like Zsa Zsa Gabor, but the last time I'd thought that she'd actually been playing Agatha Christie, so this time I was going to keep my guess to myself.

"Morning," I said cheerfully. "Just so you know, Eddie is in a talkative mood today, and-"

"Mrr!"

"What I was saying. Might work out well for Honey Hollow."

Julia flipped her strawberry blond braid over one shoulder and took Eddie's carrier from me. "Muffin," she said to the carrier's resident, "you and the senior citizens are going to get along like a house afire."

I devoutly hoped so. Today was going to be our first-ever stop at Honey Hollow Adult Foster Care. A few weeks ago, Wanda Panovich, owner and manager of the small facility, had contacted me and asked if I could incorporate them into the schedule. "Sure," I'd said, and after dozens of e-mails, multiple phone calls, and two visits-one by car, one with the bookmobile itself-we were finally ready to bring books, storytelling, and Eddie hair to the twelve residents of Honey Hollow.

"It'll be fine," I muttered to myself as I walked around the bookmobile, doing the regular preflight check. Nothing horrible would happen. And even if something did go wrong, we'd be able to deal with it. In the three and a half years I'd been driving the bookmobile we'd dealt with everything from a flat tire to engine trouble and we'd survived it all. Come out more resilient, even.

And, anyway, what could possibly happen? Honey Hollow was in the middle of Tonedagana County, a quiet area marked by rolling farmland, second-growth forests, and few people. The most likely thing that could go wrong was we'd lose our Internet connection, but I could always set up a Wi-Fi hot spot if I had to.

The second most likely thing was Eddie being more of an Eddie than usual. My workaround for that had started last night, when I'd kept him up way past his bedtime by repeatedly tossing his favorite cat toy under the dining table. I'd hoped to tire him out enough to keep him sleepy throughout the visit. That he was being overly vocal this morning wasn't filling me with confidence that the tactic had worked, so I was thinking about a workaround as I climbed the bookmobile steps and shut the door behind me.