Blush - Jamie Brenner Page 0,14

spiral staircase leading to the upper stacks. When was the last time she’d been up there?

While the first floor was filled with only leather-bound tomes ranging from medieval literature to American and British twentieth-century classics, the second floor offered more contemporary reading. Sadie climbed the stairs to the collection of modern fiction: John Updike. John Irving. Philip Roth.

All white men, Sadie couldn’t help but notice. Disinterested, she kept browsing, moving on to a shelf of thick maroon and hunter green volumes engraved with dates on the spines. She opened one dated 1982 and found that it was a photo album, each page a glossy, professional photograph of her mother’s family posing in various locations around the estate: On the veranda. In the vineyard. In front of the family home. Her grandmother was dressed in the vibrant colors and poufy sleeves of the day, her makeup bright, her hair golden blond, a heavy Bulgari necklace at her throat. Grandpa Leonard wore a suit with a wide, paisley-patterned tie. Her mother was in a miniature version of the dress her grandmother wore. Uncle Asher wore a powder-blue button-down shirt. They all smiled stiffly into the camera, page after glossy page.

She pulled out another album, and then another, until they were scattered all around her. Only then did she think about how badly she was procrastinating and that she had to return everything to its proper place. She peered inside to determine how best to fit them back and noticed a seam in the wall between the shelf ledge and the one above it. Multiple seams that formed a square. She bent down lower, bracing herself with one hand on the shelf. Toward one side of the square she saw metal. Was it a small keyhole? She reached inside the shelf space and traced it with her fingertips. Yes, there was a small hole in the center. She pulled her phone out of her pocket, got onto her knees, and shined the light into the space.

It seemed to be a cubbyhole. She pressed on it, then felt around for a latch or way to open it. It was locked.

Did she dare try to unlock it? You’re being ridiculous, she told herself. This is taking procrastination to a whole new level.

She looked around the floor for any small key that might have been dislodged along with the photo albums but didn’t find anything. She sat back on her heels, thinking. What could she use to try to spring the lock? She needed something small and pointed, like a hairpin.

She took the stairs back down to the table where her work was spread out and grabbed one of her plastic mechanical pencils.

So much for the library helping her get some work done.

Back on the upper level, clearing a space among the clutter of photo albums, she knelt back down again and shined the phone light on the lock. She leaned in, again bracing herself with one hand on the shelf ledge. She pressed the pointed feeder tip of the pencil into the lock and jiggled it around.

The cubbyhole door sprung open. It was filled with . . . albums and books.

Well, what had she expected? The crown jewels?

Sadie pulled a leather-bound album onto her lap. This one didn’t have a year engraved on the spine. Opening it, she discovered it didn’t have any photos, either. It was not, in fact, an album but instead some sort of journal filled with lined pages, the first one reading: “Book Club meeting: December 12, 1984.” Sadie recognized her grandmother’s tight cursive script.

It was Delphine’s idea to start the book club. She is the only one who understands how frustrated I feel sometimes . . . so underutilized here in the vineyard I helped build. She said when women gather, there is power . . .

The library door slammed closed, making her jump with guilt. She stood and peered over the balustrade. Her grandfather had walked into the room. He moved slowly, almost trancelike, to the window and stared out.

Sadie cleared her throat.

“Hi, Grandpa,” she called down.

He looked up, startled and clearly displeased. “What are you doing up there, Sadie?”

“I’m working on my thesis.”

His brow creased even more than it usually did. Her grandfather always seemed mildly irritated. He’d been that way for as long as she could remember. She’d been almost afraid of him as a child, but she’d learned that his bark was worse than his bite. He’d been the one to teach her to ride a