The Cherry Cola Book Club - By Ashton Lee Page 0,6

second.”

“Shoot!”

“That book club she said she belonged to,” Maura Beth explained. “I need to pick her brain about that. Maybe we could get something like that going here in Cherico. You know, get people into the library to review books and socialize with each other. Maybe that’s the type of gimmick you were talking about earlier that I could use to put the library back on the map.”

Periwinkle looked particularly thoughtful and then nodded. “Couldn’t hurt. I think you need to get on it right away, though.”

“I knew I did the right thing coming in here to talk things over with you,” Maura Beth added. “That shoulder of yours has come in handy quite a few times over the past several years.”

Periwinkle reached across and patted her hand affectionately. “Hey, what are girlfriends for?”

2

Turn That Page

The Cherico Library wasn’t much to look at, and it was even harder to find. Tucked away on a little-used side street at the sinister-sounding address of 12 Shadow Alley, it had originally been a corrugated iron, farm implement warehouse seventy-something years ago. A decade later, a few wealthy matrons who decided it was time to improve the town had come up with the idea of starting a library and had even donated some of their inherited money to get one going. The City Council back then had been as indifferent as the current one was, however, and had done as little as possible in converting the warehouse into a suitable facility. The unproven rumor was that the lion’s share of the funds had been cleverly pocketed by a couple of the politicians, including Durden Sparks’s father. It seemed that Cherico had never suffered from an excess of integrity.

A few unimpressive improvements had followed over the years, consisting chiefly of tacking a couple of flimsy white columns onto a pedestrian portico and creating a cramped meeting room inside. There was no loading dock—just a back door—no off-street parking, and the building contained only a stingy 3,500 square feet of space for the librarian’s office and shelving the entire collection. Although the fiction was more current, the nonfiction needed weeding for the more topical issues—but Maura Beth barely had enough of a budget to keep the patrons in best sellers, newspapers, and periodicals. It even made her feel guilty to endorse her own paycheck, which was far from what anyone would have called generous.

Oh, sure, it was enough for her to shop for groceries at The Cherico Market, pay the apartment rental, manage the note on her little Prius, and get her hair curled the way she liked at Cherico Tresses. But putting anything aside for the future—such as for a wedding, provided she could ever meet the right guy—was completely out of the question; and she was genuinely embarrassed by what was left in the coffers to pay the two circulation desk clerks that alternated workdays.

“I feel like a missionary in a foreign land sometimes,” Maura Beth had confessed to Periwinkle shortly after they had first met. “I’m bound and determined to make everyone here in Cherico understand what a library is for and that they need to take advantage of it. Of course, I’m the first to admit that I got this job straight out of library school—right after my big booster shot of idealism that came with my diploma.”

“Don’t ever lose that kind of dedication, honey,” Periwinkle had advised her back then. “No matter what happens. Because things’ll bear down on ya both sooner and later. I speak from experience.”

One week after the latest disheartening session with the City Council—another bona-fide example of “things bearing down”—Maura Beth was leaning back in her office chair and reflecting upon that memorable conversation with Periwinkle nearly six years earlier. Momentarily, Renette Posey, her Monday, Wednesday, and Friday front desk clerk, knocked on her door and popped her head in.

“There’s a Mrs. Connie McShay here to see you. I just finished fixing her up with a library card,” she said in the disarmingly sweet and girlish voice that had become her trademark. It was the main reason Maura Beth had hired the inexperienced eighteen-year-old permanently. She was, in fact, surprisingly good with the public—diplomatic beyond her years, even—and the library needed all the help it could get.

Maura Beth was hardly able to restrain herself, snapping to attention. “Yes! Show her in!” She’d been anticipating this meeting for the last five days, hoping that it would turn out to be the kickoff for holding on to her job