I’d seen her before, the woman in the doorway. That was my first thought. In an I LOVE HASTINGS ROCK sweatshirt with matching sweatpants, and with her graying bob, she could have passed at first glance for one of the mall walker brigade. But then the other details stood out: the mud staining one leg and both sneakers; the twig snarled in her hair; the extremely well-defined biceps. And then, of course, there was the gun.
She pointed it at the sheriff and said, “Drop your weapon.”
Moving slowly, Sheriff Acosta lifted her gun out of its holster and lowered it to the floor. Then she displayed her hands in an open, easy way. After a moment, she said, “You must be Wanda.”
Wanda made a peremptory gesture with the gun. “Put the book on the table. The rest of you, shuffle over there. Everyone plays nice, and we’ll all get out of this just fine.”
“There are a lot of people looking for you right now,” the sheriff said. “Why not make your life easier? Put down that gun, and we can talk about this.”
“Looking for me?” The sneer showed in her voice, if not her face. “Why? You heard him—the librarian killed George.”
“Library assistant,” Mrs. Shufflebottom said primly. “He isnota librarian.”
With quiet calm, the sheriff said, “If that’s true, then you don’t have anything to worry about. Put down the gun—”
Her laugh sounded like steel burrs. “Nice try.” She made that gesture with the gun again. “I said everybody move, so move.”
We started to shift toward the back of the room, and as we retreated, Wanda advanced. When she reached the diary, she cast me a sharp smile. “I know George thought he was being smart, sending me after you like an idiot while he got the diary for himself. But he wasn’t entirely wrong, was he? Here I am, and here you are, and here’s the diary.” Her smile broadened. “Sorry about the house.”
As she reached for the diary, her hand holding the gun drifted down—a kind of automatic balancing as she bent and stretched.
My dad brushed back his corduroy jacket.
“Dad!” I shouted. “No!”
But it was too late. My dad was already drawing his gun. Alerted by my cry, Wanda reared back. Her gaze swept the room and settled on my dad, and the gun in her hand barked. Then my dad fired—and kept firing. He must have fired ten cartridges,squeezing off each shot without slowing down. Wanda, for her part, threw herself on the floor, her own gun forgotten.
When my dad’s slide locked open and he was out of cartridges, my ears were ringing from the gunfire. A faint hint of gun smoke hung in the air, the taste acrid and invasive. Wanda got to her feet. She patted herself down, and she seemed as surprised as any of us that she was uninjured. I checked my mom and dad. They were fine too.
“Hold on,” I said, “you missed every single time?”
“My shooting stance—” my dad began.
Wanda grabbed the diary and sprinted toward the exit. As she passed through the door, someone wheeled a book truck into her path. Wanda crashed into it, flipped over the top, and landed on her back. A moment later, Bobby appeared in the doorway, and his frantic gaze found me first.
“I’m okay,” I said. I breathed in the tang of gunpowder. I breathed out. I realized my legs were shaking, but I managed a smile for Bobby. “We’re okay.”
Chapter 19
It was a warm summer afternoon. The wind had died down for the time being, and on the horizon, out past the cotton-ball clouds glued to the sky, the sun was bright. I was sweating as we carried the last of my parents’ things out to the RV.
Bobby, on the other hand, wasn’t sweating. Bobby looked like he carried luggage and boxes of books and other heavy things all the time. Because it was such a nice day, he wasn’t wearing anything but shorts and a gray tank, and twice now, I’d almost fallen on the stairs. The second time, Indira had cleared her throat—pointedly.
After we’d stacked the last box of “research” books in the RV, my mom said, “There, that wasn’t so hard, was it?”
“Easy for you to say,” I said. “You weren’t the one carrying the boxes.”
“How far are you driving today?” Bobby asked. “Aren’t you getting kind of a late start?”
“Only to Portland.” My mom shooed us out of the RV and followed us onto Hemlock House’s drive. “We’ll have a nice dinner with friends and hit the road early.”
“That sounds nice,” Bobby said.
“Bobby,” my dad called. He was standing on Hemlock House’s lawn, and—because he was a normal dad and we were a normal family—he had a gun in his hand. “Do you have time to give me some quick pointers?”
“No,” I said. “He doesn’t.”
Bobby laughed quietly, kissed my temple, and jogged over to my dad.
