The Library of Shadows

Este was eight the first time her dad took her to the library.

Her birthday was firmly situated in July, at the peak of summer’s heat, and she remembered the way the library’s air conditioner swept stale breezes through the stacks, winding around her legs like snakes that made her shiver. The bespectacled woman at the circulation desk waved to them as they walked in. They filled out sheet after sheet of paperwork, and in turn, the clerk slid a thin, green library card across the counter. Este had been barely tall enough to reach.

That afternoon, they left with a pile of paperback chapter books tucked neatly into the back of a blue wagon. Este knew how libraries worked: the books weren’t hers forever, only for two weeks, and that was enough. She would read them over and over until she had nearly memorized the pattern of ink on the pages, so that even when they were back on the shelves where they belonged, she could carry a piece of their stories with her.

Her dad was the one who introduced her to that world, and she could still see the day in a grainy, sun-bleached film photo.

Este trudged toward her dorm room as a tempest roared with bough-breaking gusts and downpours like down comforters, thick and enveloping. Biting rain soaked her straight to the bone marrow. Her teeth clattered, waist drummed with pain, and shoulders sagged in relief as she thrust into her Vespertine suite.

Thankfully, there was no trace of Posy and the others. Their uncomfortable brunch felt like a lifetime ago. The day, now dark, had slipped away from her, but at least her roommate and the rest of the PI club were probably heading to the Burlington International Airport by now, trading Vermont for Versailles.

The pile of yearbooks still sat faceup on her unmade bed, but Este lunged for her suitcase. Inside, she found three photos. In one, her dad grinned outside the suite to his junior-year dorm room, Vespertine Hall 503A. In the next, he shook hands with Robin Radcliffe’s statue in the middle of the Hesper Fountain. And lastly, in a cracked frame, he stood outside the Paso Robles City Library with an eight-year-old Este by his side. She gripped her brand-new library card in one hand and wrapped the other around her dad.

Digging deeper, Este peeled out wool socks and consignment-shop sweaters and at the bottom, next to a few stray lip balms and wrinkled syllabi she hadn’t looked at since the start of the school year, sat a small, green book.

As far as books were concerned, this one was nondescript. There was no title, no dust jacket, no gilded lining. When she and her dad returned home from the city library on Spring Street that day in July, there had been a small stack of wrapped presents waiting for her on the kitchen table. The best day of her young life had just kept getting better. She’d peeled off glittering wrapping paper in long streams. Her dad sat next to her, tapping his fingers against the tabletop in anxious anticipation, and her mom buzzed around the kitchen, lighting cake candles and dimming the lights.

Este ran her hands along the book’s smooth cover now the same way she did after she unwrapped it, heart swelling with appreciation as she memorized the texture of the backing. She pried open the front cover, loose from years of reading and rereading. Underlined on the first page, her dad had written, From the library of Este Logano.

Her dad had taught himself to bind books, a holdover from his days at the library, and he’d woven together all her favorite stories. She recalled the scent of his cramped office—like repair glue and old books with fresh ink—so thick that for a second, she could’ve sworn she was there again.

Este’s fingertips pressed against his penmanship like it might make him feel closer. He had walked this path before. He knew the way. She didn’t have to do it alone.

A breath shuddered out of her as she flipped the page. She knew what came next. The first time she read these words, she hugged him in the kitchen. He was still alive, breathing and laughing and there when she needed him. Then, after he passed away, she had to skip past the dedication page every time she cracked open the storybook. It hurt too much.

She’d been avoiding that hurt for so long. But now, on the floor of her Radcliffe Prep dorm, with her back pressed against the stiff side of her mattress and her legs sprawled out in front of her, she read his inscription through a new lens. One she hadn’t dared look through since arriving at Radcliffe for fear of what she would find.

“There is life, there is death, and there is love—the greatest of these is love.” Her finger drifted over the smudged blue ink. He’d written it quickly, like he was running out of time. And he had been. Still, each crooked letter was his promise to her that even when he was gone, he would never truly leave her.

Este sucked down a steadying breath. She fanned past the fairytales and fables she’d committed to memory, straight to the last chapter where a signature block of blank pages had been bound past the last story.

She’d always assumed they were meant for her to write her own story someday, the way that some school texts had workbook pages at the back for assignments. All this time, she’d been too afraid to press pen to paper, too concerned with following his path that she never considered forging her own.

Now, as the pages unfolded in front of her, they weren’t blank at all. As promised, the answer she needed was found inside her library—the library of Este Logano.