Page 13 of The Library of Borrowed Hearts

To my knowledge, the base had only lasted a little over a decade, but it left a mark all the same. Not only was the abandoned structure a favorite hangout for teens, paintballers, and aspiring graffiti artists, but we still had an Air Force survival school in these parts. Apparently, the Air Force had fallen so much in love with our surroundings—and the manynatural hazards, which emulated the worst places a pilot might be forced to land—that they’d decided to set up a permanent training facility.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” I asked suddenly.

Pepper grinned and cracked her knuckles. “If what you’re thinking is digging through a decade’s worth of microfiche, absolutely. I never get to put my librarian skills to good use anymore. Most people only ever ask me how to send documents to the printer.”

I laughed and started stacking up the books to return to the shelves. As much as it pained me to admit it, Pepper was more suited for that kind of research than I’d ever be. In fact, she was a better librarian than me in almost every respect. Not only had shefinishedher degree, but she understood the technology way better than I did. I could stock a shelf with the best of them, but the additional training needed to move forward in our increasingly digital age always seemed to be just out of reach.

Physically. Financially. Emotionally.

Iwantedto care about e-book lending and online content curation, I really did, but I also wanted to sleep sometimes. Everything in this world was a trade-off—at least for me. Pepper, on the other hand, never did anything she didn’t want to. I tried not to be jealous of her, but it was a struggle. She’d actuallyturned downa research library job in Seattle to start driving around in the bookmobile instead. She’d always preferred the close feeling of life here, the way everyone’s stories played out on a small stage like an intimate off-Broadway experience.

Which, now that I thought about it, was probably why she’d started hanging out with me back in grade school. Every detail of my life had been on display since the moment I’d been conceived.

The phone rang before I could dwell too much on that depressing thought. Pepper jumped down from the counter and reached to answer it before I could snag the handset.

“Colville Public Library, could I interest you in a book by ErnestHemingway? We have several in search of a good home.”

“Pepper!” I hissed as I kicked playfully at her leg. Pepper was ready for it with a neat sidestep. “What if that was Gunderson calling in to check on—”

“Wait. He didwhat?” Pepper glanced quickly at me before turning her back so I couldn’t hear her conversation. I recognized the ruse for what it was: right after I got custody of the kids, I used to catch Trixie doing the same thing. Every incoming call had the potential to be Mom with a rational explanation, full of tearful apologies that would make up for the wrongs she’d done us.

She’d never once called, but that hadn’t stopped Trixie from dashing to answer the phone anyway. Or me from wishing there wasanythingI could do to ease the sting for her.

“You’d better give it to me.” I waggled my fingers in front of Pepper’s face. “Whatever Theo’s done now, it can’t possibly be as bad as the time he set fire to—”

“Yeah. Uh-huh. Yep.” Pepper ignored me and continued with her terse, one-syllable replies. “She’ll be right there. First floor? By the ambulance station?”

At the sound of that word—ambulance—my stomach turned over.

“But it’s lunchtime,” I protested. I didn’t know who I was protesting to, but I felt it needed to be said. “He should be at school. He’s safe there. They don’t let any of the kids near the science equipment unless they’re supervised.”

Pepper hung up the phone and turned to look at me. “It’s not Theo this time. It’s Noodle.” Her lips pulled into a frown so serious that the churning in my stomach stopped cold. “They said you’re going to want to get to the hospital straightaway.”

The hospital was located less than a mile from the library as the crow flies. Even though I was no crow, I got there in record time.

“I’m here for Noodle—I mean Aloysius—Sampson,” I said, breathless as I ran up to the first person in scrubs I could find. She looked to be all of eighteen years old and no more qualified to practice medicine than I was, but her name tag proclaimed her Dr. Letitia Underhill, so she was good enough for me. “He’s twelve years old, has red hair, isn’t very tall, and—”

She held up a hand to cut me off. Since she smiled while she did it, I found it in me to obey.

“You must be the sister,” she said in a voice that sounded as young as she looked. “I’d have recognized that hair anywhere.”

“His sisterandlegal guardian,” I corrected her, lest there be any confusion. I also fought the urge to put a hand to my head. A flaming head of red hair always sounded good in books, but the real thing wasn’t nearly as glamorous. People could spot my family walking down the street from space. “Is he okay? What happened? Why isn’t he at school? What—”

“Whoa, there,” she said, still smiling. “He’s fine. Just a broken leg, that’s all.”

I felt my knees growing weak. “Justa broken leg?”

“Well, his ribs are pretty bruised, too, but kids tend to heal fast. He’ll feel like he fell off a cliff for a few days, but that’s because, well, he fell off a cliff.”

The weakness in my joints traveled to the rest of my limbs. “I think I need to sit down,” I said.

“I’ll say you do,” a cheerful male voice said from behind me. “You look like you just swallowed a ghost.”

I felt rather than saw a chair materialize underneath me. Too grateful to care how or why it had appeared, I sank into it.

Childhood ailments and injuries were nothing new to me. Trixie hadonce hit her head so hard on the door of the station wagon that she’d gotten a concussion and five stitches for her trouble. Noodle was prone to sore throats and got them so often that the pharmacist no longer needed a prescription for his antibiotics. And Theo…well. Theo had, in no particular order, burned off his eyebrows and eyelashes (twice), removed the top quarter of his pinkie finger (he claims it was an accident), and gotten his tongue stuck to an icy metal pole (also twice).

But to my recollection, no one had yet fallen off a cliff.Especiallynot Noodle.