I hadn’t seen the town since, when? Since I’d seen my mom, at least. It looked smaller than before, the cardboard more warped and tattered. I couldn’t find the people in any of the boxes, or even the animals. The town looked lonely, and it made me sad. Somehow the magic was gone, without her. I found myself reaching for Lena, in spite of everything.

Everything’s missing. The boxes are there, but it’s all wrong. She’s not here. It’s not even a town anymore. And she’s never going to meet you.

But there was no response. Lena had vanished, or banished me. I didn’t know which was worse. I really was alone, and the only thing worse than being alone was having everyone else see how lonely you were. So I went to the only place in town where I knew I wouldn’t run into anyone. The Gatlin County Library.

“Aunt Marian?”

The library was freezing, and completely empty, as usual. After the way the Disciplinary Committee meeting had gone, I was guessing Marian hadn’t had any visitors.

“I’m back here.” She was sitting on the floor in her overcoat, waist high amidst a pile of open books, as if they had just fallen off the shelves around her. She was holding a book, reading aloud, in one of her familiar book-trances.

“‘We see Him come, and know Him ours,

Who, with His Sun-shine, and His showers,

Turns all the patient ground to flowers.

The Darling of the world is come…’”

She closed the book. “Robert Herrick. It’s a Christmas carol, sung for the king at Whitehall Palace.” She sounded as far away as Lena had been lately, and I felt now.

“Sorry, don’t know the guy.” It was so cold I could see her breath when she spoke.

“Who does it remind you of? Turning the ground to flowers, the darling of the world.”

“You mean Lena? I bet Mrs. Lincoln would have something to say about that.” I sat down next to Marian, scattering books in the aisle.

“Mrs. Lincoln. What a sad creature.” She shook her head, and pulled out another book. “Dickens thinks Christmas is a time for people ‘to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures.’”

“Is the heater broken? Do you want me to call Gatlin Electric?”

“I never turned it on. I guess I got distracted.” She tossed the book back onto the pile surrounding her. “Pity Dickens never came to Gatlin. We’ve got more than our share of shut-up hearts around here.”

I picked up a book. Richard Wilbur. I opened it, burying my face in the smell of the pages. I glanced at the words. “‘What is the opposite of two? A lonely me, a lonely you.’” Weird, that was exactly how I was feeling. I snapped the book shut and looked at Marian.

“Thanks for coming to the meeting, Aunt Marian. I hope it didn’t make trouble for you. I feel like it was all my fault.”

“It wasn’t.”

“Feels like it was.” I tossed the book down.

“What, now you’re the author of all ignorance? You taught Mrs. Lincoln to hate, and Mr. Hollingsworth to fear?”

We both just sat there, surrounded by a mountain of books. She reached over and squeezed my hand. “This battle didn’t start with you, Ethan. It won’t end with you either, I’m afraid, or me, for that matter.” Her face grew serious. “When I walked in this morning, these books were in a pile on the floor. I don’t know how they got there, or why. I locked the doors when I left last night, and they were still locked this morning. All I know is, I sat down to look through them, and every single book, every one of them, had some kind of message for me about this moment, in this town, right now. About Lena, you, even me.”

I shook my head. “It’s a coincidence. Books are like that.”

She plucked a random book out of the pile and handed it to me. “You try. Open it.”

I took the book from her hand. “What is it?”

“Shakespeare. Julius Caesar.”

I opened it, and began to read.

“‘Men at some time are masters of their fates:

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,

But in ourselves, that we are underlings.’

“What does that have to do with me?”

Marian peered at me, over her glasses. “I’m just the librarian. I can only give you the books. I can’t give you the answers.” But she smiled, all the same. “The thing about fate is, are you the master of your fate, or are the stars?”

“Are you talking about Lena, or Julius Caesar? Because I hate to break it to you, but I never read the play.”

“You tell me.”

We spent the rest of the hour going through the pile, taking turns reading to each other. Finally, I knew why I had come. “Aunt Marian, I think I need to go back into the archive.”

“Today? Don’t you have things you need to be doing? Holiday shopping at least?”

“I don’t shop.”

“Spoken wisely. As for myself, ‘I do like Christmas on the whole…. In its clumsy way, it does approach Peace and Goodwill. But it is clumsier every year.’”

“More Dickens?”

“E. M. Forster.”

I sighed. “I can’t explain it. I think I need to be with my mom.”

“I know. I miss her, too.” I hadn’t really thought about what I would say to Marian about how I was feeling. About the town, and how everything was wrong. Now the words seemed stuck in my throat, like another person was stumbling through them. “I just thought, if I could be around her books, maybe I could feel how it was before. Maybe I could talk to her. I tried to go to the graveyard once, but it didn’t make me feel like she was there, in the ground.” I stared at a random speck on the carpet.