Saturday. Ten-forty in the morning. You and Charlotte walk the five blocks from the house to the Cherry Creek Public Library branch at 305 Milwaukee Street. Charlotte has a book to return and a list to check. Karen is at her yoga on Saturdays and your father is in his shop in the garage doing whatever he is doing that involves the sound of one tool, so today the walk is yours.
Charlotte has a small backpack on with one book inside. The book is A Wrinkle in Time. The library sticker is on the spine. Charlotte read it this week; she says she wants a different one next.
What kind of different?
Not space.
OK. What kind?
Something with a dog.
OK.
The walk is five blocks. The sidewalks are wide. There are two other people walking — a woman with a poodle about fifty yards ahead of you, and a man in a Broncos sweatshirt on the opposite side of the street going the other way, who nods. Everybody else is in a car or in a house.
Charlotte walks on the inside of the sidewalk — you note this; she has been taught to walk inside. She is wearing the same purple unicorn sweater from yesterday. The sidewalk cement under the cottonwoods has a rind of yellow leaves along its edges that nobody has raked; you wait.
At the corner of Third Avenue a woman pulling a small red wagon with a two-year-old in it waits for the light. The two-year-old has a graham cracker and is looking at Charlotte. Charlotte does not look back. The woman looks at Charlotte, looks at you, says, cold today, and you say, cold, and the light changes and everyone crosses.
At the library the after-Halloween paper pumpkins are still taped to the inside of the glass door. Inside there is the specific smell libraries have — old-book + wool-carpet + someone's takeout that somebody else is eating at a study table. A woman at the desk looks up. Her badge says CHRISTINE — VOLUNTEER.
Returning? she asks Charlotte.
Yes.
Do you want another one?
Yes.
What kind?
Something with a dog.
Christine — who has a pencil in her hair the way archivists across two continents have pencils in their hair — nods at Charlotte and says, I'll think about it while you browse. Charlotte goes into the children's section without looking at you. You stand by the desk and you do not say anything to Christine and she does not say anything to you.
You look at the bulletin board. A flyer for a memoir-writing group at the main library downtown. A flyer for a Thanksgiving food drive at the Cherry Creek shopping plaza. A Missing Cat poster with the cat's name spelled out by somebody who is losing the cat — LUNA, PLEASE CALL. The poster has three tabs torn off; the rest are there.
Charlotte comes back with two books. One has a dog on the cover and the dog is wet. The other has a girl and a dog and the girl has a scar on her face. Charlotte has chosen both.
Do you want both?
Yes.
Are you going to read both?
Yes.
OK.
You walk to the desk. Christine checks them out under Charlotte's card. Charlotte has a card. Of course Charlotte has a card. The card is green; it has her name on it — CHARLOTTE; no last name, just CHARLOTTE. You wonder briefly which last name she would have chosen if she had been the one filling out the card. You stop wondering. The card goes back into Charlotte's small purple wallet. The two books go into the backpack.
Thank you, Charlotte says to Christine.
You're welcome, kiddo, Christine says, and Charlotte almost smiles and does not quite, and Christine looks at you and nods.
You walk out.
On the way home you stop at the coffee cart at the edge of the Cherry Creek Shopping Center because Charlotte wants hot chocolate. The cart is an independent cart not a Starbucks; the woman who runs it is maybe sixty and wears fingerless gloves. She remembers Charlotte. She calls her honey. Hot chocolate is four-fifty. You give her six; the tip goes in the jar that says TIPS ARE APPRECIATED, YES. You get a coffee for yourself, black.
Through the plate-glass window of the bagel shop behind the cart a TV plays with the sound off. HALLORAN TESTIMONY: SECOND DAY — COMMITTEE SUBPOENAS DOCUMENTS reads the chyron along the bottom; a man in a blue jacket stands in front of a Capitol-building graphic. No one inside is looking up. You look once. You do not look again. Charlotte does not see.
Charlotte holds her hot chocolate in both hands as you walk the last three blocks home. The steam from the lid is brief in the Cherry Creek November dry-cold and ends a foot above her face.
You don't talk on the last three blocks. You don't need to. Charlotte is thinking about the two books and thinking about the hot chocolate and possibly thinking about what A Wrinkle in Time was about because she did not finish it, she has told you, she just wanted a different one.
Char.
Yeah.
You didn't finish the Wrinkle book?
I have some left.
OK.
I'll finish it at night.
OK.
You walk on. The mountains at the end of the block show above the roofline for thirty seconds where the street angles west and then the block bends and they go away.