Single Dad

On Tuesday evenings, I work until nine at the Milford College library. The hours aren’t as bad as they sound because it means I don’t have to come in until noon.

Students tend to be night owls, so the late hours aren’t quiet. I’m a research librarian, and Tuesday evenings are when I have the most students come up to me for help with their papers and bibliographies. Tonight isn’t very busy, however. Midterms are over, and we’re not close enough to the end of the semester yet for most students to have incentive to work on their big essays and projects. So I help a couple of students who are working on an annotated bibliography for a government class and a baseball player who has to rewrite a research paper for a passing grade so he can keep his scholarship.

It’s just after eight when I get up from the research desk on the ground floor and walk around the library to stretch my legs and make sure no one is smoking in one of the study rooms or having sex in the far corner of the upper floor by the theology collection.

Everything is running smoothly tonight, and I pause by a big armchair in the fiction section to say hi to a girl who hangs out here every Tuesday evening.

Her name is Rika with a k. She told me that specifically when I introduced myself to her in February.

She looks around thirteen or fourteen with bushy dark hair and wire-framed glasses. She sits and reads here at least until nine, which is when my shift ends. The library doesn’t close until ten on weeknights, so she might stay until closing. I don’t know exactly what her situation is. When she first started coming in, I asked, and she said she was waiting for her dad.

It makes me wonder if she’s got a difficult family situation and wants to stay out of the house, but she’s never given me any details. She’s old enough to be in the library by herself, and she’s clean and looks healthy, so I figure it’s none of my business.

I like her though. We have similar tastes in books.

“How far along are you?” I ask when she looks up at me through her glasses.

She shows me the copy of Emily’s Quest she’s reading. “Hi, Katrina. Almost done with this one.”

“And what do you think?”

“You were right. I like these even more than the Anne books.”

A few weeks ago I saw her reading Anne of Green Gables, and we talked for a while about L. M. Montgomery. I told her I liked the Emily books better than the Anne books and discovered that she hadn’t known they existed. So I found her copies of the three Emily books and gave them to her last week.

“I read them for the first time when I was about your age. I loved them too. I still read them occasionally.”

“This one kind of gives me a stomachache though.”

I smile at her. “Yeah. I always felt that way too. That heavy feeling. It ends good though.”

She nods. “I hope so. I don’t like to read all this way for an end that’s not happy.”

“Me either.”

“I would have been finished by now, but Dad didn’t want me to read this weekend.”

That makes me frown. “Why not?”

She shrugs. “He doesn’t like me to read all the time.”

I try to control my initial annoyance at that claim. It’s entirely possible that her father is worried that she does nothing but read. That’s a reasonable concern for a quiet, bookish girl. It doesn’t necessarily mean her father is an asshole who doesn’t understand a person like Rika. “Oh well. You’ve still made good progress. It looks like you might finish tonight.”

“I will.” She gives me her slow, grave smile. “What should I read after this one?”