The Summer Nanny

Book 0: Yorktide, Maine Novel

by Holly Chamberlin

Genres: Friendship; Women's Fiction

Synopsis

Every June, the quiet beach town of Ogunquit is overtaken by wealthy families who hire local young women like Amy Latimer and Hayley Franklin to care for their children. Best friends since childhood, Amy and Hayley are eager to secure lucrative summer jobs. Amy wants to finance her upcoming move to Boston. Hayley hopes to squirrel away enough money so that her mom can finally leave her abusive husband.

Amy is immediately in thrall to her dynamic boss, Cressida Prior, so different from Amy's mother, Leda. Though skilled at creating tapestries and rugs, Leda lacks confidence. But one thing she does know, after a painful summer long ago as a nanny herself, is how damaging a manipulative boss can be.

Hayley's employers, Jon and Marisa Whitby, are loving parents to their two-year-old twins. Jon also has a grown son by a previous marriage. Ethan is kind, handsome, and not least, wealthy. For the first time, Hayley, usually so selfless, can't help seeing him as an opportunity.

But the passing weeks bring complications and revelations, altering friendships, testing the bond between mothers and daughters, and proving that the ripples from a single season can last forever . . .

Release date: June 26, 2018

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 352

Sample

Beautiful spring weather came late to southern Maine and now, when it had finally made its appearance in mid-April, Leda Latimer was taking full advantage by opening all the windows in her studio to let in fresh air for the first time since the windows had been shut tight the previous October. Just the week before, the vibrant yellow forsythia bushes had mellowed into lush green. The first and then the second robin had been sighted, and the ubiquitous muck of mud season had begun to dry out, leaving ruts in the driveway and along the path around the side of the house. Ruts Leda could handle. Wallowing in wet ground she could not.

Leda was a lifelong resident of Yorktide. She wore her dark hair in a ponytail or in a casual updo. At forty she didn’t yet need reading glasses, though she suspected she would need them before long. Doing the sort of work she did put a strain on the eyes, for Leda was a craftswoman, as her mother had been before her. In fact, Leda had learned all of the basic skills she knew from her mother, and while making a living by crafting was a bit laborious, Leda could imagine no other way of spending her time. She would have liked her daughter to express an interest in craftwork, too, but Amy had less than no interest. Many years before, Leda had tried to teach Amy how to sew a button on a blouse. Blood had been spilled. Leda’s blood.

Leda was proficient at a variety of skills, from rug hooking to embroidery, from beading to sewing. She made particular clothing items for Amy and made alterations to her own clothes, both of which cut down considerably the cost of maintaining their wardrobes. As for work that paid the bills, there were two main categories—what Leda called the custom and the commercial.

The custom work itself could be divided into two categories: work produced from Leda’s original designs and that skillfully copied from famous works of art. When a customer wanted a particular item and couldn’t find it in a brick-and-mortar or an online store, she came to Leda’s studio and browsed through her ready-made designs or worked along with Leda to get the vision in her head onto paper. This process could be anything from exhilarating to frustrating, but in the end the results were almost always gratifying for both Leda and her client.

The second part of Leda’s custom work was the reproduction of popular works of fiber art, from designs produced by William Morris in the nineteenth century, to works dating much further back in history. For example, people were mad for the famous Unicorn Tapestries. The originals, created between 1495 and 1505, were masterpieces of needle and thread, color and design, and Leda never tired of the challenge of re-creating the beautiful and poignant scenes depicted in the seven works. She and her clients were particularly interested in images pulled from The Unicorn Is Found, The Unicorn in Captivity, and the Lady and the Unicorn tapestries. Because of the time, effort, and artistry that went into each of these meticulous re-creations, Leda was able to charge a healthy price for each of them.

On occasion, interesting commission work led to more commercial enterprises. For a local woman who was proud to trace her ancestors to Scotland, Leda had copied several of the surviving bits of embroidery stitched by Mary, Queen of Scots, during her long incarceration in England. Once word had gotten around that Leda could produce such small masterpieces without the aid of a kit, orders came flooding in. The most popular of the images were without a doubt the ones that featured animals. The Catte, Jupiter (one of Mary’s pet dogs), Delphin (a dolphin), Frogge, and Eape were clear favorites.

Leda’s bread-and-butter work, however, was making originally designed rugs, pillows, chair pads, table linens, and accessories like eyeglass cases and change purses. These she sold locally at home-decorating shops such as Wainscoting and Windowseats, owned by her friend Phil Morse. Leda also sold her work at The Busy Bee quilt shop and a few of the tourist stores in the area. She did have a website—LatimerCreations.com—though it didn’t get significant traffic. Leda wasn’t exactly good at self-promotion. In fact, she had set up the website only at her daughter’s urging. “Everyone has an online presence these days, Mom,” Amy had argued. “You’ll be totally left behind if you don’t have a website.”

“Left behind what?” Leda had been tempted to ask, but she knew what her daughter meant. Only weeks earlier she had learned the meaning of FOMO; Vera, her closest friend, had explained it in context of an article she was reading about current trends in the food industry. “It means fear of missing out. It pertains to those people who need to be tuned in to media of all sorts 24/7.” Leda had laughed. “I live to miss out,” she exclaimed, to which reply Vera had given her a look Leda found disconcerting. Maybe keeping one’s head in the sand wasn’t always the smartest thing.

Still, Leda did all right. It didn’t hurt that her mortgage was small, as her parents, Anne and Paul Gleeson, had paid off most of it before they died; when Amy was seven, the little house on Hawthorne Lane came to Leda in their will. The house suited Leda’s and Amy’s needs perfectly. There were three bedrooms and a full bathroom on the second floor. Amy had the largest of the bedrooms, Leda the second largest, and the smallest was kept as a guest room. The first floor comprised a cozy kitchen, big enough for a table at which to eat meals; a living room; and Leda’s studio. Three of the studio’s walls were mostly windows, allowing for plenty of light.

An ear-piercing scream of the feline sort caused Leda to jump. The noise had come from Winston Churchill, though it might equally have come from Harry, aka Henry 8th. Both were large and grumpy and demanded constant attention. They were suspicious of visitors, even ones they knew, which was probably why Winston had let out a warning.

Indeed, a moment later Leda heard the back door, the one that led from the small hall off the studio into the yard, open and shut with a bang. Vera Cecil had a way with doors. A moment later Leda’s assumption was confirmed when Vera appeared in the doorway of the studio. Her short, dark hair was sticking up like a rooster’s coxcomb, and she was wearing an old plaid shirt Leda knew for a fact she often wore to bed.

“Well,” Vera announced, throwing her hands in the air. “It’s over. Another relationship bites the dust.”

“What happened?” Leda asked, putting down her embroidery hoop. “I thought things were going really well for you two.”

“So did I,” Vera admitted. She strode into the room and flopped into the armchair on which one of Leda’s hand-stitched quilts was draped. She was no sooner seated than Harry was on her lap. “You’ll read about it in the paper tomorrow, but I might as well tell you now. The charming Kitty Doyle is a bank robber. Well, she was a bank robber, back when she was known as Katie Dunn.”

“Wait,” Leda said. “What?”

“You heard me. The police turned up at the door first thing this morning with an arrest warrant. You can imagine my surprise. I hadn’t even had my first cup of coffee. It wasn’t until after ten o’clock, three hours after the cops dragged my girlfriend off to the slammer, that it sunk in. I’d been harboring a criminal without knowing it.”

“A bank robber? Really?” Leda shook her head. “Where do you find these people? Wait. Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. I hope the police believe that you had no knowledge of Kitty’s past.”

Vera rubbed her eyes with the palms of her hands. “They seemed to,” she said, “but my lawyer will press the point.”

“It’s kind of too bad really,” Leda said thoughtfully. “I liked Kitty. True, she had that slightly freaky way of watching people out of the corner of her eye, but now that habit is explained.”

Vera sighed and gave Harry a stroke. “She made a mean beef stroganoff. I’m going to miss that beef stroganoff.”

“You’ll meet someone else,” Leda said soothingly. “You always do.”

“Nope,” Vera said. “After this latest debacle, I’m resigning myself to being an old maid. I have spectacularly bad taste in women, and I can’t see that changing no matter how many self-help books I read.”

“You’ve been reading self-help books?” Leda asked.

“For years,” Vera admitted. “It’s been my dirty little secret, but I’m dumping them all now. Fat lot of good they did me.”

“Maybe you should let a friend set you up,” Leda suggested. “That way at least you’ll know the person is halfway sane. Well, assuming you trust the friend.”

“Nope. I’m done.” Vera suddenly got up from the armchair, sending Harry flying. He landed on his feet. “I don’t know why I’m so bad at meeting normal people. I had a perfectly fine childhood. My parents loved me. They even spoiled me, and maybe that somehow made my judgment go bad, assuming my judgment was ever good. It’s a mystery for the ages.”

“A mystery I wish I could solve for you.”

“If wishes were horses . . . Well, I’m off. Just wanted to give you the big news.” Vera came to a sudden stop and turned around. “It just dawned on me. What am I going to do with Kitty’s stuff? Even if she gets out on bail, she ain’t living with me.”

“Send it to her family?” Leda suggested.

“That would be a great idea if I knew anything about her family, and I don’t. What a mess!”

And with those words Vera was gone, letting the back door slam behind her.

Some people have really rotten luck in love, Leda thought, turning back to her work. If only a little bit of the luck Vera enjoyed in the financial sector could be inserted in the sector of romance, Vera might be a whole lot happier.

For many years Vera had worked in various administrative office positions until about eighteen years ago, when she had inherited a fairly large amount of money from an aunt that allowed her to quit her job and move to Yorktide, where she set up her dream restaurant. Over Easy, a high-end breakfast place, closed in mid-October, after the last of the leaf peepers had gone home, and reopened in late May to catch what business the very earliest vacationers might bring. During the dreaded Maine winters Vera traveled, visiting her parents in Arizona and indulging in spa retreats in Santa Fe. She often asked Leda to join her, all expenses paid, but Leda, while not stupidly proud, wasn’t comfortable taking expensive gifts from anyone, not even her dearest friend. If ever she could afford to join her friend on a spa retreat, she would. Until then she would be content with stories of hot stone massages and naked yoga classes. Well, the naked yoga stories she could do without. Too much flapping around.

Vera had come to Yorktide not long after Leda’s husband, Charlie, Amy’s father, had passed. She had met Leda at the real estate office where Leda was working as a receptionist. The two women grew friendly, and over time Vera had become a sort of aunt and even a friend to Amy. Like Amy, Vera was interested in au courant fashion, something Leda wasn’t particularly, so she made a better shopping buddy for Amy than her mother.

Leda went to her worktable and opened one of her sketchbooks. A vague idea had come to her the night before as she was on the verge of sleep. Now, pencil poised over the blank page, Leda tried to empty her mind of all extraneous noise, but it was not so simple. Vera’s news of her latest romantic fiasco had brought to the fore of Leda’s mind her own romantic situation—or lack thereof. She had been on her own since Charlie’s death not long after the birth of their child Amy, now twenty-one and soon to graduate from college. In odd moments, but only in odd moments, Leda felt a pang of loneliness. Growing old might not be a lot of fun and games, but if you were in a couple then at least you weren’t alone when arthritis made it difficult to get into and out of the car or gastrointestinal issues took much of the fun out of eating dinner out.

Still, Leda knew that being on her own was a far better way to live her life than to spend it side by side with someone she didn’t love or who didn’t love her. She knew that without a shadow of a doubt.

Shadows. Moody, crepuscular light. That idea that had come to her the night before just as she was about to fall asleep.... Leda began to draw.

It was a beautiful spring day with temperatures reaching the low sixties for the first time since who could remember when. Purple and yellow crocuses had bravely begun to poke their little heads above ground and the rare daffodil had been spotted, a sure harbinger of better weather to come.

Hayley Franklin, otherwise sensitive to beauty in all of its shapes and forms, was untouched by the scent of green wafting through the open window of her car. She was on her way to meet her boss, Judy Speer. Hayley had a bad feeling in the pit of her stomach. She knew that she had done nothing wrong. Still, when your employer summoned you to the office for a chat, things could not be good.

Hayley stopped at a red light and immediately became aware that the guy behind the wheel in the car to her right was staring at her. She ignored him. She was used to the effect she had on men. The bolder sorts did more than stare. For the pigs, Hayley always had a few choice words that managed to shut them down. The unwanted attention drove her crazy.

But what could she expect when she looked the way she did? Hayley was five feet, ten inches tall and slim, with long legs, a small waist, and what she had once been told was an “enviable bust.” The ridiculousness of that assessment had almost caused her to smack the woman who had said it to her—a body part enviable? An intellect, sure. An excellent moral character, yes. But a body part?

The light changed and Hayley drove on, glad to be leaving the creep in the other car behind.

For the past four years Hayley had been working for Squeaky Clean, a small local company that specialized in cleaning private homes. Judy Speers had started the business when her husband had run off with another woman, leaving her to support two little children on her own. Hayley’s pay was good, but the work could be exhausting and sometimes a bit stomach turning. A surprising number of otherwise civilized people didn’t seem to mind hair accumulating in drains or spatter marks on toilets and floors. And on occasion the people whose houses Hayley cleaned could be a bit high-and-mighty with her and the other women on her crew. Hayley resented this borderline callous treatment, but she always remained polite and took pride in doing her job thoroughly. After all, she had no choice but to keep quiet and carry on. She couldn’t afford to be fired.

Hayley still occasionally babysat in the evenings, though when her father was in one of his bad states she stayed home. It wasn’t safe for her mother to be alone with Eddie Franklin when the demons were upon him. Her longtime clients understood that she couldn’t always be available and had never abandoned her for the simple fact that Hayley was great with children. And maybe also because they felt bad for Hayley and Nora Franklin. Hayley didn’t like being pitied, but when it came to an extra forty or fifty dollars now and again she could ignore the pity. You did what you had to do.

And that was a lesson her mother had learned all too well. Nora Franklin was forty-seven years old. Photographs proved that she had once been attractive, but the joy in her smile was long gone, her once shiny hair was now dull, and the lines around her mouth were deeper than they should be.

For the past nine years Nora had worked as a bagger at Hannaford, the local grocery chain. The job was steady and Nora was treated well. The only trouble arose when the family found themselves temporarily without a second car due to Eddie’s failure to make a loan payment or some other Eddie-instigated disaster. Then, if Hayley couldn’t drive her mother to and from work, Nora had to rely on a fellow Hannaford employee.

Hayley’s mouth set in a grim line as she drove past Forest Road. The Franklin family had lost their home on that quiet little street to foreclosure when Hayley was ten. She didn’t know the details of how it had been taken. All she knew was that you couldn’t dwell on what had once been, good or bad. You had to keep facing ahead. You had to be ready for whatever was to come.

Like more substandard living quarters. Since losing the house Hayley’s family had been living in a series of apartments in buildings that were once grand single-family homes but that had become generally run-down and broken up into strangely configured living spaces. One apartment had only a stall shower and no tub. One apartment was so small there was no room in the kitchen for a full-size fridge. Another apartment had an illegal second bedroom about the size of a large closet in which Hayley was forced to sleep. At least she had had some privacy. Her brother had slept on the old couch in the living room, his long legs draped over the couch’s arm.

Hayley’s relationship with Brandon, six years her senior, was pretty much nonexistent. He had never been the least bit interested in being a big brother, and when he wasn’t ignoring Hayley he was torturing her in ways he thought were funny—tripping her when she came into a room, taking her stuff without asking permission, once even cutting her hair when she was asleep. Their mother had tried in vain to control him. Their father had paid no attention whatsoever to his son, other than to take him along to the pubs when Brandon came of age, where too often they ended up getting into fights with other patrons, which most often resulted in their being tossed out into the street, markedly worse for wear.

No, there was none of that Hallmark domestic coziness in the Franklin residence, none of that sense of loyalty you were supposed to find in a family, the knowledge that no matter what happened, someone had your back. A long time ago Hayley had decided that happy, devoted families were the rarity after all, in spite of those holiday commercials that depicted laughing grandparents bonding with doting grandchildren while moms and dads looked on fondly.

Dads. The sad truth was that Hayley had only one memory of “special” time alone with her father and she would never share it with anyone, not even her closest friend, Amy Latimer. It was too pathetic.

Back when she was about eleven there was a popular show on network television called Prison Break. It probably wasn’t an appropriate show for a kid her age, but no one had protested when she had joined her father in front of the old TV. Her father would sit on the couch, right in the middle, his legs spread wide. Hayley would sit on the floor. He never spoke to her during the commercial breaks other than to tell her to get him another beer from the fridge. He never thanked her when she did. But he never told her to go away.

A child would take what attention she could get and interpret it as affection. At least that was what Hayley had done, until one night Brandon came home about halfway through the show, boasting that he had scored thirty bucks. Eddie Franklin had turned to his son, eyes suddenly bright. Then he reached for the remote, turned off the TV, and taking his son’s arm had led him to the door. “Let’s go to Mike’s Tavern,” he had said.

When her father and brother had left the apartment, Hayley continued to stare at the blank television screen. Deep down she supposed she had known all along that the weekly hour in front of the TV hadn’t meant anything to her father. Still, to have her intuition proved in so final a manner had hurt.

Hayley pulled up outside the Squeaky Clean headquarters, located in a tiny strip mall, and went inside. Judy Speer was sitting behind the old card table that served as her desk. “Hayley,” she said. “Thanks for coming in. I hope it wasn’t inconvenient.”

Hayley assured her that it wasn’t. She was anxious for Judy to say what she had to say. The sooner you knew bad news, the sooner you could start to figure out how to handle it.

“I’ve decided to retire at the end of June,” Judy announced, “and I’m closing down the business. My daughter is due in July, and without the father around she’s going to need all the help she can get.” Judy shook her head. “It’s far from an ideal situation, but I know it’s my duty to do what I can for Charlotte and the baby.”

Judy’s reason for retiring was one you simply couldn’t argue against, Hayley thought. Besides, the company was hers to do with what she wanted. Judy didn’t owe her anything. “I understand,” she said.

“I’ve prepared a reference for you.” Judy handed Hayley a typed sheet of paper. “You’ll see I’ve given you a glowing recommendation. You’re the best employee I’ve ever had by far.”

After thanking Judy for her consideration, Hayley took her leave. Grimly she got into her car. This was bad news. Similar jobs paid far less than what Hayley had been paid working for Judy. But she wasn’t really surprised at this turn of events. Nothing good ever happened no matter how hard she tried to make it happen. Hayley started the car and headed for home. If it could be called a home.

“Where is it?” Amy asked her room. Her room did not reply, though if it could it might have said, “If you ever bothered to put things back where they belong you might have found your headband by now.”

Clothes were strewn across the unmade bed, heaped on the rocking chair, and spilling out of the closet. The trash can overflowed with used tissues and makeup removal pads. An empty bottle of juice had been sitting on the windowsill for more than a week. A crumpled candy wrapper had been lying on the rug since Amy had dropped it there the night before. A slipper had gone missing over a month ago and had still not made an appearance.

“There it is!” Amy cried, spotting the missing headband in a corner.

Amy Latimer was five foot, three inches tall, neither overweight nor underweight. Her dark curly hair was unruly but not problematically, which was good because hair products were seriously expensive. Her eyes were dark like her father’s eyes had been. As for her personality, well, she was open and friendly and honest, and her mother was those things, too, though Leda Latimer was a better judge of character than Amy had ever been. In that way, too, Amy was like her father, happy to think everyone she met was as nice as she was. Not that Amy remembered her father, having been a baby when he died. But her mother and grandparents had told her all about Charlie Latimer, and Amy had loved hearing the stories.

Amy went to her small desk, the one her mother had used as a child, and opened her laptop. Checking her bank statement was a task she dreaded. There always seemed to be a nasty surprise. This time was no different. Amy frowned. How could she have so little in her savings account? Okay, she had sort of lost track of her goal of putting away one hundred dollars every week—or had it been every two weeks?—but still. Her expenses weren’t huge. Her mother paid the mortgage and electric bill and whatever else needed to be paid to keep the house running. Sometimes Amy bought the groceries, but only sometimes. And her mother paid her tuition, too. Whatever money Amy made from a variety of part-time jobs was earmarked for day-to-day expenses, like coffee drinks and lunch at the college cafeteria and gas for her car, which her mother owned outright because it had once belonged to Amy’s grandfather, who had paid off the loan before he died.

And then Amy remembered. She had bought that new leather wallet earlier in the month, hadn’t she? Not that she had really needed a new wallet but it was the prettiest shade of purple. And she had also bought those cool sandals in two colors, black and light brown, because you needed some things in multiple colors. You just did.

“Darn,” Amy muttered. She was supposed to be saving for her move to Boston come September. She would be sharing an apartment in Allston with three girls she knew from school and working at a cool new clothing shop called The Aces. Her mother had promised to help cover the cost of the move, but the last thing Amy wanted was to take advantage of her. Maybe she could find two jobs for the summer. The question was, What sort of jobs would pay the most? Maybe she would ask around at school. Someone might have a brilliant idea of how to earn a lot of money in just a few months.

School. Amy had almost forgotten that there was an assignment due the next day. She reached for the spiral notebook on the floor by the desk and began the search for a pen. It was ironic. Here she was, an average student at best, about to graduate with a degree from a four-year college while Hayley, always an excellent student, hadn’t even been allowed to complete a two-year course at the community college. Life, Amy thought, could be so unfair. Though it hadn’t really been unfair for her. In fact, life had been pretty darn good so far.

“A bank robber?” Amy said, handing her mother a can of peeled tomatoes. “As in someone walks into a bank holding a gun and wearing a ski mask?”

“I can’t be sure about the ski mask,” Leda admitted as she put the can into the cupboard and then reached into the second grocery bag. “But I’m pretty sure a gun is required.”

Amy sighed. “Poor Vera. Why does this sort of thing always happen to her?”

“I don’t know,” Leda admitted. “She’s so savvy in every other way, but when it comes to romantic partners, her discrimination fails. That or she falls in love with someone expert in fooling people into thinking she’s normal.”

“Rats!” Amy exclaimed, holding up a box of cereal. “I got the wrong kind. I like the kind with raisins, not almonds.”

Leda smiled. “Did you take a moment to actually read the box before tossing it into the cart?”

“Probably not,” Amy said. Then her phone rang. “I have to get this, Mom.” Amy dashed from the kitchen, leaving her mother to continue the unpacking.

And if Amy couldn’t be relied upon to read the label on a package of cereal, Leda thought, how was she going to handle living on her own (roommates didn’t count), reading bills carefully before paying them and remembering to turn the oven off before going to bed? Leda sighed. Amy was a rather naïve young woman, still a virgin, impressionable, and prone to see only the positive and the obvious. And she was terrible with managing money. Rather, she was terrible about spending it before it could be managed. Leda continued to try explaining the basics of home economics and personal financial responsibility but to no avail.

As for a direction in life, Amy had never expressed an interest in a particular career path. In fact, it almost seemed as if she didn’t much care what she was doing as long as she was making money and having a good time doing it. There was nothing wrong with that attitude, even if some people might consider such a life as directionless.

Leda experienced a pang of guilt. There was no doubt in her mind that she was partly responsible for her daughter’s immaturity. She and her parents had coddled the poor fatherless child Amy had once been, and it had been a difficult habit to break. But now it was high time for Amy to grow up. So, while Leda was nervous about Amy’s moving to Boston in the fall, she was also supportive of her daughter’s decision. Amy needed to learn how to live an independent life.

Amy returned to the kitchen as suddenly as she had gone. “Sorry, Mom,” she said. “That was Stacy. She wanted to remind me that Victoria’s Secret is having a major blow-out sale this weekend. We’re going to drive to South Portland on Saturday.”

“What do you need at Victoria’s Secret?” Leda asked, hoping her tone didn’t betray the trepidation she felt. None of the items in that store were necessary, and all were overpriced. At least they were overpriced for the Latimers.

Amy shrugged. “Nothing, really. But I’ll find something to buy.”

Leda gathered the empty bags and began to fold them neatly, one into the other. So much, she thought, for her lessons in home economics.

Hayley stopped at a crossroad as a driver was supposed to do, not that many drivers on these back roads obeyed such commands—like the man who cycled on past her on his makeshift three-wheeler. Raymond Windermere was the eccentric owner of a tumbling-down old farmhouse in the back of beyond. Sticking out of the wicker basket strapped behind his seat was a haphazard pile of books. It was said that Raymond Windermere was insanely rich, but the only thing he seemed to spend money on in Yorktide was books.

Hayley could understand such passion. She yearned for money with which to buy every book she had ever wanted to read and a copy of all the favorites she had already read. Thank God for the library. It had been her haven since she had first been able to read. In fact, Hayley remembered keenly the very moment her interest in history was born. Her mother had dropped her off at the public library in Yorktide while she kept an appointment with the doctor. As childminders, librarians were perfect for the parent with little or no money to spare. The eight-year-old Hayley had wandered from the tiny children’s section into the not-much-larger section of adult books. On one of the blond wood tables there sat a thick book with an inte