Chapter 21: Her Name, First Line

It took four men and a hand truck to bring the plaque up the ramp.

It was bronze, and thicker than I had pictured.

The stonecutter's grandson walked beside it with one glove on the edge to keep it steady.

The crowd had not gone home.

Nobody on the library steps seemed to want to leave.

The old draftsman sat on a folding chair that someone had found for him, with his granddaughter's coat over his knees.

"The old plate is bolted, not set," the grandson told Margaret. "It'll come off in a minute."

He fitted a socket wrench to the first bolt.

The bronze that read DESIGNED BY CONRAD MERRICK came away from the wall with a groan of metal.

Two men carried it to the side and laid it face down on a blanket.

Under it, on the pale stone, was a clean rectangle that had never seen weather.

Nobody spoke while the new one went up.

I stood at the bottom of the ramp with Ada against my shoulder and watched it be bolted, level, to the wall of my own building.

When the men stepped back, I read it.

THIS LIBRARY WAS DESIGNED BY LUCY HOLLINGSHEAD AND BUILT BY HER EMPLOYER, CONRAD MERRICK, WHO ASKED THAT YOU REMEMBER HER NAME.

My name was the first line, and Conrad's came second.

Underneath, smaller, in the slant of his own pen, the grandson had cut: Not mine. Hers.

I had thought I would cry, and I did not.

I stood there with the cold on my face, and I felt peaceful for the first time in years.

"May I?" Margaret said at my elbow.

She stepped forward and ran her thumb across the letters of my name, slowly, from the L to the last N.

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