Chapter 32: Waiting for Someone

Joelle's POV

The basement of the Fairmont library still had green lamps.

They stood along the long oak table, ten years older, with the same cracked shades.

I came down the stairs at ten to seven, in a yellow scarf, with a pencil behind my ear.

I had bought the scarf that morning at a stall near the station.

I had not told anyone why.

"You're early," said Maud, from the front row.

She had saved me the seat at the end of the table.

"I'm on time."

"You're early and you're pale. Sit."

I sat.

The room was full.

Every one of the thirty-one chairs was taken, and a row of people stood along the back wall.

The chairman's daughter had brought three friends and a thermos.

The Marlow director sat near the door with her notebook and a first edition of *The Salt Road*.

Hugh's mother sat in a black coat in the second row, with her hands folded, and she nodded to me once.

No one else from her family had come.

I had not expected them.

At seven o'clock exactly, Ivo walked in from the side door.

He wore a white shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows, and he carried a stack of loose pages.

His hands were not quite steady.

He stopped at the lectern, and he put the pages down, and he looked out at all thirty-odd faces.

"Thank you for coming," he said.

"It's very short notice."

"There was a flyer," said the chairman's daughter, and a few people laughed.

"There was," said Ivo. "It's ten years old."

He looked straight at me.

"I'm going to read a chapter of something I wrote. It's not good."

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