This story was originally published as a two-part serial in January 2024. To read the individual parts, you can click the links below:
The title “Ashlyn’s Exercise” refers to a writing exercise I developed in college. You can find more information about that here.
A crisp autumnal breeze brushed her cheek, and Brown quickly reached up to replace the strands of her dark hair that the breeze had displaced. She shivered slightly, pulling her thin shawl tighter around her shoulders.
Her knees, covered by her thick woolen skirt, were beginning to ache from kneeling in the cold, dew-and-leaf covered grass, and she shifted a few inches closer to the tombstone in front of her. In the dim half-light of the not-yet-risen dawn, she couldn’t make out the words inscribed on the granite stone, but she hardly needed to read them to know what they said. She could recite them from memory.
“NEVER MET A STRANGER,” the stone read, followed by the dates and her father’s name, all below a cross. She visited the stone, like her mother, once a week, coming before sunrise to pay her respects. And to remember.
Her memory of the phrase was more than words carved in stone, though. Rather, it was her father giving a homeless man at a bus stop a five-dollar bill and speaking with him for the better part of an hour, missing his bus; her father asking for directions and leaving twenty minutes later with a woman’s life story ready to share; her father greeting people he had never met with the same warmth he brought home to his family every day. Never met a stranger. Indeed.
Brown grinned to herself, despite the cold, recalling a gas station in Tennessee where the family had stopped during a childhood road trip to her great-grandfather’s farm. While she and her mother had gone to the restroom, her father had started talking to the cashier, and the conversation that followed had taken so long that her sister had come in to see what the matter was.
An auburn oak leaf floated slowly down from the tree above Brown, landing in front of where she knelt, and she realized with a start that she could see the veins on the leaf clearly. The sun had begun peeking over the horizon, and she had to leave soon.
Slowly, she reached out and traced the chiseled letters of her father’s name, feeling the rough stone and letting it remind her of reality. Then, she stood and started her walk back to her car.
The town cemetery was hardly massive, but it still took Brown the better part of five minutes to reach the wrought iron gates, her short heels clicking along the concrete walkway that wove between the headstones and monuments. The square plot of land was edged on all sides by tall oak trees that were dressed in yellow and red and orange, the colors of fall that had begun showing only two weeks earlier. Soon the cemetery itself would be covered in the palette, and then not long after, the first snow would blanket the town in white.
But she was getting ahead of herself. Snow would not fall for another month or more, and she would be at the graveyard every Monday whether the ground was covered in leaves, snow, or anything else. It was a promise she had made to herself, and Brown was not in the habit of breaking promises.
Her tan Honda Civic sat in the parking lot alone but for the gravekeeper’s white pickup truck, though later in the day she knew the lot would fill, people come to visit their friends or relatives. Her mother’s blue Accord would fill one of those spots this evening. Visiting her father’s grave was a rhythm they shared.
Brown shivered as she climbed into the driver’s seat of her car, and she made a note on the notepad she kept in the console to wear more layers the next week. She gave one last look towards her father’s grave, out of sight on the other side of the graveyard. Then, she started her car and pulled out onto the street.
The drive to the library was a short one, but Brown liked to take the scenic route through the old neighborhoods, admiring the colonial style houses that sometimes actually were from colonial times. The town of Colsend had been settled just before the Revolutionary War, and many of the family names that neighbored her father’s in the cemetery could be traced back to the first families of Boston, the nearest large city. Most of the homes she drove past had been built in the fifties, though, when Colsend expanded, but they had been modeled to match the older houses that actually were from the eighteenth century.
Brown had lived in Colsend all her life, and at this point she could recognize which houses belonged to which era, though most people couldn’t. Her sister had always thought she was weird for caring so much for the little town’s history; but Brown and her sister had never quite understood each other.
It wasn’t that they didn’t get along — they were the best of friends most of the time, the way that sisters were supposed to be only in movies and fairytales. But they each had sides to themselves that the other just didn’t get. Brown liked her books and the history of small places like Colsend, and her sister liked makeup and going to concerts with her friends from school. When they had both been in high school — Brown as a sophomore, her sister as a senior — they were almost never seen together, the one hiding in the library and the other going out to movies and every other social gathering she could get an invitation to. At home, they did nothing but talk to each other, sharing stories about ancient history or Tommy Nicholson’s latest party, respectively, but it always came as no surprise when Brown declined her sister’s invitations to go out. And it had come as no surprise when her sister had graduated and moved to New York, either.
Traffic in Colsend was never very heavy, but Brown still felt like the only person on the planet when she pulled into the empty library parking lot, the sky above her slowly turning from red to orange to yellow, like the oak trees spread throughout the town. As she stepped out of her car, another cold breeze wrapped around her, making her shawl flutter and leaves kick up from the sidewalk. There was not another soul to be seen.
The public library, a white marble building, was the largest structure in town, built at the end of the central square like some sort of Greco-Roman temple with columns lining the front and large steps leading to heavy oaken doors that were decorated with black hinges and studs. Above the entryway, three-foot tall letters were carved into the marble — “A MAN IS KNOWN BY THE BOOKS HE READS” they said, a quote from the library’s namesake, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Brown wasn’t certain how many people still knew who Ralph Waldo Emerson was, but his words looked out on them regardless.
Brown produced a heavy iron key, a remnant of an earlier time, from her purse and quickly unlocked the library doors. They opened easily despite their size — the hinges were kept well-oiled by Mr. Harrison, the town’s facilities manager — and Brown hurried inside, shutting the doors behind her against the breeze that tried to follow. She locked them again, checking the clock. Still half an hour to open.
The library was just as big inside as it was outside, though far less cold. The floors were marble like the exterior, polished to a shine, but heavy rugs covered most of the open areas, and tall oaken bookshelves filled the rest of the building. Brown set her purse and shawl down at the front desk, which was hers, and set about ensuring everything was ready for the day.
Heels clicking on the marble floor, Brown strolled between the bookshelves with practiced ease. There were enough shadowed corners and narrow gaps between shelves that some people could get lost in the library, but Brown knew the place like the back of her hand. She ought to, after six years of working there.
She started with the children’s area, in the back corner, a space about the size of her living room separated from the rest of the library by a low wooden wall. Bright colors filled the shelves here, and Brown took a few minutes to set up half the space with a circle of chairs in preparation for the children’s book club meeting that afternoon.
The library boasted three reading nooks, variably set up with comfortable furniture, side tables, and floor lamps for light, and after Brown checked on those she made a note on her notepad to check whether the budget allowed for a new coffee table, to replace a badly scratched one along the North wall. It hadn’t been like that on Friday – she also made a note to check with Jennifer, the weekend attendant, to find out what had happened.
On her way back to the front of the library, Brown wove between the shelves, stopping at each book return cart to reshelve the handful of books that had been left there over the weekend. In the process, she found some misordered books — really, was it so difficult to remember that K comes before L? — and reshelved them as well, with a sigh. That was the whole purpose of the carts, after all.
The front of the library held the restrooms, which she only had to ensure were unlocked — all the public buildings shared janitorial duties, and the library was scheduled for Wednesdays. Across from the restrooms was her desk, which she sat down at eagerly, checking the clock again. With twenty minutes still to open, she produced a book of her own from her purse and opened to where her bookmark had been for too long.
The book was a historical fiction novel, recommended by her cousin in Colorado, about a soldier in World War II writing letters to his family from deep behind enemy lines. She would have said it wasn’t what she usually read — but at the same time, Brown didn’t have anything that she ‘usually read.’ She read anything, provided it was well-written.
The book was well-written, at least, and Brown finished a chapter before standing up to unlock the library doors at precisely eight.
It was another hour before anyone showed. The huge door of the library cracked open, letting in a sliver of the brisk autumnal breeze that was still blowing outside, and a young woman peeked her head into the library nervously.
Brown gave the woman a warm smile, setting her book down. She wasn’t a regular visitor, else Brown would have remembered her face, at least, if not her name.
“Good morning,” Brown made herself say, and the woman stepped hesitantly inside and toward the desk. She jumped at the latching sound as the door shut behind her, refusing entry to the wind. Part of Brown hoped she would just head off into the library, leaving her to her book.
“Hi,” she said slowly, but before Brown could reply she continued, gaining speed almost breathlessly. “Is this library public? Are there good reading spaces? Does it stay quiet if I want to just sit for a little while? If I want to read a book while I’m here do I need to check it out? Will I need to reshelve it myself? Are the books organized by author or by title? Am I allowed to stay here all day? When does the library close? Will you be working all day? Are you the only one working, or is there someone else? How many people usually come in on a Monday? Will it get crowded? Are there already people here or am I the first one? Do I have to reserve a reading space? Will I —”
“Miss,” Brown interrupted softly, holding up a single hand, and the woman quieted, pale cheeks flushing a deep red. She nervously ran her fingers through her long blonde hair, and Brown smiled gently at her.
She was maybe in her mid-twenties, with a cloth bag over her shoulder that was worn with years of use, and an equally worn paperback, peeling cover and dog-eared pages, under her arm. Brown waited for a moment while the flush slowly left the girl’s cheeks, though her blue eyes continued to flick nervously back and forth.
Brown leaned across the desk, speaking softly, though there was no one else in the building to hear them. “Let me show you my favorite spot to read,” she said, and the girl smiled uncertainly. Brown stood and began leading the way through the bookshelves.
“This is the Emerson Public Library,” Brown said quietly as they walked. “We’re open until nine o’clock tonight, and enforce a very strict rule of quiet, with the exception of the children’s corner, which is off in the back left-hand corner. If you take any books off of the shelves, you can place them on the carts throughout the library and I’ll reshelve them for you. All of our books are organized by the Dewey Decimal System, and guides are posted at the ends of each shelf to help you find what you’re looking for.”
The two women reached a spot about midway along the right-hand wall, with a large, plush chair, and a small side table. A floor lamp, providing a soft, warm light, stood behind the chair.
“I’ll be at the front desk all day,” Brown said with a smile, then raised an eyebrow. “You can stay here as long as you like, miss…”
“Oh!” the girl said. “Um, I’m Sarah. Sarah Richardson.” After a moment, he awkwardly extended her hand.
Brown smiled and shook Sarah’s hand, watching the girl’s face. She seemed a little more relaxed, now, staring at the chair. Impulsively, Brown leaned in just a little.
“It’s just as comfortable as it looks,” she said, as if sharing a secret, and Sarah flushed red again, but grinned. “Go ahead and get comfortable, and don’t be afraid to let me know if you need anything.”
Sarah nodded, thanking Brown as she set her bag down. Brown didn’t wait for her to sit, turning to head back to her desk. It really was a comfortable chair — Brown would sometimes stay in the library after hours to enjoy that particular spot — and for a moment Brown was jealous of the girl. She chuckled to herself as she sat down at her desk — that was silly. Opening her book again, she was mostly glad that Sarah hadn’t tried to make any further conversation. Working at a library did come with some perks for someone like Brown.
Mondays tended to be slow at the library, but it wasn’t long before a few of the regulars trickled in. Nathan had finally finished The Everlasting Man and wanted to try Chesterton’s novels — Brown recommended Manalive — and Jessica wanted to explore more fiction from S.E. Reid. Thomas nodded to her without making conversation, heading for the academic research section, and Samuel asked if the library had any books on trains, which Brown was not entirely sure of. She walked the eight-year-old back to the children’s corner so he could take a look on his own — his reading ability had really blossomed recently, and reading the titles could only help — and made small talk with the boy’s father for the minimal time politeness demanded before returning to her desk.
Living in the same town for three decades and working in the same library for half of one meant that Brown knew the majority of the people who walked through the door, and she did her best to make them all feel welcome, though she had never been very comfortable with initiating social interactions. She frequently made recourse to her notepad, where she tried to keep the most important information about each visitor written down. That was how she knew to ask Anthony about his wife’s health — she was doing much better, thank you for remembering — and to wish Timothy a happy birthday, only three days belated. Making people feel welcome was part her job, after all, though blessedly not all or even most of it.
More of the regulars floated in, some floated out, and every once in a while a stranger stepped through the door. When that happened, Brown was quiet, preferring to let them come to her with any questions — and if they didn’t, all the better.
By lunchtime, Brown’s bookmark was a full chapter further along, and her thoughts turned to Sarah, presumably still sitting in the reading nook with her paperback. There had been a certain amount of desperation in her questioning, a nervousness that struck Brown as out of place in the otherwise mundane events of the morning. What could have caused the girl to seek so frantically for a quiet place to read?
Brown stamped down her rising curiosity about the stranger, chiding herself. A person’s life wasn’t a novel, after all. Sarah’s business was Sarah’s business.
Brown’s business was running a public library, and after she finished the store-bought salad she had brought for lunch, she grabbed a pencil and a smaller notepad for her afternoon rounds. Placing a small “Be back soon!” plastic sign on her desk, she began walking the library clockwise, methodically.
The city of Colsend liked to know how many people visited the library at various days and times, for ‘statistical purposes’ on paper, though Brown just thought they needed to give the interns something to do. Regardless, it was her job to count the number of people in the library each day in the early afternoon and right before closing time.
Her heels clicked on the marble floor as she zig-zagged through the bookshelves, making a tick mark on her notepad for every person she saw. She kept her pace steady, metronomical, routine. She smiled to herself as she walked, falling into her usual rhythm.
The children’s section held about a dozen kids between the ages of six and ten, some of whom were trying to find books to read while the others played with the various small toys the library kept stocked. The parents were gathered in a small sitting area next to the children’s section, some reading, some conversing in low tones. When they saw Brown, a few of them nodded politely, and she smiled as she marked them down on her notepad, and then moved on.
There was laughter coming from the back corner, and Brown sighed as she approached, recognizing the voices. Really, could Aaron and Bethany not find a better place to avoid their parents?
The teenagers had stopped laughing by the time Brown reached the reading corner, instead preferring to kiss sloppily on the couch. Brown tapped her foot loudly and cleared her throat.
The couple sprang apart, flushing beet red and pointedly avoiding eye contact with either Brown or each other. Brown raised one finger to her lips, suppressing a smile.
“Quiet, please,” she said, and the two nodded quickly. Brown left them there, thoroughly chagrined. Oh, they’d go back to it soon enough, but at least they’d be quieter about it. She was the librarian, not their mother.
Finally, Brown approached the reading nook she had left Sarah in hours ago, the last stop on her round of the library. She checked her notepad — forty-one was high for a Monday afternoon. Perhaps something had happened that had made people want to check out their local library. Brown had a hard time keeping up with the news, but it wouldn’t be the first time some national or international event brought people back to books.
One shelf away from the reading nook, Brown paused, her regular pace interrupted as she listened. It sounded like… someone crying?
Sure enough, when Brown peered around the shelf, she saw Sarah curled up in the armchair, knees pulled up to her face and arms wrapped around herself, crying softly. The paperback lay on the side table next to an open journal. Sarah didn’t seem to notice her.
Brown marked Sarah on her notepad, and then hesitated. She didn’t want to intrude on the girl, did she? She could return to her desk and continue her book, forgetting about Sarah until she left the library. She was a librarian, after all. Librarians cared for books, not people.
“I don’t know her,” Brown whispered to herself. “I don’t know anything about her. I don’t know what to say, or how to say it, or if it would do any good at all.”
She tapped her foot impatiently, looking at the girl, then turning slightly to look back towards her distant desk.
Never met a stranger.
With a sigh, Brown stepped into the reading nook, sitting down softly on the side table, next to the open journal, which she gently closed. Sarah glanced up at her, eyes red and puffy from crying, Brown presumed, for multiple hours. The girl quickly tried to wipe her eyes, though it only made them worse.
“I’m sorry,” she said quickly, voice cracking. “I can leave, I can get out of here if you need the space, I’ll just grab my stuff and go.”
Brown said nothing, but when Sarah tried to get out of the chair, she raised a hand and the girl stopped. Brown leaned back as best she could without anything to lean against, racking her mind for something to say. This was harder than her father had ever made it seem.
“I had a rosary,” she started, and Sarah scrunched her eyebrows in confusion. “Do you know what a rosary is? A set of prayer beads that Catholics use.” When the girl nodded slowly, Brown continued.
“It was a nice rosary, with fine glass beads and a pretty silver medal, and had a nice slim case with it. I’d had it for years.” Sarah was beginning to relax, but still looked confused. Well, Brown could understand that — she still was not one hundred percent sure where she was going with this herself.
“When I was in college, I was part of a Catholic young women’s group, and we’d pray the rosary together once a week,” she continued. Now she was just telling a story. Maybe it would help, maybe it would not. “And I’d often pray it myself when I could find the time. Well, one day I did find the time, and went to grab my rosary, and it was missing.
“We had prayed at my house the night before, so I thought maybe it had fallen between the couch cushions, or been knocked under a chair. I started looking for it, and, well, long story short, it was gone. I searched everywhere for that rosary, but I just could not find it.
“I was understandably upset. I used an extra rosary whenever the women’s group prayed together, a cheap plastic thing, and eventually I started looking for a new rosary. I would browse the shop windows in the square — there’s a nice little religious store down there, you know, though I did most of my searching online. But none of them seemed… me. Does that make sense?”
Sarah nodded, still confused, but engaged in the story. She sat straight in the chair now, though her knees were still pulled up to her chest and her eyes still puffy from crying. Still, she looked better. Brown continued, the words coming more easily the more she spoke.
“That winter, I went with the women’s group to a conference of young Catholics from around the country. It was a lot of fun, and better yet, religious stores from all over were set up in one of the conference halls. On the third day or so, I went in to see if I couldn’t find myself a rosary. I did a lot of browsing, at first, and saw quite a few of the same rosaries from the stores online. Again, none of them really seemed right for me, so I kept looking around.
“I was almost ready to give up when I noticed a small booth set up in the corner that was displaying rosaries from the Holy Land, from Israel. All handcrafted, and, well, I found this one and fell in love,” Brown reached into one of the pockets sewn onto her skirt, and removed a string of crystalline beads with a small worked metal crucifix hanging at the bottom. Sarah gave a slight gasp as the crystals caught and reflected the light from the floor lamp, covering the small reading corner in thousands of fragmentary glimmers.
Brown let the girl stare at the rosary for a moment before holding it out to her, and Sarah took the loop of crystals with something approaching awe, rolling the beads between her fingers. Brown smiled.
Eventually, the girl went to give the rosary back to Brown, but the librarian shook her head, pushing the beads back at Sarah in a spontaneous decision.
“Keep it,” Brown said. Sarah stuttered.
“B-but, I’m, ah,” she said, and Brown smiled. “I’m not Catholic.”
Brown chuckled. “You don’t have to be Catholic to own a rosary,” she said. “Besides, I’m not telling you to pray it, though if you want to learn how to I’d be happy to teach you.”
“If you don’t want me to pray,” Sarah asked after a moment of looking at the crystals again, furrowing her blonde eyebrows in confusion. “Why are you giving it to me?”
Brown paused. That was the question, wasn’t it?
“It’s your reminder,” Brown said after a moment. “That no matter what you’ve lost, you can always find something more beautiful than you ever imagined.”
Sarah stared at the rosary, a single tear welling in her eye. Then, she smiled.
“Now,” Brown said. “Why don’t you tell me what book you’ve got there? I’m always curious to know what people are reading these days.”
Sarah happily obliged.
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