The Mysterious Disappearance of the Reluctant Book Fairy Read Online Free Page A

repeat of her early years in which she’d discovered the pedestrian predilections of her peers in matters literary. To know that they had grown into adults whose tastes had not altered …? Life was hard enough, Annapurna thought.
    She stamped three books for a local woman. She answered four questions from a man whose knowledge of how to use the library- provided WiFi began and ended with turning a computer on. When at last she was free, she cast a look round the library to make certain she and Monie Reardon Pillerton were not being observed. Finding the coast clear, she hustled Monie behind the check out counter, through the librarian’s office, and into the supply closet, which she had made ready.
    A camping cot found on Craig’s List would serve as the launching pad. A thin mattress covered it and around this was tucked a quilt purchased at a fund raiser for the town’s feral cats, always in want of a decent meal. Mood lighting was provided by a candle carefully sheltered by a hurricane globe. The line of reality—so Annapurna thought of the boat’s line that would be used to anchor Monie—lay curled at the foot of the cot.
    Monie had brought Rebecca with her as her memory told her to do. She confessed herself so excited that she feared she’d “let loose in her pants.” Disconcerted, Annapurna offered her friend the lavatory at once. “Just an expression ,” Monie said with a laugh. “I hope I still have bladder control, Janet.” She winced as soon as she said Annapurna’s birth name. She apologized quickly. It was all due to excitement, she said. She could only imagine what it was going to be like to witness Maxim de Winter’s proposal of marriage to his youthful, inarticulate but nonetheless soon-to-be blushing bride.
    â€œSo you’ve decided?” Annapurna asked her. “You don’t want the Mrs. Danvers scene?”
    â€œMaybe later,” Monie told her, which should, of course, have warned Annapurna of things to come. But at the moment the bell on the checkout desk rang peremptorily.
    â€œYou’ll have to wait a moment,” Annapurna told her friend.
    â€œDamn it! But there’s so little time,” was Monie’s reply.
    Annapurna wanted to tell her that it wasn’t an overlong scene in the book anyway: just the narrator interrupting Maxim in the middle of shaving, followed by her wretched and lovestruck goodbye to him, followed by breakfast on the terrace, followed by an abrupt proposal of marriage made over marmalade which, let’s face it, was one of the more forgettable marriage proposals ever made. As Annapurna recalled … Hadn’t the word ninny even come into play? Perhaps not. But the word love certainly hadn’t. For heaven’s sake, even the imperious Mr. Darcy had managed to cram love among the various insults to Elizabeth Bennett’s family. But … no matter. Monie would get her moment in Monte Carlo in which the narrator’s life is turned upside down and in that moment Monie too could dream of what it would have been like to be the wife of the dark, brooding, desperately unhappy but at the same time filthy rich Maxim de Winter.
    First, however, she had to see to whoever was ringing the checkout desk bell. And thus she met Mildred Banfry, the woman who would forever alter the existence that Annapurna had grown to find so personally burdensome.
    It must be said that Mildred Banfry did not for an instant look like a life changer. She didn’t look like any kind of changer at all. She looked precisely the way someone named Mildred Banfry would look, although Annapurna did not, of course, know her name in the moment that her gaze fell upon her. What she did know was what she saw: gangly, potentially suffering from late onset sexual dysphoria, a horrifying dress sense even for this part of the world which was not known for individuals capable of putting together something that might