Page 4 of Mountains Divide Us

“Funny,” she said, crossing her arms too.

Oh yeah. That was me. A regular ol’ comedian. If I told a joke at the station, my co-workers would probably drop dead from shock.

“Samantha but Sam” looked like she came from a different era, a made-up one with her long skirt and pink cat-eye glasses. Her top was old-fashioned, too, like something from some frontier TV show. It was a white, short-sleeved getup, with frills around her upper arms and pearl buttons ascending the soft curve of her neck. Her eye makeup was accented with a black flip at the edges of her eyes. Except for her blue hair and combat boots, she looked completely different than any other woman her age, whatever that was.

I was still wondering.

Whatever number, it was too young for me. And I was too old for her. That was clear. My vision was going. I’d barely been able to read the damn library card application she’d made me fill out. Shit was getting all fuzzy when I tried to see things up close.

If that wasn’t a definitive sign of old age, I had no clue what was.

As I contemplated the age gap between us, trying to remind myself that I wasn’t interested in getting involved with anyone, never mind if she was beautiful or not, a group of little kids poured through the library door, their parents following behind, chatting and laughing with each other, and Samantha smiled.

Whoa.

She pulled the pencil from her bun, and the hair uncoiled and slipped down her back, like water, and I watched her gaze at the kids as they ran around like rabid monkeys, chasing each other and giggling. Her smile lit the whole place up. It changed the shape of her face and made her seem like a wholly different person than the one I’d just been holding in my arms.

She had me rethinking this whole library thing. What was the harm in coming back again? Once I’d gotten my card, I’d need to come back to get my books anyway. And when I’d read those, I’d need more, right? Not a lot of people used the library in Wisper, so maybe if I did, it would start a trend.

Yeah, right. Frank Sims, a trendsetter? But still. I’d be back. I knew that for sure as she blinked and one lone dimple deepened on her right cheek.

“See you Tuesday,” I said.

Her eyes darted up to mine, and she threw that smile my way finally. “Okay. Thanks for… you know, saving me, even though it was your fault I fell.” She was joking. The little smirk in her eyes told me so.

Nodding once, I knocked on the counter and left the library, thinking, But how old is too old, really? There’s no law about it. Well, okay, there were a lot of laws about it, but if she was running a library, she had at least graduated college. If I wasn’t wrong, she was in her late twenties, maybe even early thirties. Technically, I was still in my forties.

That wasn’t so far apart.

CHAPTER TWO

SAMANTHA

ONE YEAR AND, LIKE, FOUR MONTHS LATER…

“Does there have to be so much”—Mrs. DuBois lowered her voice as she flipped through the paperback copy of a steamy contemporary romance I’d handed to her—“sex in every book we read?” She stopped in the middle, focusing on whatever scene she’d landed on, and her eyes went wide, her mouth forming into an O.

An odd group of women occupied various mismatched chairs in the reading room at the Wisper, Wyoming public library, my new favorite place since I’d taken the job here over a year ago. I was a little nervous. I’d never been a part of a large group of friends like this. Technically, we weren’t friends yet, just acquaintances, but I was hopeful we’d get there.

The last few years hadn’t been a picnic.

Who was I kidding? They were hell.

Getting pregnant in grad school had been unexpected, and then losing the baby in a whirlwind of bleeding, ambulances, and surgeries wasn’t exactly a day at the boardwalk.

There were several months when I could barely get out of bed. I couldn’t find a reason to, and I cried most of the time. At one point, I wondered if I’d even finish my graduate degree in library sciences, the thing I’d been chasing for more than eight years.

Finally, I’d pulled myself up by my bootstraps, made myself shower and eat on a semi-normal schedule, and graduated. I took the job in Wisper and moved on a whim, but what I’d left behind in Florida was still like this big neon sign in my mind, flashing: You’re hurt! Don’t forget! You can’t have that thing you really wanted, the thing you thought would make you happy for the rest of your life.

I could’ve used a big group of friends to help peel me off my sofa. But after a lot of soul searching, I was trying to move on. And if I could find some girlfriends who liked to read and then talk about the books? What more could a librarian want? But I’d been in Wisper for a while now, and the friends I’d made were still few and far between: Brady, who I’d known since childhood, Theo, Juneau, and Vern. Vern was really technically more like the library’s occasional handyman, but he was nice to me, so I counted him. He’d fixed the front door for me once when it got so stuck in the doorjamb I’d had to crawl in through a window.

My gramps was my friend, too, probably my best friend, and looking back, I wondered why I hadn’t come to Wisper sooner. Being around him was like sunshine on a cloudy day, which was fitting since he’d nicknamed me Sunny the day I was born. Short for Sunshine. Unfortunately, Gramps was recharging his own sunny disposition at my parents’ house in Clearwater while they were working on a project in Norway. At least, that’s where I thought they’d emailed they were going this time. They rarely called. Why bother when email is so efficient?

But it wasn’t just Gramps I missed. Giving up the dreams you’d once thought you couldn’t live without was… lonely.

There was no one to blame for what had been taken from me, though, so I couldn’t really call it “giving up” because I’d had no say in the matter. And if I could’ve continued to blame my ex-boyfriend, Tyler, I would have. He deserved some of my anger, especially because of his “This is really messing up my plans for the future, Sam” comment before I’d even been released from the hospital, but none of what had happened was actually his fault.

Sure, he could’ve handled it loads better. I mean, come on. He was five years older than me, with perfect credit and a pristine health insurance policy and, by the time we’d started dating, had already begun to thrive in his career as a project manager at a new tech startup. Now, while I was struggling to find myself, to force myself to adopt new dreams, he was off living the life he’d promised me before things had all gone to shit, with a wife and two kids, a swing set in the backyard, and yearly summer trips to the Adirondacks. But still, I couldn’t blame him.

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