Page 48 of Finders Keepers
“I’ll be right back. I’m just going to the bathroom,” I tell Mrs. MacDonald, who, as promised, has not moved from her chair since taking her place in it.
“Do you want a medal or something?” she snaps as she slowly rubs her right hand with her left. I pause outside of the special collections room, listening to her sigh heavily and mumble to herself about “these damned fingers” and “that damned doctor” not sending in a refill for her pills.
“Can I get you anything? Do anything for you?” I make sureto ask when I return. I know it’s a long shot, but considering she let me grab the materials on my own, maybe she’s in enough discomfort to say yes.
“Yeah,” she surprises me by saying. “You can take this godforsaken job so I can finally retire.”
I blink at her. “I’m sorry?”
“You’re an archivist.”
“I’m not…I mean, I was, or I’m technically qualified to be, but I—”
She waves away my bumbling protest with a slightly clawed hand. “I’ve been doing this job for sixty years,” she says.
Sixty?! I knew she’d been here a good long time, butsixtyyears?!
“I thought about retiring back in 1999. All that Y2K bullshit. Didn’t want to deal with it. But then there was talk about closing down the special collections room completely if I left. Deaccessioning everything. I couldn’t let that happen, could I?”
“Of course not,” I say.
“So I stayed. And stayed. And stayed. And now it’s 2024, and—”
“2025,” I correct. She frowns. “Happens to the best of us,” I assure her.
“Whatever year it is, I shouldn’t still be here. I should be in Arizona with my great-grandchildren. Now that you’re here, you can take over. I don’t have to worry.”
My first emotion at her words is elation. Like Santa Claus has hand-selected me to be his successor. Quickly, though, it dissipates as I remember I can’t accept. “But Mrs. MacDonald, I’mnothere. I don’t live in Catoctin. I’m only visiting for—”
“You got a job back wherever you came from?” she asks bluntly.
“No.”
“You got a husband there? Kids?”
“Um. No.”
“A house?”
“Ha. Definitely not.”
“And your parents are here?”
“They are.”
“So what’s the problem?” The way she says this, it’s as if she thinks it’s all very simple.
And maybe it would be, if I were the person I was when I first discovered this room and everything it held. Or even the person I was when I considered archives as a career. But so much has happened since then that taking over for Mrs. MacDonald would feel like a step backward. Settling for something I told myself wasn’t worth wanting. If that was a lie, if I didn’t really mean that, then the last few years of my life were a waste. That’s a bit too much to swallow right now.
“I am extremely flattered that you think I’m a good choice. Really.” Mrs. MacDonald has always held a place in my heart as the first person to introduce me to the world of archival research. Everything I decided to throw myself into later might not have ever been an option if Quentin and I hadn’t spent time with her in this room in the summer of 2008. Her wanting me to be her successor is truly an honor I would never have expected. “But I’m sorry, I can’t.”
“Can’t, can’t, can’t,” she says dismissively. “Don’t talk to me about can’t. There’s a difference between can’t and won’t. Ican’trun a marathon. Ican’ttalk to my dead husband. Ican’tlive on my own much longer. Lots of things you can’t do when you’re my age. And lots of things you can do but won’t when you’re young.”
I try to absorb the lesson while also figuring out the best way to counter it. Before I come up with my response, Mrs. MacDonald lowers her voice to something gentler. “Let me know if you change your mind. But don’t take too long. Don’t want to get to my granddaughter’s house in Tucson only to croak on her doorstep.”
“I don’t think you need to worry about that,” I say with a small smile. “I have it under good authority that you’re never dying.”
“Well, you will, one day,” she says bluntly. “So figure out what it is you want in life before the real ‘can’ts’ come to get you.”
