Chapter 5 - The Black Squares [https://cdn.midjourney.com/22fecc69-7376-4338-910a-8ad2d6052c03/0_3.png]
“Did it happen when you were camping?”
“I don’t enjoy talking about it.” The door swung open and two guys lumbered in, dirty from work and looking thirsty. The bartender tapped the counter and left her to her drink. When she glanced over at the woman in the corner, she met her focused gaze. With a shudder, she touched the photograph in her back pocket. Tipping her glass up to gain amber courage, she steeled herself to go ask the drunk to look at her picture. That is what she was here for. As she approached, the woman’s eyes narrowed.
“If you are coming to ask me something, you better bring a beer.”
“Beer after,” Kennedy said. Unwilling to hand her the photo, she held the Polaroid up for the woman to view. “Do you know either of them? My parents lived here twenty-four years ago.”
“Nope. Now get me the beer you owe me.”
“Not on your life.”
The woman’s hand snapped out and locked onto her wrist. “I answered your question.”
Jerking her arm back, Kennedy freed her hand. “If you tell me anything useful, you will get your beer.”
Her frown turned down like a cartoon. “Go to the town library. Ask to look at the yearbooks.” Leaning back, she folded her arms over her chest. “Two answers, two beers.” Instead of interrupting the bartender, Kennedy dug out her wallet and placed six dollars on the table. From across the room, the two male customers focused on her. The intensity of the stares kept her from asking them about her parents. She’d try the library first when it opened in the morning.
*
Only a few blocks away, full of pancakes and coffee, Kennedy headed toward the library next to the high school. If she limited herself to two meals a day, she could keep her budget in check. Outside the front door, they had a rolling cart filled with books tagged with a paper sign that said free. Standing in the spring heat, hair damp at the back of her neck, she chose the air conditioning over a new book. Maybe on the way out. The two-room library had plenty of books, but no people. Behind the library desk, there was a chair.
Leaning forward, she called out, “Hello?”
“I’ll be right with you.” A young man close to her own age slipped through a door marked office, with a pile of books in his arms. Both of his ears were pierced, and he had dark brown hair framing his clean-shaven face. “What can I do for you? Are you the new math teacher?”
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“No, I’m just visiting, on vacation.”
He laughed and began placing the books on a sorting cart. “You came here to go on vacation? To do what? Visit our bustling laundromat?”
“I’m looking for my history.” She offered him the photograph. “These are my birth parents. Somebody told me you have high school yearbooks here.”
“We used to, but all of that got digitized. You can use one of our computers to pull up the scanned versions.”
*
Excited to have a thread to follow, she paid rapt attention as he explained how she could pull up every year since 1947 and scroll through the pages.
“I don’t need to go back that far.” Kennedy pulled up the oldest year she considered a possibility and began looking through the pictures with her parent’s photo next to her keyboard for reference.
“You can enlarge the pages if you want.” The librarian lingered at her shoulder.
In the third row, of Mrs. Miller’s class, two of the students didn’t have a picture. “Why are the pictures black? Did these kids not take one?”
“It used to be a thing around here. When someone died, they would blacken the picture in the book. Sometimes there is a shadow, but whoever did the censoring, was serious about their job. It’s a shame.”
“Why would they do that?” The next page had six blackened squares.
“It’s a local tradition. Two years ago, when the state sent me here to update the library’s technology, I discovered what was happening and stopped the practice on our copies. In the beginning, I wanted to replace what we had with complete versions, but there aren’t any. There are local superstitions. It’s part of why I moved our copies to a digital format. Of course, space is an issue here. We always need more shelf room. When we had physical versions, people would come in after a death in their family, and ask for their yearbooks. Often crying, they would black out their family member’s image in every book.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. This conversation is one of the longest I’ve had in town since I got here.” He winked at her. “I’m hoping that the new math teacher is a guy, a single one.”
“An attractive one?”
“I can dream.” He sat down on the edge of the desk. “It gets lonely around here. The town folk don’t care for outsiders. When I have a day off, I head into the city and stay with friends.” Hands in his lap, he asked, “Any chance you are going to stick around for a while?”
Looking up from the page of photographs, Kennedy said, “Less than a week. It’s all I can afford.”
“So what is this Nancy Drew mystery you are solving? Why not contact the adoption agency?”
“It was private. I tried to find the lawyer on the paperwork this winter, but I had no luck.” She shifted the screen to the next page. “I just want to know their names.”
“Well, keep looking. Maybe you will find them.” He patted his thighs. “If I want to be ready for the after-school rush, I have to finish my shelving.”
“Are you the only librarian?”
“One of two. But Mrs. Simpson isn’t very social and mostly, she naps.”
*
No luck. At every black square, she paused and pondered the name beneath. Hungry and tired, she went to where the librarian was reading to two little children. She raised her hand to draw his attention and say goodbye. Eight adults stood close to the wall, attentive, mostly men. The parental ratio seemed out of whack. As she’d scrolled through the high school yearbooks, she’d noticed that each year the size of the classes diminished. Did a factory close? There had been no children on the playground she’d passed this morning.