6 - Pages of Sin

shoes.”
    Byron continued talking but I was lost in my own thoughts. I felt so awful for him, knowing his wife must have suffered so much. But in another part of my mind (an admittedly shallow part of my mind), I knew that I never could have killed myself before checking out that cute new pair of shoes.

Chapter Five
     
    That evening, I arrived at the library an hour early to set up the room for my book-repair class. It was good to see that the library was a quiet but busy hubbub of activity at this time of day. At the front desk, the assistant librarian handed me a copy of the sign-up sheet, then led the way upstairs to the meeting room. Not that I needed a guide; I knew my way around the Dharma Library probably better than the librarian who was giving me the “guest” spiel as we climbed the stairs.
    In the nondescript community room, four long utility tables had been set up in a chevron pattern, all facing one long table at the front of the room. There were enough chairs for twenty attendees and I checked the list again.
    “This is more chairs than we’ll need,” I said.
    “Oh no, five more people signed up today,” the assistant said, grinning. “This is turning out to be one of our most popular events this month.”
    “That’s great.” The more book lovers, the better, I thought. “Good thing I brought some extra supplies and tools.”
    “Do you need help setting up?”
    I checked my wristwatch. “No, thanks. I’ve got plenty of time to arrange things.”
    She left the room and I pulled my small dolly over to the front table. I lifted the two boxes of Wanda’s books onto the table, then laid out and organized my tools and supplies in the particular order I liked them to be.
    The busy work kept my mind from playing Byron’s words over and over in my mind. It was pretty obvious to me that Byron had still been deeply in love with his wife. Wanda must have known how he felt. So Marjorie had called her that morning to tell her she was coming over with a brand new pair of shoes. Had Wanda chosen that day to kill herself so that Marjorie would find her instead of Byron? Maybe she didn’t want Byron to be the one to find her because it would hurt him too much.
    Any way you looked at it, Wanda’s death was heartbreaking. And it left me with more questions than answers.
    I shook my head to get rid of all those sad thoughts. I’d completed setting up my own work area, so I moved to the attendees’ tables. At each place, I laid down a thick place mat that could double as a cutting board. On it, I placed a bundle of supplies and tools each person would use to complete the assignments I planned to give them.
    It might sound odd, but this quiet time prior to the students arriving for class was one of my favorite parts of teaching. I preferred everything to be ordered and methodical and I think my attendees appreciated the attention to detail. I had tried in the past to give everyone free access to tools and supplies, but that had proven to be too chaotic, so I’d gone back to setting things up in my own orderly style. It’s not that I was a control freak. Not really. Oh, fine, I was a control freak, but it worked for me.
    Once I finished laying everything out, I sat down at my table and studied the list of attendees. I found Robin’s name at the end of the list and was happy to know I would have a friend in the room.
    One of the library assistants had typed up the list and next to each attendee’s name, they’d added either an occupation or the person’s reason for taking the class. Eight of them were library employees who were looking for ways to make their inventory last longer. The rest were simply book lovers. That makes sense, I thought with a smile. I qualified as one of those, too.
    Two women strolled into the room and I stood up to greet them. “Hi, I’m Brooklyn Wainwright. Are you here for the book-repair class?”
    “Yes,” the taller woman said. “I’m Celeste and this is Trudy.”
    “Hi,” I said, popping open the packing boxes. “Come on over and pick out a book.”
    “Cool,” Celeste said, and peeked into the box. “Some of these are beautiful.”
    Trudy looked at me with an apologetic frown. “What did you say your name was? I didn’t catch it.”
    “Call me Brooklyn,” I said, and added, “Thanks for reminding me.” She laughed, then nodded in approval as I pulled a sheet of name tag labels from my box of supplies, along with two markers. I quickly wrote my own