Cold Fire

AND ADVENTURERS WELCOME. ALL OTHERS STAY OUT!
    “Nice,” Holly said sincerely, indicating the poster. “You really put yourself into this job.”
    “Keeps me out of barrooms,” Mrs. Glynn said, with a grin that made it clear why any kid would like her.
    Holly said, “My fiancee here has spoken so highly of you. Maybe you don't remember him after twenty-five years.”
    Mrs. Glynn looked speculatively at Jim.
    He said, “I'm Jim Ironheart, Mrs. Glynn.”
    “Of course I remember you! You were the most special little boy.” She got up, leaned across the desk, and insisted on getting a hug from Jim. Releasing him, turning to Holly, she said, “So you're going to be marrying my Jimmy. That's wonderful! A lot of kids have passed through here since I've been running the place, even for a town this small, and I can't pretend I'd remember all of them. But Jimmy was special. He was a very special boy.”
    Holly heard, again, how Jim had had an insatiable appetite for fantasy fiction, how he'd been so terribly quiet his first year in town, and how he'd been totally mute during his second year, after the sudden death of his grandmother.
    Holly seized that opening: “You know, Mrs. Glynn, one of the reasons Jim brought me back here was to see if we might like to live in the farmhouse, at least for a while—”
    “It's a nicer town than it looks,” Mrs. Glynn said. “You'd be happy here, I'll guarantee it. In fact, let me issue you a couple of library cards!” She sat down and pulled open a desk drawer.
    As the librarian withdrew two cards from the drawer and picked up a pen, Holly said, “Well, the thing is … there're as many bad memories for him as good, and Lena's death is one of the worst.”
    “And the thing is,” Jim picked up, “I was only ten when she died—well, almost eleven—and I guess maybe I made myself forget some of what happened. I'm not too clear on how she died, the details, and I was wondering if you remember …”
    Holly decided that he might make a decent interviewer after all.
    Mrs. Glynn said, “I can't say I recall the details of it. And I guess nobody'll ever know what on earth she was doing out in that old mill in the middle of the night. Henry, your grandpa, said she sometimes went there just to get away from things. It was peaceful and cool, a place she could do a little knitting and sort of meditate. And, of course, in those days it wasn't quite the ruin it's become. Still … it seemed odd she'd be out there knitting at two o'clock in the morning.”
    As the librarian recounted what she could recall of Lena's death, confirming that Holly's dream had really been Jim's memory, Holly was touched by both dread and nausea. What Eloise Glynn did not seem to know, what perhaps no one knew, was that Lena had not been in that mill alone.
    Jim had been there, too.
    And only Jim had come out of it alive.
    Holly glanced at him and saw that he had lost all color in his face again. He was not merely pale now. He was as gray as the sky outside.
    Mrs. Glynn asked Holly for her driver's license, to complete the library card, and even though Holly didn't want the card, she produced the license.
    The librarian said, “Jim, I think what got you through all that pain and loss, more than anything, was books. You pulled way into yourself, read all the time, and I think you used fantasy as sort of a painkiller.” She handed Holly the license and library card, and said to her: “Jim was an awfully bright boy. He could get totally into a book, it became real for him.”
    Yeah, Holly thought, did it ever.
    “When he first came to town and I heard he'd never been to a real school before, been educated by his parents, I thought that was just terrible, even if they did have to travel all the time with that nightclub act of theirs—”
    Holly recalled the gallery of photographs on Jim's study walls in Laguna Niguel: Miami, Atlantic City, New York, London, Chicago, Las Vegas …
    “—but they'd actually done a pretty fine job. At least they'd turned him into a booklover, and that served him well later.” She turned to Jim. “I suppose you haven't asked your grandpa about Lena's death because you figure it might upset him to talk about it. But I think he's not as fragile as you imagine, and he'd know more about it than anyone, of course.” Mrs. Glynn addressed Holly again: “Is something wrong, dear?”
    Holly realized she was standing with the blue library card in her hand, statue-still, like one