Page 20 of Head Room

“So...”

Hannah’s introductory syllable brought my attention back to her.

She immediately followed up with, “Here,” and straightened her arms, so the paper bag lightly contacted my midsection.

Automatically, I grasped it.

“It’s Irene’s book.She was working on it right up to the end, poor lady.”

“But why give it to me?”

“Oh, because the sergeant said to.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

“Excuse me?Hetold you to give me the manuscript his wife was writing?”

She nodded earnestly.“We were talking about it and I said how it was a pity she didn’t finish and he said there was already an awful lot of good in it and he wished it could be published somehow and I said he should talk to Ivy Short at the library, because she knows all about books and he said he thought you were the person who should get it because you’re a smart person who looks into scams and crimes and things, like in those specials on TV and he said you’d know how to find things in it that other people wouldn’t, and if it ever came to that, that’s what I should do with it, so I am.”

After the convolutedhe said, I saidpath, that ending piqued my interest.

Was there something in the manuscript that would reveal...something?

Since I didn’t know what was going on, I didn’t know what to even hope for.Unless it said on Page Forty-Seven:This is the answer to all Colonel Crawford’s questions and makes everything clear.

Except the woman died well before this situation.

And yet, I couldn’t stop myself from being a little optimistic when I asked, “What’s it about?Does it tell the story of her life with the sergeant?Or maybe a mystery?A spy thriller?”

“Oh, no, nothing like that.It’s a historical romance.”

“A historical romance?”

With much more enthusiasm than I had voiced, she said, “Uh-huh.It’s set here in Wyoming.Well, it starts somewhere else, but then they come here.And it’s mostly here.She said the people are fiction, but the background’s real.”

Nothing against historical romances, but the chances the manuscript would have a magic answer just plummeted.

“Have you read it?”

“Oh, no.When she told me a little about it, she said she didn’t let anybody read it.Not even the sergeant.And when he and I first talked about it — not right after she died, but around Christmas—”

She stopped, clearly going into memory mode.

She shook her head, then picked up, “But it had to be recent we talked about it again, because I remember Vidalia was wearing a romper my cousin passed down this month.Striped.Real cute.”

“What did he say about it?The manuscript,” I clarified, not wildly interested in his comments on the romper.

“What I said about giving you the manuscript.That’s why I was confused.”

She wasn’t alone.“Confused about what?”

“Back at Christmas he said he hadn’t read it and it was real hard that she’d never get to finish it or get it published and then, last week, he said the opposite, that he had read it and you’d know what to do with it, which had to mean about publishing it, right?And Penny said people can change their minds and their hearts when they’re grieving, so I figured that’s what it was.”

Penny, the sage of the supermarket, was right, of course.She usually was.

Once you sorted out what she was saying.

Still, I clung to the possibility of the manuscript offering answers.I was particularly hopeful for Page Forty-Seven.