The book drop at the Lake Street branch was emptied every morning at nine by whoever got there first, and on Tuesdays that was always Dot Engquist. She had retired from the reference desk three years earlier, and she still came in once a week to shelve, to straighten the paperback spinner and to take one butterscotch from the jar at circulation, which she considered part of her pension.
That Tuesday the bin held eleven picture books, two cookbooks, a DVD with no DVD in it and a hardback copy of Rebecca in a plastic library jacket gone yellow as old teeth. The due date card was still in the pocket. The last stamp read March 3, 1983.
Dot turned the book over. Taped inside the back cover, flat and neat, was a brass house key with a paper tag on a string. The tag had one word on it in blue ink, in a hand she almost recognised: Sorry.
This is as far as the free sample goes — the rest of Overdue at Lake Street is waiting for you.
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