July 5

HE MEANT TO take the two library books back to the Heights and leave them on the Mackeys’ front porch so Katie would find them there once she was home. But as he walked up Fourteenth Street, past the public library, he saw Junior Mackey and Gilley on the courthouse square studying Katie’s bicycle. Junior lifted his head and looked all around him, and Mr. Dees slipped behind a pine tree on the library’s lawn, afraid that Junior would see him. He watched until Junior and Gilley had lifted Katie’s bicycle into the trunk of their car and driven away. He was afraid then to keep walking toward the Heights, afraid to try to leave the books on the Mackeys’ front porch. He was carrying too many secrets that might come out if the Mackeys happened to spot him.

So he did the only thing he could think to do: he dropped Henry and Beezus into the after-hours return bin. He couldn’t bear to let The Long Winter go because it had been one of the Little House books that Katie and Rene Cherry were anguishing over that first time he had come to tutor Katie. She had said the Ingalls children’s names with such love in her voice, and for that reason alone he couldn’t bear to put the book into the bin. He’d keep it just awhile simply because she had touched it, held it in her hands, and he wanted it, like the fluff of hair from her brush and the snapshot he’d stolen from her dresser, wanted it close to him.

He dropped Henry and Beezus into the bin, remembering only after the door had closed what he had left beneath the jacket, where he imagined no one would ever see it, and if by some chance anyone ever did, they wouldn’t think anything odd about it. Just some kid, they’d say, some kid having a lark.