Chapter Text
Karen had started sorting the bulk of clutter into distinct piles: newspapers, books, file folders, scrap pieces of paper, notebooks, mugs, tins of mints, unused tea bags, and the list went on and on. She had categories, piles, sub piles.
She sat in the middle of the room on the floor, feeling a little sweaty, itchy, and tired. She had also been playing phone tag with the auto shop that did have her car—she still didn’t remember which one was named what—to no avail. All of this for a roughed up car that was legally old enough to drink.
She had been at it for about three hours—that was enough time to warrant a coffee break, right? She tossed a quilting magazine onto the two-foot-high appropriate pile, sneezing as the action upset a layer of dust.
The fall day was in full swing when Karen walked back out the front doors of the library. More people walking the sidewalks, ducking in and out shops and eateries across the street, more cars moving down the main drag. Leaves skittered and swirled on the concrete, and she could smell the spiced scent of their decay carried on a warm breeze.
Hartford’s coffee shop was simply named Beanie’s—Karen remembered Nora mentioning it was named after the owner. It was heavily decorated with pumpkins, paper leaves, and orange lights in the window. She stepped inside to find herself transported inside a cornucopia of pumpkin stacks, leaf garlands, black paper bats on the walls. The smell of coffee mixed with cinnamon sticks and baked goods. There was a small shop display with a “local businesses!” Handwritten sign hanging above it. Baskets of handmade soaps, bookmarks, and hand-poured fall scented candles with minimalist and alluring branding that read honeyheart. There was also a shelf of books claiming to be “Beanie’s faves!”, which were mostly 80’s romance novels with blush-inducing covers like the ones piled high in Winnie’s office.
Karen got into the surprisingly large line—though maybe she should have expected it given there were several fresh looking signs exclaiming “now pouring PSL!” in the window and on several chalkboards. The building was old, and it had been allowed to keep its charm—some exposed brick, creaky but well maintained wood floors, all of the tables and chairs wood but mismatched, vintage art prints on the walls, mixed in with some beautifully cared for houseplants.
One woman ran the counter alone—Beanie, Karen assumed. She was short, wiry, with a shock of short white hair, but exuded force of nature energy. She reminded Karen a little of her maternal grandmother who spent her youth as a roadie for underground rock bands and who took Karen to get a tattoo when she was seventeen. She liked her for it.
When it was Karen’s turn to order, the woman’s gray blue gaze settled on her, a brow a little quirked. “You the librarian?”
Karen was a little jarred, forgetting for a moment that she wasn’t still living in a town where no one would notice if she vanished into thin air. “Sorry,” she collected herself. “How’d you know…?”
“I heard we were getting one, and Sonya Webb said she saw someone matching your description coming out of the library, which she noticed because it’s been closed since Winnie passed.”
Karen had no idea who Sonya Webb was, but guessed she would find out soon enough. She also felt a small twinge in her chest when she realized that the previous librarian whose things she had been pitching and piling up all afternoon belonged to someone this town knew well and likely cared very much about. She decided to tread carefully. “That’s me, Mayor Rowland let me in this morning,” she said. “Your town’s library is just beautiful, I’m really lucky to be working there.”
Karen was happy the woman made a sound of approval. “What’s the name and iced or hot?” She asked.
“Uh, could I get a large iced with honey, cinnamon, and oatmilk?” Karen ordered then paid with the loose ones and change in the bottom of her purse. She considered throwing her last piece of physical cash, a dime, into the tip jar but that felt like an insult more than a gesture of gratitude.
She stepped out of the way so Beanie could take more orders and get her coffee started, turning to look out the window into the town square, when she saw him.
The asshole from the auto shop— looking oversized in a wooden cafe chair, his legs manspread out around the feet of the table. His hands and face were cleaner, but his clothes were the same. He sat by the window with his hair still messy—it seemed to curl on the ends—but no longer hanging in his face. His brow not as tightly knit together, his jawline still sharp but not clenched. He looked softer, less intimidating as he leafed lazily through the newspaper he had sprawled out across the table. He had another coffee cup, now with a poorly drawn monster and the name Frankenstein scrawled on the side.
Karen looked away, pretending to look at the candle display in a social panic. Fuck, fuck, fuck, she didn’t not want to see him again—especially not now when she was pretty sure she had spiderwebs—and potentially an actual spider, there had been a close call—in her hair and buying coffee with loose nickels.
She glanced over at him just as Beanie called out the name for a coffee order, and he looked up, and…
Frankie, now Frankenstein—or more likely, Frank—leaned back a little in his chair when he saw her, glancing over at the counter.He gestured over to the bar where Beanie had set someone named Jennifer’s coffee “Aren’t you going to grab that?” He asked, then smirked. “Well, assuming it cost more than yours.”
Karen’s embarrassment was quickly replaced with the same biting heat in her chest she’d felt that morning, her gaze sharpening. “Don’t you have a child labor violation to babysit so he doesn’t give someone a Ferrari for three hundred dollars?” She asked.
Frank looked truly amused, a brow quirked. “You think someone who owns a Ferrari would bring it to an auto shop in Hartford?”
“I wouldn’t take my piece of shit car to you so probably not,” Karen muttered.
“Good thing you didn’t, then,” Frank mused with an easy, smug smile, picking up his coffee cup.
Karen rolled her eyes. “You know,” she said, her voice short but she kept it low, almost a whisper with all of the other people around. “Neither you nor your fresh-off-the-turnip-truck employee bothered to ask me my name, the make or model of my car, or even say ‘hey this is an incredible price difference: did you bring this in for a battery change or to get tires crafted by the Lord Jesus himself?’”
Frank’s gaze had locked onto her, and it made her feel too warm in her layers of sweater, jacket, scarf. He looked at her expectantly, as though waiting for her to finish.
“And,” Karen continued, too flustered to stop now. “You had to know I’m not from here, that I probably wouldn’t know about the absolutely batshit crazy history of the properties, including six murders in the forties. Not to mention the suspiciously fuzzy documentation about the purchase in the 60s...” Karen babbled, spiraling under his unwavering eye contact, word-vomiting.
“Oh shit, you didn’t get to the 80s yet?” Frank asked before taking a drink of coffee.
“Huh?” Karen shook her head lightly.
“The drug trafficking in the 80s, that’s my favorite Hartford Auto Repair bit of folklore, personally,” Frank said, sitting forward again, one hand returning to the edge of the paper, folding and unfolding with a slow but almost mechanical rhythm.
Karen let out a long sigh, a small laugh dancing on the end. “Talking to me about my manic deep dive isn’t an apology,” she said to him.
“You want an apology?” Frank was once again amused.
“It’s your Facebook review reputation on the line, not mine,” Karen shrugged, smiling a little despite herself.
“I know I came in a little hot,” Frank allowed.
Karen laughed. “Hot? You kinda called me a thief for walking into the wrong building in a town I’ve lived in for two days.”
Frank’s gaze softened a little, though still uncomfortably discerning, painstakingly evaluating.
“Look, I-… I was having a bad morning. Parker is just a kid, I should have been helping him not just going off,” he said, then ran a hand through his hair, shrugging lightly. “So, I am sorry for that.”
Karen considered him for a moment. Despite his teasing, he looked sickeningly genuine now. Puppy dog eyes, truly—dark and penitent.
“Well, I guess I didn’t have to accuse you of running the business into the ground,” Karen sniffed.
Frank’s brow furrowed, but he smiled. “Did you say that, exactly?”
“I definitely thought it,” Karen assured him. “And about egging the place, putting up a for sale sign for eight hundred dollars…”
Frank laughed Karen was caught off guard by the sweet soft edges of the expression manifesting on his lips, the genuine tilt of his head. His laugh was deep like his voice, a rumbling noise that she could feel the timbre of in the joints of her skeleton.
“I’m Frank, by the way,” he told her.
“Yeah, Frankenstein, I figured that out,” Karen said, gesturing to his cup. “And Parker’s name-tag didn’t match Frankie with a heart, so…”
Frank cracked a small smile a little easier this time. “The hearts started after I fixed Beanie’s absolute shit car for the fourth time,” he said, then thrummed his fingers along the top of the newspaper in front of him. They had faint lines of opal scarring, he ran his middle finger along the edge of the newspaper, until they both realized she was staring, and he sat up a little more, pulling his hands away while Karen’s cheeks burned. “Well, I should probably get back,” he said.
“Right, “ Karen agreed, nodding a little too emphatically until she made herself stop. “I should get back to the library,” she said, and Frank paused.
“Oh, you’re the librarian,” he said with a look of recognition.
“First day,” Karen said, reminding herself that apparently it wasn’t weird that everyone knew about her arrival in some way or another.
Frank shook his head a little bit. “Well shit,” he said.
“Oh no,” Karen felt genuinely alarmed. “Don’t tell me Hartford has some kind of violent and controversial past with librarians like they do real estate.”
Karen could see Frank continue to fight a smile, he almost seemed embarrassed by it. Shy, which was so odd to see on the hard, sharp lines of his face.
“Late fees,” said Frank.
“How late?”
“I don’t know, like eighty dollars.”
“Eighty!? You mean they just charged you for the books because you stole them?” Karen’s jaw dropped in mock disgust. “You’ve stolen books from the library—and then had the audacity to yell at me—”
Frank cut her off, but both of them were smiling, he even laughed a little. “It wasn’t on purpose—””
“That’s government property, I think it’s a federal crime.”
“Federal crime my ass!”
“A moral crime of the highest order, then.”
“I had them… A little overdue before it got closed and then I set them somewhere else and now…?” He shrugged uncertainly.
“What kind of monster threatens local literacy, Frank?”
“Look, they were not exactly gems, alright? One was a very, very unabridged version of Moby Dick that still had a due date card in it from 1998—”
“God knows what impoverished college student needed that very copy to write a paper about male impotence in a capitalistic society,” Karen managed through a laugh and Frank shot her a look then continued with a smirk on the corner of his lips.
“Two were ones that someone there slipped in as recommendations that were exceptionally,” he made a vague, uncomfortable gesture. “Graphic,” he said. “Then the purgatory book with like the hell circles…?”
“Dante’s Inferno? That’s actually a poem,” Karen said.
“It sucked,” Frank said with the forcefulness she recognized as a reader--was there anything worse than a shitty read?
Karen almost told him she felt the same way, but didn’t. “That’s considered a deeply seminal piece of literature, Frank,” she said instead.
“Is seminal librarian code for fucked up but not in a fun way?”
Karen laughed a little. “Try Paradise Lost, you might like it better,” she said. “Satan is way more fun in a fucked up way in that one.”
She got another light laugh, his nose scrunching a little—which she found she really, really liked but told herself she shouldn’t notice.
He stood up to leave, not towering over her, exactly, but she did have to tilt her head a little to meet his gaze. He folded the newspaper into a neat rectangle, leaving it on the table, then paused as he looked at something behind her, confused.
Karen slowly turned around to see every pair of eyes in the coffee shop settled on her and Frank, Beanie leading the charge with Karen’s dripping, melting iced coffee drink suspended in her hand.
They had the decency to all turn and pretend they hadn’t been gawking and eavesdropping, except for Beanie who belatedly called out the name for the order. “Karen!” Before setting it down and turning back to the espresso maker.
Karen’s cheeks burned red, and when she looked back at Frank he looked irritable, the same expression from that morning.
“I should get back to work, too,” Karen said abruptly, her face burning with embarrassment, quickly grabbing her coffee off the counter and unable to make eye contact with Frank when she waved and said, “see you around” before darting out the door.
Karen moved quickly down the pavement, hearing the bells on Beanie’s jingling behind her before she heard Frank’s deep voice call out.
“Hey, wait up!”
Karen turned back, and Frank caught up to her quickly. Though as soon as she was looking directly at him again, he shifted on his feet, looking away as he spoke.
“Look, I could…” he started, switching between glancing at the ground and making the most intense eye contact she had ever experienced in her life. “I could take a look at your car, y’know?”
Karen was surprised. “Take a look at it?”
“Yeah, you know, like give you a second opinion. They’re not exactly… Look, I’m biased but they do actually kind of suck.”
Karen considered. His gaze, when settled on her, was earnest—soft, even. An incredible contrast to the flinty, agitated version of him from this morning or the little spark of annoyance just moments before the coffee shop.
“Would it mean I’d have to take down the scathing Facebook review?” Karen joked.
Frank’s expression softened, relaxing a little as he recognized the gentle teasing. “Leave it, the techs love bad reviews, they frame them sometimes,” he said, and she barely kept herself from staring as his fingers methodically strummed at his thigh. “You don’t have to pay me anything, I owe you for being a dickhead” he added. “I’ll look at it and be brutally honest, and if you don’t want me to work on it or they can do it cheaper: I will be shocked but also drop it completely.”
Karen considered. “You don’t have to—“
“I want to,” Frank cut in. “I was an asshole.”
Karen sighed. “You were,” she couldn't deny it.
“So let me apologize,” Frank shrugged.
He held her gaze for a moment, his dark eyes more of the mulled wine tone in the daylight, but still dark and quixotic.
“Ok, fine,” Karen relented. “I’ll have it hauled in the morning…” she said, going to grab her phone.
“Nah, I got that, you don’t have to worry about it,” he said, and Karen could tangibly feel the relief of having one less thing to worry about after weeks of tense decision after decision, reminder after reminder pinging on her phone.
“Oh, you sure?”
“’S no problem,” Frank assured her. “I know Nathan.”
“Oh, yeah Fieldman, he’s the one who picked it up,” Karen said, eyes wide at the coincidence.
Frank looked amused. “Yeah he’s the only guy with a tow truck in Hartford, so.”
“Ah,” Karen sighed. “Right, very, very small town.”
Frank glanced back inside the coffee shop. “Too small, sometimes,” he grumbled.
“Do you need my number?” Karen asked. “For the car,” she added quickly.
“Oh, right, yeah,” Frank said, pulling his phone out of his pocket, unlocking and handing it over.
Karen couldn’t help but spare a glance at his home screen—which was entirely barren besides a browser, phone, messages, contacts… And that was it. Even the factory preset apps like music and wallet were removed. The background was factory settings. Karen threw him a raised eyebrow, but said nothing as she clicked on contacts.
Frank Castiglione (You) it said at the top before Karen hit add contact in the corner. She threw in her information, handing the phone back, and Frank looked at the screen.
“Nice to meet you, Miss Karen Page,” Frank said before re-pocketing the phone.
“Karen is fine,” she said, though realized the she hadn’t told him her name until typing it in.
“I’ll text you,” Frank said. “About the car,” he added, in the same way she had.
“Right,” Karen managed, playing with the hem of her jacket between her fingers, still feeling too warm when he looked directly at her like that. “Well, I’ll see you around, unless you can’t find those books and then I will be forced to impose a ban.
“I will pay for Inferno just so I can burn at least one copy.”
“Things you should never say to a librarian definitely include verbalizing a desire to burn books, Frank.”
“I thought it was a poem,” Frank threw back at her with a trouble-making smile.
The town bell—oh my god they had a bell tower, like she was in the provincial town in Beauty and the Beast—rung out, and Frank shifted his stance.
“I gotta get back, Parker is genuinely a liability when left unsupervised on many different levels.”
“Never would of guessed,” Karen shrugged.
Frank only fought another smile before he turned and walked towards the auto shop. “Tomorrow, Page,” he called over his shoulder, and Karen stood for a moment, before she turned and looked back at the coffee shop window next to her, and several people inside quickly turned and pretended to be deeply invested in their coffee, their book, pumpkins, leaves, and paper bats.