Brooke ‘Bookeeper’'s Arc

Chapter 4 of 32

They had not gone a mile before Webster slowed and turned them back toward town. He had something to show her, he said, before she walked two weeks into nothing. The boy looked up at Brooke. She nodded, and they followed Webster down a side road to a small corner stand stacked with neat rows of newsprint. Outside the door, a tall board held his latest paper pinned under glass. Brooke read the headline twice. It was about Rust. About empty shelves and a town that had stopped reading. He had been writing about her without saying her name. He walked her two doors down to a little cafe with books in the windows. A small iron table sat under the awning, two chairs pulled close. He set his notebook between them. "Write with me," he said. "One column a week. About the road. About the book you're going to find. Make a story people can't ignore." Brooke sat. She thought of the boy, of the shelves, of two weeks of road still ahead. She picked up the pencil and signed her name across the top of his page. The journey was the same, but now it had a witness, and a promise of ink waiting on the other end.