The Library of Shadows

by Rachel Moore

But for now, she had adrenaline in her veins, ivy residue coating her tongue, and a ghost at her side who smelled like New England forests and candle smoke and crisp, yellow pages—like home, if she had one.

“When you love someone, it’s like building a library and filling the shelves. It doesn’t matter how many years it’s been since Austen wrote Emma or Fitzgerald wrote This Side of Paradise. We can still pull them from the bookcases and dive back into the words, the same as the day they were written. All the years and memories are still right here, cataloged inside us.”

Sobbing

Maybe sepia-toned nostalgia was its own type of haunting. The ache of missing something you could never have again.

Alone was a canyon, and Este had carved it out herself.