Page 70 of Midnight Enemy

“They are, rather. I don’t read them all cover to cover. I tend to dip into them for reference or to check facts.”

She continues walking, past another bookcase of finance, property, investment, and management books. “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, The Making of a Manager, How to Deal with Difficult People. Like me?”

I just smile.

She carries on to the next bookcase. “Oh… these ones are different. Teach Students How to Learn, McKeachie’s Teaching Tips, Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning. Do you teach?”

I nod. “At the university. One afternoon a week.”

Beneath it is a shelf containing books on coaching rugby. “Rugby Drills, Rugby Skills, Tactics and Rules, Confessions of a Rugby Mercenary. You coach rugby?”

I nod again. “At the local high school with a friend who’s a teacher.”

“Hmm.” She moves on to the next shelf. “Lots on space,” she says. “Astronomy, the solar system, the International Space Station. Sports. And… oh my God…” She stops by the numerous shelves of biographies. “Steve Jobs, Carrie Fisher, Oscar Wilde, Sylvia Plath, Buster Keaton, Pontius Pilate, Thelonious Monk…”

“I’m interested in people,” I say with a shrug.

“I saw a Kindle on the table. Do you use it?”

“I do. I read a lot. Fiction on the Kindle. I tend to buy non-fiction as hardbacks.”

She stares at the next shelves and gives me an interested look. “Poetry?”

I don’t say anything.

She looks back and runs a finger along them. “Amanda Lovelace, Shel Silverstein, Rupi Kaur, John Milton, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Homer, Coleridge, Robert Frost… Wow, lots of collections… Every poet I can think of is here. And books on writing poetry! A Poetry Handbook. Poemcrazy. A Little Book on Form. Writing Haiku. The Sounds of Poetry.” She looks at me. “Do you write poetry?”

I’ve never told a soul about the poems I write. I slide my hands into the pockets of my trousers and study my bare feet.

She comes up to me. “Do you think I’m going to mock you for it?”

I shrug. “I’m not showing you any.”

“Okay.”

“I only do it for fun and it’s terrible.”

She tips her head to the side to look at my face. “I’m not a literary snob, Orson. Poetry should be for everyone to both read and write, just like art. It’s not about creating a masterpiece. It’s about expressing yourself.” She lifts a hand to my face. “Your father has really done a number on you, hasn’t he?”

“Actually, it wasn’t him.”

“Oh?”

I frown. “It doesn’t feel right to speak ill of the dead.”

She strokes my face. “It’s not speaking ill if it’s stating a fact.”

I suppose that’s true. I huff a sigh. “My mother found a folder of poems I’d written once. She threw them away and told me to stop being childish.”

Her jaw drops. “Seriously?”

“She didn’t agree with pastimes that were ‘unproductive’. Her word.”

She looks genuinely puzzled. Then she says, “Do you write anything else?”

Man, this girl is astute. “Ah… some bits and pieces.”

“Like…”

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