Excerpt from How Can I Help You by Laura Sims, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

MARGO

The moment I walked through the front door, I knew. That deep, abiding quiet, and the sense that the outside world couldn't reach me here. I was like someone chased by demons across the threshold of a church, stepping into the library that first time. I could have turned around, right there at the door, and stuck my tongue out at the world.

Can't catch me.

I didn't do it, and besides, the world wasn't watching. Couldn't find me anyway, could it? I'd already changed my hair and makeup, my clothes, my voice, and even the way I walked. I'd changed my name, too. I'd been Jane but I was Margo now. I liked Margo. Jane would have turned and stuck her tongue out, but Margo never would. No, Margo simply stood in the vestibule, shoulders back and head held high like a queen.

I hadn't spent much time in libraries before then. It was quiet as a nighttime ICU ward-maybe quieter, without all the noise that goes with slow dying: the whoosh of respirators, the mechanical beeps of infusion pumps. I stared up at the high, vaulted ceiling and around at the egg-white walls, then sat down at one of the public computers. I checked the want ads and saw one for circulation clerk right there at the Carlyle Public Library. I toiled over a cover letter and résumé for an hour or so, then handed them in at the desk. "I was so happy to see this job come up," I said to the stout, red-haired woman there. She seemed managerial, but I learned later that Liz was just a just a regular staff member. "I can't imagine a more peaceful work environment," I went on, waving my arm around. She chuckled a bit, as if I'd said something funny. But from what I could tell, the library was just that: quiet, anonymous, orderly, and sane. From the grandness of the old building to the way the light slanted through the high windows that afternoon, I knew I'd landed in a cozy, carpeted, outdated vault, and I loved it on sight. The job was what I wanted, too: helping people. Not the way I'd helped them before, at the hospital, but still. I would be serving others. When I'd glanced around at the careworn souls sitting at the monitors that day, I'd known there would be plenty of work for me here, plenty of helping to do.

Liz and I struck up a conversation. I told her how long I'd been in town, how much I was enjoying the weekend farmers' market-though I hadn't even been-and the birdsong outside my window every morning. She seemed like the bird-watching type. I told her I'd seen cardinals, wrens, and woodpeckers, though the only birds I'd really seen were the pigeons in the parking lot of my Soviet-era apartment complex, pecking at the ground. I' told her a tale about moving from Indianapolis, where all I could hear was the roaring river of cars. I told her I'd hated it, hated the overrated canal walk and the seedy downtown, and had moved for a much-needed change. Liz and I were laughing like old friends before long, and she said she'd put in a good word for me.

And now here I am, two years later, checking out patrons' books, DVDs, and audiobooks, answering their questions about overdue fees with patient grace, policing the computers where I myself sat that first day, making sure the guy in the baseball hat who comes in on Fridays doesn't watch porn while he's pretending to job-search. I understand now why Liz chuckled that first day; the library is peaceful, on the whole, but disturbances happen. Patrons shout into their cell phones, throw tantrums over lost books, or hide, half-naked, in hidden corners of the stacks. I'm never bored here-the way I thought I might be when I first arrived.

I sneak up behind Friday Guy, as we've come to call him, and lean right over his shoulder so my breath is hot on his neck. "Hey," I say. He jumps and fumbles, tries to click screens to cover up the giant tits I just saw bouncing before my eyes. Then he looks up, red-faced. Sweating, even in the cold of the main room. "You know the rules," I say, drawing up to my full height. "Yes, ma'am." I feel a deep tickle when he calls me ma'am and obeys me like a scolded dog. "I'm watching you," I tell him. "Yes, ma'am." He blinks up at me with his sad gray eyes. After a long pause, I walk away.

Excerpted from How Can I Help You by Laura Sims. Copyright © 2023 by Laura Sims. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.