Practice Makes Perfect by Sarah Title Page A

you’re walking her dogs?”
    â€œI love these dogs!” That wasn’t a lie, at least.
    â€œBabe,” Jake said, and Grace turned to him. “I think Helen might not want company.”
    â€œBut we’re not company,” Grace insisted. “Henry’s not company.”
    Jake looked intently at his fiancée. Henry looked anywhere else. The trees were lovely tonight. Pity the sky was so cloudy.
    As Henry looked for stars to count, he heard Jake sigh. “I’ll tell you later,” he said to Grace. “G’night, Henry.”
    â€œGood night,” Henry said, and watched them walk away, arguing quietly.
    Guys being guys. He wanted to give Jake a fist bump. But he also wanted to get the dogs home before anyone else accosted him with well-meaning curiosity. He also hoped Helen hadn’t put her shirt on yet.

Chapter 8
    H elen heard the click of the door counter as she entered the Pembroke archive, but other than that, it was totally silent. As usual.
    Very few people used the archives. For one, most of what it contained was either related to Pembroke, or to the town. And most of what the archives contained that related to Willow Springs was just a duplicate of what was stored over in Town Hall and enthusiastically maintained by the all-volunteer Willow Springs Historical Society, which was also kind of a mess, but a little less of a mess than the archives. To add to the confusion, the archive also contained some Kentucky history and the few federal government documents the college collected.
    Basically, it was a repository for anything that didn’t fit in the regular library.
    It made Helen nuts.
    Not the materials—those she found endlessly fascinating. But the small space they lived in was not adequate to house everything properly, and the system of shelving was just thrown together as needed, so it only made sense to people who worked there, and sometimes not even then. It was definitely the provenance of the archivist, Lou, who some said had been at Pembroke since before it was Pembroke. (This would make her 121 years old, which was unlikely. This did not detract from the rumors.) Lou didn’t like other people touching “her stuff” when she wasn’t there, which was fine, since no one else could find anything. The only time Lou was happy, it seemed, was when someone came in looking for information, and she could guide them to the right box or file or crumbling manuscript to get them what they were looking for. She always gave them a speech about how the archives were not magic, that no matter how organized information is, research is still work, and if it was easy, any idiot would be able to do it.
    Henry understood that.
    Lou loved Henry.
    Of course she did.
    It was only recently that Helen had started working a shift at the public desk in here, and only because the dean of the libraries realized that Lou was way past eligible for retirement and if she ever did decide to leave (unlikely, but possible), someone else had better know how things worked in here. All of the librarians had a weekly shift, which Lou hated, but since it was either that or a rotating crew of undergraduate workers, Lou got on board. She seemed to be thawing a little, trusting that professionally trained librarians actually could handle the non-traffic in the archives without accidentally setting anything on fire.
    Helen didn’t mind the change of scenery. She liked the quiet—a nice change from the bustle of the main library—and as long as she didn’t look too hard at the piles of stuff to be cataloged, it was relaxing. It required several deep breaths, but she was able to look past it, to sometimes flip through some of the stuff scattered around. And besides, it was so quiet on the desk that she had time to get other work done.
    Today, she would continue her valiant fight with the desk schedule.
    She hoped there was something interesting she could distract