The Story Keeper Read Online Free

walked down the marble entry hall past rows of office doors and oodles of cover art from books that had made careers and started hot trends that were quickly chased by a horde of scrambling copycats. Rounding the corner, humming under my breath and in full stride, I slid across the tile like an ice-skater, did a YouTube-worthy scramble, and caught myself on a half-height partition in the customer service area, barely saving my smoothie.
    “That’s wet, sha.” Russell, the cleaning guy, emerged from a nearby office, pushing a mop bucket. Russell and I had become acquainted over the past few days. He was at least six and a half feet tall, lamppost thin, and not entirely pleased to have someonedisturbing his usual morning routine by coming in so early. He’d been cleaning the building since the sixties and had an apartment in the basement, so it was definitely his domain.
    “Sorry.” I backtracked across the freshly mopped floor, my pumps leaving little tracks in the sheen of water. “You’d think I would’ve learned to watch by now.”
    He lifted the mop from the dingy bucket and plopped it into the wringer. “I got it. Boss man don’ like his flo’ track up at the beginnin’ a the day. Like a clean start.” His slow Southern drawl ran in direct contrast to the three quick, efficient swipes that cleared the floor. Russell was a hard person to read. I hadn’t quite decided if he liked his job here or liked me, or if he was simply resigned to both as a reality of life.
    I wanted Russell to like me. He seemed like a guy with a story, and I’d always been fascinated by stories. That was the first thing Wilda Culp had noticed about me all those years ago, after she caught me pilfering from her orchard. To pay back the damage, I became her Wednesday help around the old family farm she’d moved home to after retiring from Clemson and taking up writing full-time. She’d noticed immediately that I understood the lure of a good story. Sometimes a world that doesn’t exist is the only escape from the one that does.
    Russell’s silvery eyes narrowed, age wrinkles squeezing in. He was an interesting man to look at, his skin a warm brown, his cheeks burnished to a lighter color with an almost-unnatural shine, like the face of a carving lovingly touched many times by the hand of its maker.
    “Guess you betta get’a work, sha.” Leaning on his mop handle, he sidestepped to let me by, his gaze ricocheting across the open area toward the semicircle of soft light shining from George Vida’s office. No matter how late I stayed at work or howearly I came in, George Vida was always there, occupying his space. Amazingly, nothing went out of Vida House that hadn’t traveled through his hands.
    That scared me a little, as I contemplated acquiring new manuscripts here. What if I got it wrong? What if my instincts ran counter to the big boss’s liking?
    A woman must be confident! Wilda’s gruff reminder was the snap of a rubber band. A quick, sharp rebuke. When the negative comes against her, she must B-E-A-T. Be, expand, arise, triumph. Be all that she was designed to be. Expand her vision of what is possible. Arise from every challenge stronger than before. Triumph over her own insecurity. This is what I always told my students.
    You, Jennia Beth Gibbs, have greatness in you if you want it.
    I felt Russell watching me as I continued down the hall and slipped into my office at the end, where new editors began their careers, no matter how many years of prior experience they brought to the job. At Vida House, you started at the bottom and worked your way up. It wasn’t so bad, really. Being at the fringe of the nonfiction hall meant having a corner space. My office was in a three-sided turret, which made it quirky and interesting. Even though the skyscraper next door blocked both the sunshine and the view, I liked the place.
    The fluorescent light flickered stubbornly overhead when I flipped the switch, the room bright, then