Free Dead Over Heels by Charlaine Harris

of the coin. Children and parents didn’t always have close and loving relationships. Like marriages, the pairing of parents and offspring sometimes didn’t work out.
    As I went to my desk in the children’s area, I reminded myself forcefully that bearing a healthy child didn’t mean you lived happily ever after.
    Then I saw my aide Beverly, remembered this was the morning we worked together, and felt my day take another downturn. Fixing a pleasant smile on my face, I sat at my desk.
    Beverly was shelving books and muttering to herself. This was one of Beverly’s most irritating habits, especially since I was almost sure she was saying unflattering things about me just low enough for me to miss. Despite my mental recital of her good qualities only the day before, I felt my heart sink at the prospect of trying to deal with the woman. That chip on her shoulder was the size of Stone Mountain, and everything you asked of her, everything you said or did, had to be filtered through Beverly’s resentment.
    Feeling the familiar twinges of guilt, I recited my comforting mantra to myself: I was as glad to see black library patrons as white, I thought black kids were as cute as white kids, I worked as well with black librarians as white. Except Beverly Rillington.
    Still, there were days when Beverly would just do her work and I’d just do mine, and I’d hoped fervently this would be one of those days.
    But it wasn’t.
    I could hear the book cart slamming into corners as she rolled it along from shelf to shelf. The muttering faded and grew stronger as she turned from the cart to the shelf, then back to the cart. I couldn’t quite make it out, of course, but I had a stronger-than-ever feeling it had to do with my faults.
    I sighed and unlocked the desk to get out my scheduling notebook. I had two telephone message slips waiting on the blotter, and they both contained requests for special storytelling times for a couple of day-care centers. WeeOnes had asked for the time I’d slotted for another group; I searched the appointment book and made a note of two different times it would be convenient for them to come. Kid Kare Korner wanted to come in the afternoon; that would be feasible only if I stayed late or if Beverly were willing to do the story hour.
    I sighed again. Getting to be a habit.
    It would almost be better to work late without getting paid for it than to ask Beverly to do a story time. She violently resented being asked to do it, but she was offended if you didn’t ask. In a cowardly way, I put off making a decision, and began to work on the list of suggested books one of the kindergarten teachers had asked me to prepare. I’d gone over the list compiled by the previous children’s librarian and taken a dislike to a few of the books she routinely recommended, so when a new list had become necessary I’d found myself combing the shelves. I had a pile on the table in front of me I’d been reading, and I picked up the top one to whittle down my stack still further.
    “Some of us have to come in here and really work, not just sit at a damn desk,” the muttering resumed, suddenly quite clear.
    I clenched my hands. I read another page. If the children’s area had been a real room, instead of a corner of the ground floor, I would have shut the door and had a discussion with Beverly. As it was, I could just hope to ignore her until I could talk to her away from the patrons. There weren’t many, but there were some; I saw Arthur Smith waiting impatiently at the checkout desk while Lillian put a pile of children’s videos into a bag, and Sally had come in and was talking to Perry in a hushed tone by the water fountain. A youngish man I didn’t know was browsing through the new books shelved close to the entrance, and it occurred to me that he’d been there an awfully long time.
    To my surprise, Angel came in the double front doors, dressed quietly in blue jeans and a striped T-shirt. She was carrying a shopping bag