Elena worked evenings at the Flushing branch. I designed community buildings for a living and kept inventing reasons to visit the reference desk.
On a rainy November night I asked her to stay after closing. I had hidden a ring inside a copy of One Hundred Years of Solitude — her favorite, which I had checked out and returned three times just to hold it.
She said yes before I finished the sentence. Then she made me reshelve the book properly because rules are rules.
Carmen welcomed me into every Christmas tradition that year. Wei clapped me on the shoulder and said, in English and then in Cantonese, that the family had room.