Before she had spoken, I was at the first stall.

I found myself in an aisle that was almost teeming with books. At this stall, there were however rather older copies, which must originate from the 19th century. 

Interested, I rummaged through the books in front of me. These were mainly old town histories of Blairville. 

I raised my eyebrows. 

A wonder you could fill pages with something like that...about a town like that.

The old lady behind the booth smiled kindly at me before turning back to her knitting. 

I tried to ignore the black raven on the wooden post of the stand and let my eyes wander further over the books – there were really a lot of nice ones – until I got stuck on a brown one. 

The cover had to be made of leather and I could see a kind of seal in the middle of the cover. Instinctively, I reached for it to run my finger over the fine details. They were vine-like ornaments that formed a circle around a dragonfly located in the center. Its eyes were made of tiny blue stones and reminded me of the necklace Mum had given me for my sixteenth birthday. 

It had to be somewhere in my jewelry box because I didn’t like wearing it that much. The fear of losing it was too big.

When I opened the first page, I was disappointed to find that it was empty. I kept turning the pages, but it turned out that it wasn’t really a book. Whoever had made this thing must have had some fun. They cut out the contents and worked on it so that it had become some kind of box. Now, it was possible to store some smaller things in it. 

Maybe it wasn’t so bad after all....

Intrigued, I looked for a price tag but discovered nothing.

“Excuse me, how much is this?” I finally asked the little woman with the gray hair and the black lace headscarf, who put aside her knitting and came over to me. She was a bit older, maybe in her mid-sixties, and her walk was slightly heavy. However, none of this seemed to affect her cheerful disposition. Before looking at the book, she gave me a friendly look. 

“Oh, that. And here I was thinking no one would ever like it,” she joked, “You’re the first to discover its little secret.” Her eyes sparkled as soon as she smiled. “So, you can have it for five dollars.”

Astonished, I looked at her and immediately shook my head. 

“Five dollars?” That would never do this book justice. I had expected to pay at least thirty dollars. After all, the cover was leather and just the two little stones....

It must have sounded to the woman like it still cost me too much because she replied, “You can have it for three dollars, then.”

“No, absolutely not. I’m sure this pretty book is worth much more.”

“Well, I haven’t been able to sell it in the last two years, though, and you look like you like it a lot.” 

She was right about that. And yet I would give her more money.

I reached for my wallet to pay, but it wasn’t in my jacket pocket. 

Crap... I must have forgotten it at home.

Carefully, I put the book back on the table.

“I’ll be right back. Please don’t sell it yet,” I said to the woman before turning around and heading off to find Mum.

It wasn’t long before I spotted her at a large vegetable stand. I hurried over to her. 

“Mum? Can I borrow some money from you? I left my wallet at home and...”

Mum, who had been talking, less than a minute ago, turned to me with a jerk. At that second, I realized that she had just been engaged in conversation with a woman her own age, who was now eyeing me with a curious look. I immediately recognized her resemblance to the young woman in the photo I had found in that strange room. In contrast to the dark brown waves, her hair was as short as my own and straight.

She smiled kindly at me, and at that moment, I knew it was not the same woman as in the photo. She lacked the memorable dimples. And her eyes were a dark blue.

“I didn’t know you had a daughter, Diana,” she remarked in surprise, looking at my mum with a look that could have meant anything.

The way she spoke to my mother, it had to be a former friend. I wonder if she had something to do with the woman in the picture.

Anyway, Mum looked visibly tense now.

“Bay, this is Amara Blair, the mayor of Blairville, an old friend of mine,” she replied awkwardly. 

The mayor of this cursed hick town I’d ended up in?

Mum had never told me anything about an Amara Blair, as far as I could remember.

It occurred to me that she had drawn a clear line between her old life and her new life, which now, at the latest, vanished into thin air. I felt like I knew nothing about her old life, and this Amara knew nothing about her new one.

The two of us could certainly have sat in a coffee shop for days and talked at length about my mother without ever getting bored.

I dismissed that bizarre thought because that was definitely not going to happen.

“So, who did she get her training from?”

This time, I was the one who looked surprised.

Had Mum told her about my karate class? But why? And why was that the first question she asked regarding me?

Usually, the first questions were, “This is your daughter? She hardly looks like you. She must take after her father. Where is he anyway?” or “How old are you? What, so young? You look much older.” But no, the first thing Amara Blair asked was who had trained me.

Mum hesitated before turning to me and saying, “Wait a minute, Mara.... How much do you need, honey?”

“Just a little bit. I was going to buy a book...”

If Mum had heard the suspicion from my voice, she skillfully ignored it.

“Here, keep the change. You can look around somewhere else when you’re done. I’ll catch up with you.”

I didn’t want to be intrusive, and besides, there was a beautiful book waiting for its new owner, so I turned away from them again and headed back to the little woman’s booth. Still, curiosity wouldn’t let go of me about why the mayor of Blairville had been so interested in my athletic life. Was she perhaps an amateur coach? Or maybe she was just a little weird, like everything else in this town.

Luckily, when I arrived at the booth, the book was still where I had left it.

“Here...” I pressed the money, which looked somewhat unfamiliar to me, into the smiling lady’s hands. “And the amount is right like this.”

I certainly hoped it was right. I didn’t really know how much value the Canadian dollar banknotes had compared to the American ones.

“But that’s twenty...” the lady wanted to start, but I quickly interrupted her.