It was a quiet town, and the library on Maple Street was the quietest part of it. It had a green lamp on the back table, a card catalog nobody used, and, most nights after closing, a smell of dust and old paper like a held breath.
The man came in through the book-return slot at ten past two. He was thin, and he was patient, and he had worked out that there was copper in the walls. He believed the building was empty. People usually do.
At 2:14 a.m. the Library Shusher noted the intruder at the periodicals. She said nothing. She is very good at it.
At 2:20 the man heard it for the first time: not a word, just the sound of a word being held back, long and low, from the third aisle. He stopped. Everything stopped. A paperback slid six inches off a shelf and lay there with its cover facing him.
At 2:26 the sound came again from the second aisle, closer. At 2:27 the green lamp on the back table went out. At 2:28 it came back on, and the man was already at the slot, going out the way he came, headfirst. He did not stop for the copper, or for the flashlight he had dropped in the stacks, or for the long exhale that followed him down Maple Street.
She does not say anything. That has always been the point.
Copper taken: none. Intruders departed: one, quickly. In the morning the librarian, Mr. Okoro, found the flashlight on the returns cart with a note tucked into it, in a hand he recognized. The note said: Overdue. He laughed for a full minute, then left a mug of tea on the back table, with the lamp on. It is for her. It has always been for her.