Charlie shrugs. His lemon square is gone. "I don't think you ought to worry. Very safe town, kid probably ran away of his own accord for whatever reason."

"Yeah, I know how safe the town is," she says. "Filed under: reasons my aunt moved here."

"There you go, then." Charlie puts his dish in the sink and meanders into the room with the television. He turns on some manner of sport, volume low.

"You haven't been over here before," observes Bella. "Want to see my room?"

"Sure."

Up to Bella's room! It contains many books and a bed and a chair and a handful of apparently little-used stuffed animals and other toys occupying a basket at the foot of the bed.

"Ooh, books."

"Mm-hm. Don't read the notebooks please."

"Yeah, I wasn't planning on it. How about the book books? Any good ones?"

"Most of my books are at Renée's house, mostly because that's where I am birthdays and Christmas and that's when I get most of my books, but the ones that are here are the ones that I've read and liked enough that I want them handy when I'm here and there isn't a really good bookstore around."

"I'll take that as a yes. Which ones are your favourites?"

Bella starts pointing out books, ranging from Watership Down to Christmas Carol to Pinnochio to Heidi to Pippi Longstocking to a fairly complete set of Roald Dahl.

"You know, I've never read Watership Down. Worth it?"

"It's about bunnies, but it's pretty serious for being about bunnies. You can borrow it if you want. There's a sort of a sequel but I don't have it here."

"Sure, thanks," she says.

Bella offers her the book. "I like old books," she says. "Renée thinks this is just because old books that are still getting printed have been - sorted through a lot already, though."

"I've read a couple of those but not all of them. Should I read them all?"

"Well, which ones did you read, and did you like them?"

"Scandal in Bohemia, and one that didn't make a huge impression, I can't remember the title."

"I really like the one where it's from Holmes's point of view and he keeps apologizing for giving too much away while you totally have no idea what's going on unless you've read it before. But that's probably my strange sense of humour at work," she says.

"I don't think that was one of the ones I read. Why do you like them?"

"They're fun. I like the language and the style and the mysteries."

Bella nods. "Maybe I'll read more of them. My mom picked Scandal in Bohemia for me because she said it was the only one with an interesting lady in it. That's one problem with old books is that usually they're not very up to date about that sort of thing."