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The house had always been full of books, far too many for one person to get through in a lifetime. Her father didn't collect them to read, to own first editions or to keep those signed by the author; Gil collected them for the handwritten marginalia and doodles that marked the pages, for the forgotten ephemera used as bookmarks. Every time Flora came home he would show her his new discoveries: left-behind photographs, postcards and letters, bail slips, receipts, handwritten recipes and drawings, valentines and tickets, sympathy cards, excuse notes to teachers; bits of paper with which he could piece together other people's lives, other people who had read the same books he held and who had marked their place.
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