Grimm's Last Fairy Tale Read Free Page A

she went to lock up, she noticed Hemingway was not around and knew instinctively that she was locked back in storage. Hemingway often escaped the world to the solitude of the storage unit and would sneak in when Maggie had the door opened and was otherwise occupied.
    "Hemingway, you little tramp! Get out here. I've got to go home now."
    The frisky feline walked a little too slowly out of the storage room and rubbed Maggie's legs a few too many times.
    "Fine! I forgive you. Just don't go in there again. You know how it vexes me!"
    Maggie made her way to the front of the store, gave one last glance around to make sure all was in order and opened the door to leave, then suddenly did a double take. There was a book on her desk! A second message in the same day! Was her admirer getting a little bolder or just getting a jump-start on the next day? Maggie turned on the light again and looked to see what literary nugget was left for her this time.

    Billows of thought came rolling over my soul, and the voice faded out of my hearing! Fifty-three! Break my heart! Oh, my lost darling! Just her age who was so gentle, and lovely, and all the world to me, and whom I shall never see again! How the thought of her carries me back over wide seas of memory to a vague dim time, a happy time, so many, many centuries hence, when I used to wake in the soft summer mornings, out of sweet dreams of her, and say "Hello, Maggie!" just to hear her dear voice come melting back to me with a "Hello, Jacob!" that was music of the spheres to my enchanted ear.

    Mark Twain! A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court! But he had used her name and age and now disclosed his own! Jacob. She knew no one named Jacob. Who was this gentle creature wooing her? Maggie decided maybe it was time to retrieve, shake the dust off of, and try on something she had not worn in a very, very long time. It was a smile so genuine that no calamity could wipe it off her face. She twirled in the parking lot and then drove home to the boys.
    Maggie couldn't wait to get home and turn on the computer and investigate everyone Jacob. But her plans were delayed when she received a call that one of her elderly friends needed a ride to the emergency room. She knew this would mean hours of sitting and waiting and though her heart went out to this woman, it meant she would have to waylay her sleuthing.
    In the waiting room, she read through two full Highlights for Children and three People magazines and now knew so much more about the inhabitants of the Babylon that was the entertainment world than she ever needed to know.
    At last she was able to return her friend to her home, make her a small meal and visit for a bit, and now was on her way back home and to the computer.
    "Boys, tonight is not the night to stretch across the keyboard. Mommy's on a mission!" There was a joy in her voice and a spring in her step and somewhere in the back of her mind she was subconsciously scolding herself for having to receive obscure and random love notes from a stranger in order to come to life, but there it was. She did not even know who Jacob was. She went to the local white pages online and found that there were about a thousand Jacob's in the county. So, feeling full of serendipity, she typed J-A-C-O-B in the Google search bar and came up with way too much information. This could take the rest of the week to go through.
    First up, Jacob's meaning: as a boy's name the meaning of Jacob is "he who supplants".
    Next up, supplant: 1. to take the place of (another), as through force, scheming, strategy, or the like. 2. to replace (one thing) by something else.
    Maggie thought of the empty slots on the bookshelves and her subsequent thoughts of the empty places in her heart and her desire to have them filled. Was Jacob, whoever he was, trying to do just that?
    Jacob--Jacob Black, a character in the popular Twilight series.
    Jacob--also known as Israel, father of the 12 tribes in the Old Testament.
    This was