The donor card from 1938 said the building and land were given to the Town of Bridgeton by Josiah Coleman, for use as a public library in perpetuity, and that should it ever cease to be a library, title reverts to the heirs.
Coleman. The mayor stared at me and said that was his great-grandfathers name. I know, I said. Then I turned the card over.
On the back, in faded fountain pen, there was a second note, added in 1962 and signed by Josiahs son, naming exactly who the heirs were. The town clerk leaned over, read it, and looked up at the mayor. Trent, she said slowly, it says here who the heirs are. And you are not one of them.
He called the library a waste of taxpayer money and sold it to a condo developer, never knowing his own great-grandfather had made sure it could never be anything but a library.
The family line that held the reversion had split long ago, and Trent Coleman came from the branch that was written out of it in 1962, over a family falling-out he had never even heard about. He had no right to sell that building. Nobody did. It could only ever be a library.
The developer withdrew the offer the moment the lawyers read the card. The demolition was canceled. And the town council, a little embarrassed, took a new vote, this one about the mayor.
They asked me to come back. I said I would, on one condition, that story time on Saturdays stay exactly where it has been for thirty-seven years. The old brick building on Elm Street is still a library, in perpetuity, the way a man named Josiah Coleman wanted it in 1938.