The textile mill closed on a Tuesday. No announcement, just a chain on the front gate. Most of the girls sat on the curb and cried. I walked down to the junk shop at the end of the street.
I found a crate of old books near a pile of rusted metal. They smelled like mold. One was a heavy, leather-bound math text from the 1800s.
"How much for the crate?" I asked the owner.
He didn't look up from his newspaper. "It's going to the pulp mill. Five dollars for the lot."
I hauled it home. My neighbor, Mrs. Miller, leaned over her porch railing as I dragged the box up the steps.
"What are you doing with all that trash, Flora?" she called out. "Trying to look like a scholar now?"
I didn't answer. I went inside, got a damp cloth, and started cleaning the dust off the pages.
Julian came home late. He saw the books stacked on the kitchen table.
"Can I look at these?" I asked, pointing to his old university texts sitting in the corner.
He unknotted his tie. "Go ahead. You won't understand much of it."
I opened a page on calculus. The symbols looked like a puzzle I already knew the answer to.
A few nights later, I was sitting on the porch with a nub of a pencil and a brown grocery bag. I was working through a proof I'd found in one of the junk-shop books.
A black sedan pulled up to the curb. A man in a sharp grey suit got out. He had gold-rimmed glasses and carried a leather briefcase.
"Mrs. Flora Vance?" he asked.
"Yes," I said.
"I'm Professor Sterling, from the University. I heard you bought a collection of rare manuscripts at the scrap yard."
I brought the books out. He touched the pages like they were made of glass.
"These belong in a research library," he said. "I can offer you a hundred dollars for the set."
A few neighbors had come out to their porches. A hundred dollars was more than I'd made in three months at the mill.
"Take them," I said. "I don't want the money. I just want them to be somewhere people actually read them."
Sterling looked at me. He didn't look at my stained dress or the dirt on my shoes. He looked at the grocery bag in my hand, covered in penciled numbers.
"You did these?" he asked.
"Yes," I said. "I think the last line is wrong, though."
He adjusted his glasses, tracing my handwriting. "Actually, Mrs. Vance, you're the only person I've met this year who got it right."
Julian was standing in the screen door. He looked at the Professor, then at the grocery bag, then at me. He didn't say anything.