“I’m saying we buy another.”
In the mid-century modern office of a world-renowned academic, in the middle of the day, through a blistering hangover, Liesl wanted a drink.
“Well. Sir. That isn’t possible.”
“Wrong,” he said. “Nothing is impossible if you’re willing to pay for it. I have a million dollars I can put forward. For a million dollars you can make it possible.”
She didn’t want to insult him, but she wanted to laugh. “This is impossible,” she said. “For us to buy a Plantin, one would have to be for sale.”
“Let’s find one for sale.”
“There were only 1,200 ever printed. And that was in 1572.”
“Twelve hundred is not a small number.”
“I agree. But most of them were lost in a shipwreck en route to Spain shortly after they were printed.”
“A shipwreck?”
“Indeed. There are only a handful in public collections around the world.”
“What’s a handful?” Garber asked.
Garber was bouncing on his toes, and Liesl felt her heart rate beginning to climb again.
“Twelve. There are twelve that we know of.”
“So we’ll have to pay a lot of money. We have a lot of money.”
Liesl smiled at him. “That isn’t how it works.”
“That’s just what you think,” he said. “Anything can be bought.”
“If a library holds a Plantin,” Liesl said, “they can’t just sell it off. It would be a public scandal.”
“Libraries need money,” he said. “We quietly offer to overpay, and they wind up with an extra million dollars to fix a leaky roof or install new computers.”
“Where on earth are you getting this million dollars?”
“That is up to me.”
There was a polite knock on the door, but Garber yelled that he would need another minute.
“If we have a million dollars that we can quietly allocate to replace a stolen book, then why is the bulk of my time spent begging donors for money?”
“I’m certain a million dollars sounds like a lot to you, and I’m certain I sound crass, but while a million dollars is a public relations disaster, it’s not a financial one. And the book was misplaced, not stolen.” The knocker knocked again.
“Did Christopher know?” she asked. “About how much there was available in discretionary funds?”
“You said a library could never sell its Plantin.”
“That’s right,” Liesl said. “We’re not the only ones who are beholden to our donors. It would be a scandal.”
“But they’re not all held by libraries.”
“What you’re suggesting would never work.”
The knocking on Garber’s door became more rapid, louder.
“Didn’t we just buy one of these books? And not from a library?”
“They’re waiting for you.”
Garber looked at Liesl, disappointed by her lack of imagination. Then he squared his shoulders, licked his teeth, and sent himself sailing out into the crowd without another word to her. She waited for him to get a proper head start so they wouldn’t cross paths again on her way out and then went out as she had come, without being seen.
Liesl left the administration building without posing for any photos. The campus was especially crowded as students left their midday classes and headed toward libraries, dormitories, dining halls in swarms. Garber was right that the Plantin had most recently been in a private collection, but what good was that information? Could she conjure up some other distant descendant of Charles III of Spain who all of a sudden needed to pay gambling debts and was selling off family treasure?
“How was the event?” Max asked from the desk when she returned. “Did you outline our fundraising priorities to the press?” As ever, he had a hand to his collar, worrying the top button of his shirt.
Max had taken off his suit jacket and had put on a white lab coat to keep dust off of his clothes. It had never occurred to her before that like Christopher, Max wore a suit to work every day.
“There wasn’t the opportunity,” Liesl said to Max. “It’s not a good time to be making ourselves available for questions.”
“It’s always a good time to let the public know what we need to complement our collections.”
“I disagree.”
***
Liesl hadn’t come in early that morning, and she didn’t stay late. She wanted only to ease out of the day without undue effort. She staggered through her front door at 5:20.
“I wasn’t expecting you for a few more hours,” John called down from the studio. “You said you couldn’t get home early.”
“Sorry to disappoint.”
“Don’t be silly. I’m thrilled you’re home.”
“Don’t call me silly. That’s not what I need today.”
“Mom!”
Liesl took a step back at the warning, the reprimand laced through the familiar word. She hadn’t expected to see Hannah at the house and definitely hadn’t expected to find herself called out for poor behavior by the girl. No matter. She was thrilled to see her daughter and pulled her into a hug as soon as she came into view.
“Oh, you beautiful thing.”
“What’s the matter?” Hannah asked.
Liesl took one of Hannah’s hands and kissed her palm. The girl had all the best of Liesl. Her seriousness but not her reserve. Her big, open smile but not her crooked nose. When Liesl hugged her, it was like hugging a rose-scented blanket. She kissed Hannah’s palm again. The girl brought her such comfort; the girl was her best evidence that she had done something right. It was a selfish way to think for a parent, so she never said it aloud, but on a day when she so needed comfort, she allowed herself a moment of relief in that blanket.
“What could be the matter,” Liesl said, “when my beautiful girl is here?”
Hannah put her arm around her mother and walked her into the kitchen where the afternoon light was streaming through the big window over the sink. Liesl had come home needing to yell at someone after a long day of not being able to say how she felt, but Hannah was a balm. When John came into the kitchen and kissed the top of Liesl’s head, she didn’t flinch. She sat at the kitchen table and watched their backs, watched them preparing dinner together until the yellow afternoon light had passed and Hannah broke Liesl’s spell, turning around to ask her mother to flip on a lamp.
***
Not for one minute had Liesl considered that Miriam would not be at work on Monday. Miriam’s computer was set to sleep, not even logged all the way out. As if she had stepped away from it for a minute with a plan to return. There was a gray archival box on her desk and a series of acid-free folders containing manuscript pages from a semifamous Canadian writer stacked next to her keyboard. Resting next to the pages was a pencil in need of sharpening. Miriam’s desk lamp had been left on this whole time. The lamp, the clutter, it had all escaped Liesl’s notice until Monday morning when Miriam failed to arrive at work again.
“You haven’t spoken with her?” Liesl asked.
“No,” Francis said. “But I never do outside of work.”
Francis was scheduled to work at the reference desk, and Liesl was lingering beside him, looking for answers about Miriam. The rest of the library’s staff had arrived for the day, and from the workroom she could hear laughing and clattering keyboards and squeaky book truck wheels. Behind the desk where Francis was sitting, someone had hung a giant red sign announcing an upcoming exhibition of Russian propaganda posters. The light bounced off it and made Francis look pink and healthy.
“What do you want to do?” Francis asked. “I thought you suspected she’d taken vacation days.”
“I had.”
Liesl had tried phoning Miriam on Friday, just as she had on Thursday. She’d tried again that very morning, and the only difference was that Miriam’s voice mailbox was full so Liesl couldn’t leave any additional messages.
Dan rolled a book truck through the reference area. He nodded hello, and the three stood in silence while he waited for the elevator.
“It was the most obvious explanation,” she said once Dan had gone. “I never thought she’d just disappear.”