But still. Time was going by so quickly, and she wanted to do more, be more. The daily chores, the sameness, weighed her down like stones in her pockets. Every day, there was yet another dinner to cook, yet another sock to mend.
She took a handkerchief from her sleeve and wiped her eyes, enjoying the stillness of the space, the dark quiet.
A sound up on the walkway that ran the length of the room above the shelves made her jump. A door opened, and there stood Dr. Anderson, squinting over the railing.
“Mrs. Lyons, is that you?”
She prayed her red eyes wouldn’t be noticeable in the darkened room. Rays of moonlight streamed through the giant casement windows, but not enough to see well by.
“Certainly is, Dr. Anderson.” She had no reason to be here at this hour, and she struggled to come up with an excuse before settling on the truth. “I like the quiet, sometimes.”
“Me, too. I was just finishing up and wanted to enjoy a smoke. Have you been up here yet?”
“No, sir.”
He motioned for her to take the door beneath him, sandwiched in between the shelves. It led to a spiral staircase that spilled onto the bronze-railed walkway, where she joined him. “Come this way.” She followed him through yet another door, this one implanted in the marble slabs between the second and third windows. Inside, a couple of steps led into a tiny, narrow passageway, hardly big enough to fit three people. Before them stood a door with a small, barred window. As he opened it wide, she gasped and stepped forward.
They stood in the night air on a balcony high above Bryant Park, looking west across the city. The full moon had brightened the neighboring buildings, while directly below, the trees cast moon shadows along the walkways, as if it were midday.
“I always wondered about these balconies,” she said. “They seem so far away when viewed from the park below.”
“Rumor has it they were meant to eventually be walkways, for an extension of the building that was never realized, but I have a feeling the architects simply liked the way they looked.” He took a drag on his cigarette. When she first met him, she’d been cowed by his high forehead and puffy lower lip—he reminded her of the portraits of French aristocrats from the seventeenth century—but his encouragement with the newsletter columns had softened her initial impression, and his recommendation letter had been nothing less than glowing.
“Any news from Columbia?”
She’d hoped he’d forgotten about it, as she’d first mentioned it way back in the spring when she applied. No such luck. “Yes.”
“Do tell.”
“I was wait-listed at first, but I recently learned that I was accepted.”
“Well, congratulations on that achievement. Jack must be very proud.”
“He is. But I think I’ll wait to go anyway. Now’s not the time.”
“Is it the expense?”
If she said yes, it would seem like she thought Jack’s salary was unfair, which was far from the truth. In her confusion to find the right response, her face became hot. She blushed furiously under Dr. Anderson’s close scrutiny. “No, not at all,” she stammered. “The children need me. I’ll try again next year, when they’re a little older.”
“So you had me write that letter for naught?”
His tone cut to the quick. He was not pleased.
“No, that’s not it at all,” she quickly assured him. “Circumstances changed, you see.”
He put out his cigarette and held the door open for her to retreat back inside. As they walked through the Main Reading Room and into the adjoining Catalog Room, they spoke of the heat wave gripping the city and other mundane matters before she retreated to the apartment to put Pearl to bed.
Three days later, Jack dashed into the apartment to fetch her as she was in the middle of drying the children’s clothes, her arm worn out from cranking wet undershirts through the wringer.
“Dr. Anderson wants to see both of us,” Jack said, his face pale. “Right now, his secretary said.”
Her stomach lurched as she followed him down the hall. Had she shared too much with Dr. Anderson the other night? He’d seemed curt, perhaps angry that she’d asked for a recommendation but not followed through. What had she done?
CHAPTER TWO
New York City, 1993
Sadie Donovan leaned against the stone lion named Patience and waited for the line of tourists entering the library to subside. The March sun was bright, offering a tease of warmth, but the intermittent gusts of wind made it clear that a temperamental spring was still firmly in charge. The chilly air irritated her, as did the crowds storming the building. They came in wave after wave, first taking photos of the two marble lions that flanked the steps—the one across the way was called Fortitude, the names conferred in the 1930s by Mayor LaGuardia as a reflection on Depression-era virtues—then around the revolving door that deposited them into the foyer like widgets in an assembly line. From there, they’d wander aimlessly, running their greasy hands over the polished walls and jamming up in the entrance to the Reading Room on the top floor as they stared up at the painted ceiling, fish mouths agape.
She almost wished the architects hadn’t put so much fuss behind their design for the building. This ought to be a place for scholars, where the maps and books and artifacts took precedence, not the scrollwork or chandeliers. If it were up to her, she’d allow the gawkers limited access, say seven A.M. to nine A.M. every other Wednesday. If the tourists wanted a museum, they could go to the Met uptown and be pests there. Not on her turf.
Finally, the crowd eased and she headed inside, maneuvering up the stairs to the northeast corner of the library’s top floor, through the heavy wooden door marked BERG COLLECTION. While the Reading Room down the hall offered a vast expanse of desks and chairs under rows of massive windows, the Berg had no windows and only a couple of large tables. Yet it offered its own quiet sense of majesty, with fluted Corinthian columns flanking Austrian oak panels. Glass cabinets showed off valuable editions and manuscripts by Thackeray, Dickens, and Whitman, generously donated by the brothers Henry and Albert Berg back in the forties. The room felt intimate, safe.
As she walked into the back-office space, her colleague Claude looked up from his desk.
“Any sign?” she asked.
“No.” His phone rang and he turned away. Sadie settled in, placing her purse in the drawer of her desk. On the other side of the room, a dozen interoffice envelopes sat piled up on their boss’s desk. Sadie supposed she might as well start her day going through them so the administration of running the Berg Collection wouldn’t fall behind.
Yesterday, Marlene Jenkinson, the Berg’s curator and Sadie’s mentor, hadn’t shown up for work as expected from the weeklong trip to New England she’d taken with her husband. When there was no sign of her early that afternoon, Sadie and Claude had approached the director of the library, Dr. Hooper, and been told to carry on with their work—he’d fill them in soon. Sadie had continued working on the master sheet of the Berg Collection’s highlights for an upcoming exhibit, entitled Evergreen, while Claude had been one room over, in the exhibit hall, going over the floor plan with the carpenters.