It took Sadie a while to notice: she wasn’t the only one who came in but borrowed nothing. Once or twice people came to the counter, held murmured, intense conversations with the librarian, and left, looking anxious or anguished or hopeful, or all three. Now and then wayward books came down the book return, shuddering their way into the collection bin: tattered paperbacks, old textbooks, sometimes just a magazine. As if someone had made a mistake, dropping the wrong thing down the chute. One day she’d wedged herself through the book return, fished one out. A note between the pages with a name, an age, and a description: a child taken, like her. A family’s plea that the network would encode, and remember, and pass on.
We are filling in the cracks, the librarian admitted, wherever we can.
So when Sadie had ended up in New York, no trace of her parents anymore, she knew where to go. When she spotted the library, it had felt like something out of a fairy tale: a palace guarded by two mighty lions, pale gray, impassive. She climbed the steps and stretched to set her hand on one massive paw, fingers curving between the broad claws, and it came back to her like a scent on the breeze: a story her mother had read her once. A little girl lost and alone, aided by a lion, the king of that land. She looked around. There was the street lamp. And here in front of her was the magical doorway that might take her home. The library was almost empty; it was nearly closing time, and Sadie wandered until she found a quiet corner, an old armchair in the children’s section, where posters that said read still hung over half-emptied bookshelves. She curled up and fell asleep and awoke to a young woman patting her shoulder.
Hello there, she said to Sadie. It looks like you’re lost.
* * *
? ? ?
You’re Bird’s mom, aren’t you? Sadie said.
Margaret touched her hips, her heart, checking for the notebooks that she’d carried so long they felt like part of her flesh.
I was, she said.
He told me about you, Sadie said, and to Margaret it had felt like a sign.
Sadie, young and motherless and fearless. After three months on her own, half wary adult, half child.
I know somewhere she can stay, Margaret said to the librarian.
* * *
? ? ?
It took some time, convincing Domi.
You’ve got to be fucking kidding, M., she’d protested. What do I know about kids.
They were speaking in fierce whispers, while Sadie waited, cross armed and skeptical, at the far end of the living room. Out of the corner of her eye, Domi studied her, and imperiously, unabashedly, Sadie studied her back.
You know as well as I do, Margaret said, that the brownstone isn’t a place for a child. And I can’t keep an eye on her myself anyway. I’ve got too much to do.
What is it exactly, Domi said, that you want me to do?
Keep her safe. Just while I’m finishing up. And after it’s done, we’ll find somewhere better. Maybe we can find her parents. But she needs somewhere now. She’s been shuttled from library to library for weeks and they won’t be able to hide her forever. It’s a miracle they’ve been able to this long.
She paused. Or are you too cramped for space? she added dryly. A glance around the enormous living room, at the ceiling where, overhead, a half dozen bedrooms sat unused.
Domi let out a long slow breath through her nostrils. Still the sign, after all these years, that Margaret had won.
Fine. But she’ll have to take care of herself. I don’t have time to be babysitting.
I only need my diaper changed twice a day, Sadie called from across the room.
Domi laughed.
Hmm, she said. She’s got a sense of humor, at least.
The two of them sized each other up—the tall blond woman in her suit and high heels, the little brown girl in her hoodie and fading jeans—and Margaret had felt it between them then, the crackle of kindred spirits, of like meeting like.
It was Sadie who’d finally told Margaret, some days later: But Bird doesn’t live at that house anymore. Didn’t you know? They live in a dorm now. I can tell you where.
* * *
? ? ?
Why didn’t you tell me, Bird says. Why didn’t she come down when I was there?
We’d told her to stay out of sight, Margaret says. So no one would spot her and start asking questions. You’ll see her soon, I promise. But I needed this time with you. I needed—
She stops, clippers poised.
Someone’s here, she murmurs.
Bird hears it, too: the sound of someone at the back door. It is raining, he realizes; though he can’t see it through the boarded-up windows, in the sudden silence he can hear it tapping against the plywood, like small, insistent fingers. Over the rain they hear the rattle of the knob being tested. Then the faint low beeps of the keypad: One number. Another. Another.