“You were asking the police about the last diary,” Stevie said.
“It’s my holy grail. I’d do anything to get it back. It would be a picture of her during those last months. It would feel like talking to her again.”
“And it wasn’t with her things?”
“We got everything from her bunk, and it wasn’t there. If the police don’t have it—I mean, I still think they may have had it at some point and lost it. The investigation, if you can even call it that, was a mess. But if they don’t have it, my guess is that she hid it somewhere and it was lost. She told me that the kids in her bunk were nice, but they went through her things, played with her makeup, things like that. She may have stashed it somewhere that the kids couldn’t get to it.”
A small but bright light illuminated Stevie’s mind. She would have to return to it later. There was still much to take in in this room.
“Here’s something else,” Allison said, removing a small blue plastic box from one of the shelves. She seemed to appreciate the fact that Stevie had a genuine interest in Sabrina’s belongings.
“These are interlibrary loan slips. I found these at the library at the bottom of an old file cabinet. Look at these
books she requested. You can tell a lot about a person from what they read. Even after she graduated, she was still requesting books, getting ready for the fall semester. The last two she requested were in June: A Woman in Berlin and The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. This was my sister’s summer reading when she worked at a camp. She studied German and she was pretty good at it, and she always wanted to know why people behave the way they do. She was deciding between majoring in psychology or history. She wanted to work for justice.
“I keep anything at all I can find of Sabrina’s. Sometimes her friends from high school turn up something—a note from class, a picture, anything at all. They know I collect them. It’s like I’m putting together a puzzle, but there are an infinite number of pieces.”
She put the slips back in the box.
“I’m also an archivist,” she added. “I come by it honestly. But you see what I mean. Sabrina worked. She studied. She volunteered. I became a librarian because she loved the library. She took me there, and it always felt like home to me.”
She consulted her smartwatch.
“Almost seven thirty,” she said. “If you want to keep talking, you have to come running with me.”
Stevie absolutely did not run, but she had a lot more to ask, so it seemed that this morning was the day she took it up. She was dressed in black shorts and a black T-shirt, which seemed fine enough. It wasn’t the moisture-wicking, professional-grade outfit Allison had on, but it would do.
“Great,” Stevie said. “Would you mind if I took some pictures? Just for me? Not for Carson. I promise.”
Allison considered for a moment, then nodded. Stevie photographed the room from several angles, getting various shots of the shelves. When she was done, Allison closed the curtains before leaving, shrouding Sabrina’s things back in protective darkness.
“Partially I cope by running,” she explained as she stretched against her outside steps. “I started running when I was a teenager, and I’ve never stopped. It makes me feel clear, like I have some control. I run the lake every morning. It’s a beautiful view.”
Allison set off, her gait even, and Stevie followed. It took her all of two minutes to become winded and so sweaty that she thought her body would lose every drop of moisture it contained, but she attempted to keep up.
“Is . . . there anything . . . you remember . . . about that night?” she asked.
Allison puffed out easy, even breaths.
“I remember everything,” she said. “But nothing relevant. I was at home. I was twelve years old. We got a phone call. After that, it was like a nightmare that never stopped.”