“We have to get enough for the others, too,” he mused to himself, without looking away from the selection. “That’s seven plus a little extra for Nell.”
“I can’t believe how late they are,” I said. “You know how much Francis hates being late anywhere.”
“If Daniel finishes choosing dinner this century, we can beat them back. Take all the big bedrooms first and leave them the smaller ones!” Tam grinned as she and Wally turned away to head for the antiques shop.
“Did you look upstairs? Even the smallest bedroom is bigger than the biggest one in the graduate housing complex,” Wally said, pushing the door open for her.
They went off together with you, leaving me to hold the cart while Daniel finally began piling pounds and pounds of steak and ribs into it. I managed to get him away from the meat, through the checkout line, and out to the car, where we loaded the groceries into the trunk. We sat waiting with the engine on for a few minutes, but Tam, Wally, and you were still in the shop.
“Now we’re waiting on them,” Daniel sighed, already restless.
“It’s your own fault,” I said. “They probably figure I’m still trying to drag you away from the steaks, and you haven’t even picked one yet.”
We laughed, and then Daniel turned to me suddenly, a mischievous grin on his face. He lowered his window and put his hand on the steering wheel, over the horn.
“Tam!” he shouted, and the horn blared noisily, startling the entire parking lot. “Come on, Tam! We’ve been waiting for hours already!”
“You’re terrible!” I cried as the door to the antiques shop flew open, and they came tumbling out as the pedestrians in the parking lot chuckled at them, Wally looking embarrassed at all the attention, and Tam and you laughing at his joke.
“We were in there for not even ten minutes,” Wally grumbled as he slid into the back seat, his cheeks red, and busied himself with helping Tam fasten you into your car seat. “You always take forever.”
“Oh, it was funny,” Tam said to him, and leaned forward to lovingly muss up Daniel’s hair.
“Was it all junk?” I asked as Daniel started to reverse the car out of the parking spot.
“Yeah,” Wally said. “Just old knickknacks and broken furniture.”
“It wasn’t a total waste of time,” Tam replied, holding out something small and folded for us to see. I took it from her before she slid back into her seat and turned it over to see the front. “We did find something.”
It was the gas station map.
As I stared at it, listening to Tam and Wally describe the shop—how friendly the old owner had been to them and Nell, telling them about where around town to get various supplies for the house if needed, and how the map had been only a dollar, and that even though it was junk, they felt like it would be rude not to take it after all her help—I felt the faintest sense of unease. Just a tendril of dread, down deep, starting to curl.
But I ignored it. We were all exhausted from the drive and eager to get back to the house. Too excited by what lay ahead.
I should have paid more attention.
XII
Eve finally broke off from her story, as if she couldn’t bear to continue. She looked down at the Sanborn map on the table again, seeming to lose herself in it. Nell gave her a few moments, hoping Eve would say something, but the preservationist didn’t offer any more.
Nell realized that if what Eve had said was true, then she’d been wrong about the gas station map. It didn’t belong to the NYPL—it had only been hidden there. It hadn’t come from an uncatalogued donor. It belonged to her father. Because her mother and Wally had found it, decades ago.
Whatever happened, whatever all of this was about, wasn’t about the library at all. It was about them.