“You weren’t planning to rob the place, were you?” she asked.
“Not tonight,” he said.
She tapped the neat pile of catalogs. She thought of the Pizan manuscript and its half-million-dollar price tag.
Francis still stood, waiting to be paid attention to.
“Fancy a drink somewhere before you head home?” he asked.
“I’ve been here since eight, Francis. I don’t fancy anything except the idea of a cup of tea and my bed tonight.”
“Can I say something then? It would be more easily said over a drink, but it should be said either way.”
“If you want to,” she said. “If you feel you have to.” It was easier now. No more fear of the pending conversation. For twenty-one years they’d avoided the question of what-if, had avoided each other as much as was possible. For Liesl had feared learning she’d made the wrong decision. Wrong lover. Wrong father. Wrong type of life. But having opened themselves to the possibilities, examined them up close, held them in hand, Liesl understood now that the conversation had been nothing to fear. The choice young Liesl had made had been the right one.
“It’s not that,” he said, and Liesl was satisfied that Francis felt the same way as she did.
She nodded. Left space for him to say what he needed to say.
“Take Garber’s job offer. Please.” He took off his red knit cap and held it in his hands as he asked.
It was the last thing that she expected. He laid out his case. That without Liesl, the job would be filled in Christopher’s image. By a man like Langdon Sibley. Or perhaps worse, in Francis’s eyes, by a man like Max Hubbard.
She struggled to sleep that night. Despite the warm tea on her nightstand. Despite the twelve-hour workday that had left her mind so foggy. She watched John’s big shoulder rising and falling beside her and was envious of him. She gave up finally and rose to go look out the window. At the snow-smeared backyard, at the outline of her garden underneath all that winter.
She would have liked to think that Francis believed she was the best person for the job. And not that he was worried it would go to his rival. The idea of being anyone’s unthreatening choice was ghastly. It made her want to spend a half-million dollars on a manuscript on a whim. It made her want to dump armfuls of books into her purse or else to sit on the floor of the stacks in the basement and tear pages out of precious ancient texts one by one. Their old bed creaked as John turned to look for her. He sighed when he saw that she was looking at the garden, mumbled something about the thaw coming soon, and then rolled over and went right back to his easy sleep.
20
“Has it already started?” Liesl asked.
Dan turned at the sound of her voice.
“They waited six months for you,” he said, “so I told them they could wait six more minutes.”
She gave him a peck on the cheek and then rushed into the large reading room. A ten-foot-tall banner announcing the Forgeries and Thieves exhibition hung from the third-story railing.
“Thank goodness,” Francis said. “I was beginning to think you had stood us up. After we got the place all dressed up for you.”
“I wouldn’t have missed it. The banner is lovely. Are we using a different graphic designer?”
“Yes. One that’s more ‘web-friendly,’” Francis said.
“Sounds like a smart move,” Liesl said.
“Not a popular one.”
“Puppies in the library would be a popular idea. Not a smart one, though.”
“I bet that even puppies would give some of the regulars reason to grumble about the new comandante.”
“How about you? Have you been grumbling?”
He motioned to the front of the room, to the star of the exhibition, to avoid answering the question.
A large glass display case had been assembled at the front of the room. In the corner of the case Liesl could see the red glint of a laser beam that would shriek if the case were to be pried open. Not that anyone would ever do such a thing. Liesl took Francis’s cue and stepped toward the case to see the contents. The Peshawar manuscript. And next to it, the facsimile.
The explanatory plaque explained the details of the carbon-dating process that had been used to differentiate the two.
“Remarkable, isn’t it,” Liesl said. “How quickly the exhibition was pulled together.”
“Remarkable indeed.”
Francis’s exhibition centering on the Plantin was next on the calendar. Still far from ready.
“The science bit,” Francis said. “It’s not really what we do.”