“What could be the matter,” Liesl said, “when my beautiful girl is here?”
Hannah put her arm around her mother and walked her into the kitchen where the afternoon light was streaming through the big window over the sink. Liesl had come home needing to yell at someone after a long day of not being able to say how she felt, but Hannah was a balm. When John came into the kitchen and kissed the top of Liesl’s head, she didn’t flinch. She sat at the kitchen table and watched their backs, watched them preparing dinner together until the yellow afternoon light had passed and Hannah broke Liesl’s spell, turning around to ask her mother to flip on a lamp.
***
Not for one minute had Liesl considered that Miriam would not be at work on Monday. Miriam’s computer was set to sleep, not even logged all the way out. As if she had stepped away from it for a minute with a plan to return. There was a gray archival box on her desk and a series of acid-free folders containing manuscript pages from a semifamous Canadian writer stacked next to her keyboard. Resting next to the pages was a pencil in need of sharpening. Miriam’s desk lamp had been left on this whole time. The lamp, the clutter, it had all escaped Liesl’s notice until Monday morning when Miriam failed to arrive at work again.
“You haven’t spoken with her?” Liesl asked.
“No,” Francis said. “But I never do outside of work.”
Francis was scheduled to work at the reference desk, and Liesl was lingering beside him, looking for answers about Miriam. The rest of the library’s staff had arrived for the day, and from the workroom she could hear laughing and clattering keyboards and squeaky book truck wheels. Behind the desk where Francis was sitting, someone had hung a giant red sign announcing an upcoming exhibition of Russian propaganda posters. The light bounced off it and made Francis look pink and healthy.
“What do you want to do?” Francis asked. “I thought you suspected she’d taken vacation days.”
“I had.”
Liesl had tried phoning Miriam on Friday, just as she had on Thursday. She’d tried again that very morning, and the only difference was that Miriam’s voice mailbox was full so Liesl couldn’t leave any additional messages.
Dan rolled a book truck through the reference area. He nodded hello, and the three stood in silence while he waited for the elevator.
“It was the most obvious explanation,” she said once Dan had gone. “I never thought she’d just disappear.”
“She hasn’t disappeared.”
“She has, though. An adult doesn’t stop showing up for work on a whim. Not unless something has happened.”
Liesl left Francis to his books. She had an idea for how she might reach Miriam that she was embarrassed hadn’t occurred to her earlier.
She nodded as she walked to the office, thinking, Daft woman, lousy leader, abysmal investigator, too wrapped up to grab the nearest rock and peer under it for answers. She picked up the desk phone, began to dial, and then hung it up before she’d finished, walking instead to her purse and taking out her cell phone and, distracted by her task, taking it out to the loading dock where it would be loud, true, but loud with people who weren’t interested in Liesl’s business. She considered a seat on the concrete steps but wrote it off as too dusty, then she lightly tapped the numbers that she read off a card and dialed the person who she should have called immediately.
“It’s so good to speak with you, Vivek,” Liesl said when he answered the phone. “How are you settling into your new role?”
There was a pause as Vivek seemed to walk from a loud room to somewhere quieter.
“It’s good, thank you,” he said. “They have me teaching three courses this term. I think it’s a hazing ritual.”
Liesl had viewed Vivek’s profile page from the university directory to get his phone number. She pictured his staff photo as they spoke. He was handsome in a way she’d never noticed.
“Hazing indeed,” she said as a heavy box of books landed on a squeaky dolly ten feet from her. “When I was in college the main method of hazing was servitude, so I guess a heavy course load isn’t far off.”
“I don’t mind too much, to be honest.”
“No. I’m sure it’s a great way to get to know your students.”
“Exactly,” Vivek said. “I have a couple of papers that will be coming out this year, so I can take a bit of a research break.”
She cleared her throat and turned her back to the noise. “Listen, Vivek. I actually have a sort of embarrassing reason to be calling.”