“I should go to work.”
***
The glass towers of the business school sent darts of early morning light into Liesl’s eyes. She dropped her head to stave off the sun and walked the rest of the way to the administration building looking at the scuff on the toe of her left shoe.
She didn’t make it all the way inside before encountering Garber and his bicycle helmet. “I’m happy to not have to hunt you down today.”
He held the door for her, and she, still worried about that scuff, went into his office.
“It wasn’t me,” Liesl said.
“I know it wasn’t you,” he said. “That doesn’t mean it’s not your fault.”
“I don’t understand,” she said. Garber hung his bicycle helmet on his coatrack.
“You called the police.”
He stood right in front of her. She hadn’t sat down, so he wouldn’t either. His gray hair was slightly sweaty from the bike ride.
“To report a missing person,” Liesl said, running her hands through her still-damp hair. “What choice did I have?”
“That’s not the question,” Garber said.
“Then what is the question?”
“Look,” said Garber, “you asked why I considered you at fault.” He reached into his briefcase and pulled out the paper.
It lay where he tossed it, on the coffee table in the office’s seating area. The picture of Miriam was uglier than Liesl remembered. She put her hands on her hips to stare down at the photo. In doing so, she realized she had missed a belt loop on her trousers and her black leather belt was riding up slightly on her left hip.
“Without a police investigation, there’s nothing for the press to write about.”
“You don’t think the police leaked it?” she asked.
The picture of the library was even nicer than Liesl remembered.
“I don’t care who leaked it. The minute there was paper—official reports, emails—there was going to be a leak. Any sensible leader would know that. Christopher would have known that. And you should have too.”
Liesl moved her left side away from him, fingers twitching at her hip, hoping to correct the belt before he noticed.
“I should get to the library. There will be questions.”
“There will. And I’ll thank you not to answer any.” He insisted on standing face-to-face with her, thinking her half turn was a way of evading his authority.
“What would you like me to do?”
“Use the press office,” said Garber.
“The press office?” Liesl said. She managed to hook her thumb around the belt, and she turned her body away from him again. “You think there will be more press?”
“The story is delicious. A rogue librarian.” He stepped in front of her again.
“I don’t think she did it,” Liesl said.
Garber picked the paper up and looked at Miriam’s picture. Her hair hung to her chin in limp curls, and her eyes looked like they were two different sizes. Liesl took his moment of distraction as an opportunity to give the belt a yank so at least it was level with her trousers. The loop would come later.
“So you say. But nothing matters less than the truth now that the press is involved.”
There was a break in the conversation. A long enough break that Liesl thought she could leave. She was cold with defeat; she had been since the news of the article had woken her up that morning. The scolding was robbing her of the last of her strength, and she wanted to get back out into the air.
“There will be donor questions.”
“I know,” she said. “Would you like me to route those to your office as well?”
“Not unless you have to,” Garber said. “Just try your best to reassure them. Can you manage that, at least?”
“What do you suggest?”
“Tell them that we called the police as soon as the thefts were detected, just a matter of time now until they have a suspect, et cetera.” He threw the newspaper back down on the table. To her relief, he was too disgusted with it or with her to muster the energy to scold her about the blue manuscript. That, at least, could wait for another day. “Don’t get too creative, and don’t be more honest than you have to be.”
Don’t be more honest than you have to be. Liesl walked to the library in the sweater-weather cold, wondering if that advice was meant for today’s donor inquiries or if Garber applied it to all his dealings. Whichever, it wasn’t how Liesl operated. The library lights were on, and through the window at street level she could see the nervous rustling of bodies, like all the orange leaves in the October wind, clinging to the trees but threatening to drop. Liesl didn’t want to go in and be their leader, didn’t want to be the force that finally shook them loose, but she had scheduled a meeting, and for the sake of her sanity, she planned to keep it.