“Where would you like to begin?” asked the Librarian.
Missy considered this.
“I thought you might have something in mind.”
“I was curious about you and Bob.”
Bob lifted his head.
“A subject on which I advise considerable discretion.”
“How did you meet?” asked the Librarian.
Missy opened her mouth.
Then she stopped.
There ought to have been an answer. A place, an occasion, a first conversation. Instead, whenever she tried to picture a time before Bob, she found him somewhere in it.
“How peculiar,” she said.
“Meeting me often is,” Bob replied.
“No. I can’t remember.”
Bob rose and stretched.
“I’m going to check something.”
“Your overdue book?”
“That would be a sensible place to begin.”
He slipped down from his chair and started toward the shelves.
At the end of the table, he paused.
“If you get there before me, keep the window open.”
Missy looked at him.
“Get where?”
“I shan’t be long.”
Then he was gone.
She stared after him.
Something about the words was familiar. She had almost answered him without thinking.
“The window?” she murmured.
The Librarian glanced toward the tall panes beside their table.
“Did you remember something?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Take your time.”
At the returns desk, a woman raised a hand beside an atlas with badly swollen pages.
“Excuse me,” said the Librarian. “I’ll be back.”
Missy nodded.
For a while, she remained seated, listening to the library.
Somewhere, a ladder rolled and stopped. At the desk, the woman began explaining that the atlas had been damp when she borrowed it.
Missy set her hat on the table and rose.
A brass lamp illuminated a narrow bookcase nearby. One shelf leaned slightly to the left. Someone had wedged a folded piece of paper beneath its corner.
She paused beside it.
Between two large volumes stood a small green book with nothing written on its spine.
Missy drew it out.
The cloth was worn smooth at the corners. Across the cover, in faded gold, was a single word.
Sizmara.
She said it softly.
The name rang a bell.
She read it again, this time without moving her lips. She could almost hear someone else saying it, though she couldn’t have said whose voice it was.
She knew how to pronounce it. She hadn’t needed to work that out.
Inside, the first page was blank. The next repeated the title, with no author’s name beneath it.
Missy looked toward the shelves where Bob had disappeared.
Then she carried the book back to the table and settled into her chair.
The story began with a little girl who had been told to go to sleep.
She had agreed, but she was waiting for the cat.
There was a narrow bed against the wall, a wooden shelf, and a window whose curtain stirred in the cold air.
Missy read the opening paragraph twice.
In her mind, she heard a child’s voice saying:
“Bob, where have you been?”
Missy glanced at the empty chair beside her.
She read on.
A small black cat climbed onto the windowsill.
“You might at least have kept it open.”
“I did.”
“Only a little.”
“It’s cold.”
“Yes,” said Bob. “I was outside in it.”
Missy smiled.
Then, slowly, the smile faded.
She knew that window.
The latch had to be lifted before you pulled. Everyone else pulled first and complained that it was broken.
Her eyes moved down the page.
The girl climbed out of bed to help him. Beneath her bare feet, a floorboard creaked.
Missy felt her toes curl inside her shoes.
Beside the bed. A little to the left.
She knew which board it was. She had learned to step over it when she wanted to reach the window without anyone hearing.
She rested a hand against the page.
She wasn’t imagining the room described in the book. She remembered it.
The blanket had a loose blue thread along its edge. She used to wind it around her finger while she listened to stories.
She looked for the blanket in the paragraph.
There it was.
For a moment, she considered calling the Librarian.
Instead, she turned the page.
“Lift it first,” the girl told the cat.
“I am lifting it.”
“You’re pulling.”
“Missy, your commentary is not improving the mechanism.”
Her name.
She stared at it.
At the returns desk, the woman was still talking about the atlas. Missy could hear her, but the words no longer held together.
She knew what happened next.
The latch would give suddenly. Bob would step back as though he had intended to do so. Cold air would enter, carrying the smell of the tree outside.
She closed her eyes.
The memory continued.
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