They walked back into the dining room. She found the can of coffee behind a box of cereal. While it brewed, Minerva stacked the books and papers that were spread over the table. For weeks she’d let chaos creep into the house and now with a guest sitting inher kitchen she could see how disorganized everything looked. Her reading materials were haphazardly balanced upon random chairs and surfaces, telegraphing her lost impetus and energy.
“What happens when you graduate?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Are you going to get a doctorate, a postdoc, all that bullshit?”
“I hope so. You don’t want to continue your studies?” she asked as she poured the coffee into two cups.
“I’m twenty-four and if I can get my bachelor’s before I’m thirty it’ll be a minor miracle.”
“Someone said you went to different schools before this,” she said, remembering what Rose had told her. She’d called it a merry-go-round, to be exact. “But you’re a senior now, aren’t you?”
“Come September, yeah. Nevertheless, graduating with a slew of C’s despite multiple tutors is no accomplishment. My grandmother said you’re extremely smart. She called a few people, asking about you.”
Minerva set the cups down on the table and passed him the jar with sugar cubes. She had no tongs and Noah had to scoop the cubes with a spoon. He stirred his coffee and took a sip.
“Was she trying to vet me?”
“Obviously. She’s a huge snob. But you passed whatever test she administers. She even said I should be nice to you. She must like you. You don’t know how rare that is.”
“I’m flattered.”
“No, you’re not. You’re too levelheaded for that,” he said as he drummed his hands against an old cup with faded flowers painted on it. “I’m still not quite sure what you think of me.”
Before, when she’d spotted him across campus, he’d simply been one more blue blood asshole to contend with, and maybe he was still a blue blood, but he wasn’t the worst kind. Maybe he was okay. But she offered no reply.
It was growing dark outside. She flicked on the lights in the dining room. His cellphone rang and he answered it while he continued to sip his coffee.
“Yeah?” he said. “Ten minutes.” He slid his cellphone away andpushed his chair back. “That was Carolyn, summoning me back to our ancestral seat. Thanks for the coffee.”
“Thanks for the ride.”
He stepped out onto the porch. Minerva followed him and stood with one shoulder against the doorway.
“If you want to really know about Beatrice, you should talk to Benjamin Hoffman,” Noah said. “They were best friends. I don’t know where he lives, but he used to write forThe Barker Bulletin.”
“I will. Thanks.”
“See you around,” he said.
Instead of watching him walk off, Minerva glanced toward the steps that led down to the beach and the barberry bushes below, then went back into the house.
—
The Molly Tanzer Libraryat Stoneridge College was likely the most iconic building on campus. Its double doors at the main entry were set within a concave apse with a richly decorated ceiling whose fleur-de-lis pattern gave it an air of solemnity. The library had been expanded with an annex in the 1950s and renovated again in the 1970s, and the result was that the interior was a dark web of study nooks and wooden shelves that defied logic, leading to dead ends and shuttered windows. The basement was labyrinthian and housed the college archives, periodicals, special collections, and movable stacks.
Normally, the head librarian and her staff sat at the reference desk by the entrance, busy checking out books or assisting students, but with the summer lull there was a sign directing patrons to the secondary desk located in the back of the library, where a single bored graduate student sat guard over the main floor. The rest of the skeleton crew was holed up in the offices located on the second floor.
Temperance Landing had its own newspaper,The Temperance Voice,with its old issues kept on microfilm at Stoneridge College. Minerva made the jaunt up to the second floor and hunted downthe filing cabinet she needed, pulling out a box containing issues from 1934 to 1935.
She pushed the microfilm roll onto the peg and loaded it in. Her headphones blared “Down by the Water” as she gently turned the knob, forwarding and focusing the film until she found the front page for December 21, 1934, two days after Ginny went missing. But the front page had a story on the Santa Claus Parade that had been held in town a few days earlier, nothing on a missing girl that week, or the week after.
She returned the microfilm to the filing cabinet and sat down at one of the old pine desks that were arranged along a row of windows. It had a hole for an inkwell. She took out her thermos from her backpack and had a sip of coffee, staring at one of the portraits hanging on the wall. It was a man in a brown suit, Dean Adam Donahue, who had presided over Stoneridge’s English department from 1940 to 1949. The portrait must have been intended to make him look imperious, but instead he seemed stuffy. Next to him were portraits of other ancient department heads, their names engraved on bronze plaques: Stephen Graham Jones, Philosophy; Nicholas Mamatas, Classics; and so on and so forth.
Minerva headed downstairs into the basement. They had a section with college materials, including yearbooks and college publications. Ginny Somerset did not appear in the yearbook, but Minerva was hopeful that she might have made theStoneridge Gazette.The college newspaper had not been established until 1952, but before that there had been a sporadic two-page newsletter focused on school events. Minerva had already scoured this periodical for information, but she’d been focused on Beatrice.
Space was highly valuable in any library, and to make way for more books, Stoneridge had set the bulk of its stacks in the basement on a rail system. Students would operate a hand crank to roll a stack open and fit between the rows of books, using a locking pin to keep the carriage from moving. There was a notice by the hand cranks that readBefore moving the stacks, check to make sure there are no people or stools between them.For a dose of humor, a student had printed a cartoon of someone being squeezed inside an iron maiden to better illustrate the situation.
