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“A pleasure to meet you. This campus is just so beautiful, and the whole city looks like the movies!”
“Where did you move from?” Deb asked.
“Toledo, Ohio, ma’am,” she said. “It’s not exactly bumpkin country, but it’s sure different from here.”
“I imagine so!”
“Say, do you all do rosters? The faculty, I mean. I’d like to get a sense of who’s who before classes start.”
“No,” Deb shook her head. “But the library has a set of yearbooks. You’ll find faculty photos in any one of them. They republish the same ones every year.”
“Good to know.” Annie grinned. “Thank you so much for your time today.”
“Here to help,” she said. “Good luck, honey.”
As soon as Annie turned around, the smile disappeared from her face. She pounded down the stairs and headed for the door, nearly colliding with a woman carrying a red-faced baby in a car seat. Annie stood aside to let her pass, then pushed out into the heat and sunshine, intent on the library.
The building was swamped with people being issued new student IDs. Since Annie needed one too, she abandoned her plan to find the yearbooks and instead stood in line to get her photo taken, then stood in another line while someone pasted it onto an ID card and ran it through a laminator. By the time she had her card, she was done for the day.
In her motel room, the piles she’d left everywhere had been straightened up by the maid. She called her parents.
“Anabelle Weaver!” her mother chastised. “You have been purposely calling when we’ve been gone!”
“No, Mom, that’s not true,” she lied. “You know it’s earlier here. I just forget about the time difference!”
Annie didn’t want to admit to her mother that her home life was shaky at the moment, so she told her there was a gas leak in the apartment building where she was supposed to live and that they had her and the other students in a motel until it got fixed. The fib slid out far more easily than any truth.
“What happens if it isn’t fixed by Monday?” her mother asked, concerned.
“I don’t know. I guess they’ll keep us on or make other arrangements,” Annie said. “I’ll let you know when I’m settled.” It was a lie so good, she wished it were true.
After hanging up, Annie warmed up a frozen dinner and watched TV until the sun went down. She didn’t think she’d sleep, but even scratchy sheets and the sound of traffic outside didn’t keep her awake. She woke once in the night to use the bathroom, banging her elbow into the doorframe, but then she stumbled back to bed and slept until her alarm went off.
The library the next morning was much quieter, and the girl behind the desk wrote down a call number on a slip of paper and directed Annie to an upper floor.
“They’re toward the bottom, the newest ones,” she said. “I don’t think they get used a lot, but there should be one from last year up there.” She gestured to the large computer monitor in front of her. “We’re still converting everything from cards to a database, so it’s been kind of crazy.”
The yearbooks were tucked away on the lower part of a tall, dusty shelf. Some of them went back well into the1950s, taking up one shelf on the bottom. The newer yearbooks were one shelf higher. They were slimmer, cleaner, brighter. Annie crouched down, found the one stamped with1991on the spine, and pulled it out.
She ran her finger down the table of contents, found the faculty section, and flipped to the back, leafing through until she hit the names beginning with E. She scanned the pictures: Edison, Engle, Epstein, Ettinger.
But no Everton. Not even an asterisk for the not pictured. Was she new?
She slammed the yearbook shut and slid it back onto the shelf.
She was just going to have to figure this woman out the old-fashioned way. Hunker down outside the building and hope she turned up. Look her up in the phone book, see if her addresswas listed. Annie was good at finding people; she’d been doing it professionally for years now. She’d find H. Everton.
She went back to Everton’s building and sat in the shade on the same low retaining wall where she had sat the day before. She’d checked out a book from the library, and she pulled it out of her bag to use as a prop, opening it to a random page in the center. From this post, she could watch for a while, see what kind of people went in and out.
She should be settling in somewhere, looking for a job, prereading her textbooks, or thinking about her upcoming classes. Buying a binder, maybe, or a pack of pens. Instead, she was doing exactly what she was trying to get away from. God, maybe she’d been wrong to leave. Maybe this really was the only thing she was good at, and she was never going to find anything that suited her better. Maybe she should have learned to live with the things that haunted her: an epic failure, a leering boss who promised her there was nothing in the outside world waiting for her.
A man and a woman went into the building. He held the door open for her. Annie glanced down as if studying her book.
When she looked up again, the man had come out alone. He was of medium height and thin. His black hair was cropped close to his scalp. He wore beige shorts and a powder blue T-shirt. She looked down again, turned the page.
She looked up when someone wearing beige work coveralls steered a squeaky cart along the walkway between her and the building. She watched him until he rounded a bend. The cart squeaked even after he left her field of vision.
Which is why she didn’t notice the stroller or the attractive woman steering it until she reached the wall and the shade where Annie was perched. She turned her head to peer into the stroller at the sleeping baby, soon realizing it was the same babyshe’d seen yesterday, the one in the car seat. Of course, it was the same woman who’d been carrying it.
