Page 107 of The Librarians

Jonathan listens meekly, feeling again like a homework-deficient seventh grader.

“But I’ll still be one up over him.” Maryam relaxes into a slight smile. “Opportunities to stick it to Detective Hagerty are few and far between and I will never forgive myself if I fail to exploit this one to the fullest.”

After the end of the Zoom call, Hazel texts Conrad.If you have time, I’m ready to see the footage.

She isn’t ready at all, but she will never be less unready so she might as well do it now.

Conrad replies,Driving right now. Give me about 20 minutes.

Twenty minutes later, she glances again at the phone. Nothing yet. She walks to the front of the house and looks out—this is typically the time Nainai’s exercise buddies drop her off from their Monday morning Zumba class.

Nainai is back, in her windbreaker and athleisure, admiring what looks like a Porsche Taycan while talking to a man in a slightly slouchy, caramel-colored suit, a large gift bag in his hand.

Conrad.

After the chaos and upheaval of the past few days, by the time she finally returned home at two o’clock this morning, she thought she had no idea how to feel about him anymore. Was she standing in the rubble-strewn remnants of Tokyo after an incursion by Godzilla, with him as Godzilla? Was Kit the rampaging beast and Conrad but a fellow plaster-covered survivor, trying to find his bearings?

Or hasshebeen Godzilla all along, heedlessly stomping through these men’s lives in her immense privilege, leaving a trail of destruction that barely registers on her awareness?

But the moment she sees him, she rushes toward the front door, remembering only at the last second to strip off her housecoat and put on a jacket.

At her running approach, Nainai turns around. “Hazel, you didn’t tell me your boyfriend was in town.”

Hazel skids to a stop.

Conrad holds up his free hand. “I just said we know each other.”

But he does not appear displeased by that appellation.

His suit, worn over a white tee, is the kind that men in Milan, Tokyo, and New York might wear to buy a pack of cigarettes at the corner store—and get photographed by chroniclers of street fashion. In a city as casual as Austin, it should be considered much too formal, especially for this early in the day. Yet on him it feels exactly right for a first meeting with her family elder.

And he even comes with a pretty correct gift—inside the gift bag is a large Fortnum & Mason boxed set, probably acquired at Heathrow airport.

“He’s not my boyfriend,” she tells Nainai, “only my dream lover.”

This earns her a lingering look from Conrad and a cackle from Nainai.

“I see your taste in men has improved,” says Nainai.

“It’s the opposite.” Conrad smiles. “We met a long time ago; she used to have good taste in men and then lost it.”

Hazel cocks her head. “I…actually can’t argue with that.”

Nainai cackles some more. “Let’s go inside. We are just about to have some breakfast.”

Over steamed bao and congee, Nainai extracts biographical data from Conrad. Hazel learns that right before he began his military service, he dumped most of the funds his mother had set up for him in an investment vehicle into two friends’ cybersecurity start-up, intending to lose his shirt, only to have the opposite happen. He bankrolled several more ventures by those same friends and then needed a meaningful way to deal with his windfall.

She also learns that he’s never dated an Asian woman. “It wouldn’t have been fair to them—to be compared to Hazel. Actually it wasn’t fair to the women I did date, but I didn’t realize it at the time.”

By the end of breakfast, Nainai appears completely satisfied. But Hazelknows that she will pass on what she knows to Hazel’s mother—her former daughter-in-law, with whom she remains close despite the death of her son. And then her family in Singapore will find out about every last parking ticket he’s ever been issued—and of course his father’s scandal.

“Okay,” says Nainai, setting down her spoon. “I’ll leave you young people alone in a bit. But what are you two doing getting together first thing Monday morning? Not exactly a conventional hour for a hot date.”

Hazel has been wondering whether she ought to come clean to Nainai. Now that Nainai has asked a direct question, she answers—at least about Perry and Kit’s connection, and how Conrad came across her wedding photos because of that connection.

“This morning I asked to see some more of the evidence concerning Kit, and I assume Conrad has brought it?”

Conrad nods gravely.