Page 19 of The Librarians

She picks up her phone. There’s a message from Jonathan, informing her that Detective Shariati doesn’t know much about Jeannette Obermann’s case, but does Sophie want her to ask?

Sophie deletes the text and rubs her faintly throbbing temple. Does she?

The front door bursts open, startling her, but it’s only Elise. “Mom, Ana Maria is here to help me with chemistry!”

Sophie shakes her head. “We do chemistry on Friday nights now?”

“What? It’s Friday night?” Elise laughs. “Did you hear that, Ana Maria? I refuse to study on Friday nights.”

“Hmm,” says Ana Maria, “guess I’ll have to stay until tomorrow to make sure you do your trig homework. Hi, Miss Sophie. Thanks for letting me sleep over.”

The sleepover has been in the works for several weeks.

But Ana Maria, who is locked in an epic struggle for valedictorianship with three other kids at their ultracompetitive school, does not have the luxury of taking an entire Friday evening off—she has to get in an hour of APUSH reading so she doesn’t fall behind.

Sophie takes advantage of this window of time to talk to Elise. Elise, who pops a bag of kernels in the microwave to take upstairs to Ana Maria, ends up shoving popcorn into her own mouth as she listens, wide-eyed, to Sophie’s account of these wild days at the library.

What? Is Astrid okay? She’s such a nice person!

No, you can’t be serious. Jeannette? The woman with the third eye, the one who asked me about graphic novels the Saturday before—she’s dead too?

We’re not the last people to see her alive, are we, Mom? Didn’t she want to talk to you about volunteering at the library? My God, she even waved at me when we drove away from the library that night.

Sophie nearly breaks out in hives at Elise’s comments. “The police want to talk to everyone who was at Game Night—we are all considered to be among those who saw her last. They already interviewed the library staff. They will want to ask you questions too.”

Elise’s expression turns somber.

“I don’t think you’ll be in any danger for speaking to the police about Game Night. All the same, I want you to take it extremely seriously,” says Sophie. “No jokes. No glibness. Don’t draw their attention. Just give them all the facts they ask for and get out. Got it?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Sophie pats the girl on the arm and sighs. “Okay, pop a new bag of popcorn and take it to Ana Maria—and tell her that the police will want to talk to her too.”

Elise jumps up from the couch. “They won’t give her a hard time. She’s an A-plus-plus student.”

You could be an A-plus-plus student too , Sophie wants to say. But Elise’s chillness extends to her schoolwork and she cannot be bothered with AP classes or extra credit assignments.

Elise delivers a hot bag of popcorn to Ana Maria, then comes downstairs again, without being urged by Sophie, to prep for her upcoming police interview.

She asks questions as if she were the cops, answers those questions as herself, and covers the entire timeline from the conception of Game Night to when they drove away from the library.

In the end it is Sophie, both proud and shaken, who shoos Elise upstairs. “Tell Ana Maria forty-five minutes of school reading is enough for any sixteen-year-old on a Friday night.”

Elise, who seems to have already brushed off the oppressiveness of a mock police interview, shouts up the steps. “Ana Maria Estevez, you are hereby commanded to live a little.”

“I’ll party when I’m in college.”

Elise glances back at Sophie. “You know she won’t. She’ll pick such an expensive place, work every spare minute, and then eat nothing but ramen for ten years after she graduates just to service her student loans.”

Ana Maria sticks her head out over the banister. “I heard that!”

Elise grins and bounces upstairs. “Miss Estevez, hi. I’m Elise Claremont, your burnout prevention counselor. How are we doing tonight?”

Sophie wants the girls to have fun and de-stress. But now that they are doing so, yakking it up in Elise’s room, she grows deathly afraid that everything Elise loves will be taken away from her.

She wants desperately to do something. To reconnoiter Twin Courtyards Apartments, at least. But the burner phone, the feverish browsing at random coffee shops from a reformatted old Chromebook, Jeannette Obermann’s address that she bought from an online background-check service with a prepaid debit card—will everything Sophie’s doing simply make cops laugh harder when she is caught breaking into Jeannette Obermann’s apartment?

She shivers.

Elise storms down the stairs—she is strong and compact, like Simone Biles if Simone Biles were seven inches taller—and sticks her head in the fridge.

“What are you looking for?” Sophie demands.

“Buttermilk. Nope, we don’t have any. No worries, Mom, Ana Maria and I will get some in the morning and then we can make Grandma’s buttermilk pancakes.”

Is this the excuse Sophie has been waiting for to leave the house?

Moments later, she stands outside her garage, car key in hand, and vacillates.

Overhead, light spills out of Elise’s room—light and muffled laughter.

Somewhere in this tight cluster of town houses, someone is baking an apple pie, the aroma of butter and cinnamon warm and delicious in the air.

Were this any other Friday, Sophie would have wrapped up her hair and been snugly ensconced in bed, a biography open on her lap.

The beauty of her ordinary life burns a hole in her heart. Will she ever have that again, that safety, that normalcy, that belief in the possibility of building a small haven for herself and Elise in the midst of a big, scary world?

A small, bright red car parks not far from her house. A tall, slim woman emerges, the surface of her wafer-thin puffer jacket gleaming under the glow of a streetlight. Hazel. What is she doing here? Surely she should know that it is inappropriate for her to show up uninvited at Sophie’s house.

Or is it a coincidence? Is Hazel meeting a Tinder date nearby?

Hazel sees Sophie and comes forward. She smiles easily, as if there is nothing odd about her presence. “Hi, Sophie. Sorry to bother you on a Friday night, but I have a question and the library may not be the best place for it.”

“Oh?” Sophie is wary, but Hazel’s demeanor is completely unthreatening. Disarming, even. “How can I help you?”

Perhaps Sophie’s reassurance to Ayesha Khan wasn’t enough for Hazel. Perhaps she’s worried about the library and therefore her job?

Hazel tucks her hands into her pockets. The two of them must appear like neighbors who happened upon each other, chatting a bit about kids and weekend plans.

“I’ve been thinking about Detective Hagerty’s visit to the library,” says Hazel, her tone soothing, her voice dulcet.

“I can’t help but think we haven’t seen the last of him.

And I was hoping you could tell me, if he comes back, whether there’s anything I should keep in mind.

Anything I should not remember, if I’m questioned again. ”

She gazes at Sophie expectantly, as if Sophie should know what she’s talking about.

Sophie’s stomach lurches. “Do you mean to tell me that you saw something that you kept from the detective?”

“Yes,” says Hazel. Almost six feet tall in her thick-soled sneakers, she steps closer until she looms over Sophie.

Then she lowers her head and murmurs, “I went home after Game Night, realized I forgot to get groceries, and went out again. I drove past the library around nine forty-five, stopped at the red light just outside, and saw you there, talking to Jeannette Obermann.”