Page 24 of The Librarians

She told him then of her parents’ divorce, which happened when she was fifteen.

Really, at that age, what could they do that wouldn’t be disappointing and disillusioning?

Her newly freed parents each went on a semi-epic search for love and companionship.

But given the demographic trends of their hometown, there was no one available among the five hundred or so residents who hadn’t already been rejected for one reason or another.

Commiserating about their scant luck out there brought them back together, but not to a rom-com happy ending. Her parents live in separate parts of the house and haven’t bothered with a new marriage license—it’s just that they are no longer motivated enough to seek replacements.

Perry sighed. Listening to you makes me realize, for the first time, that I should try to be happy for my parents.

It’s not such a bad thing that they don’t have to settle for each other if they don’t want to.

And it’s not such a bad thing that at their age they can still look ahead to a different and perhaps better life.

Some of the shame gnawing at Astrid fades away. Maybe she is a naive bumpkin who has made a lot of stupid choices in life, but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t, however briefly, a genuine connection between them.

She caresses a rare solo photo of his that somehow found its way to the interwebs.

But Perry’s parentage and dating history offer no clues as to why he came to Austin.

Astrid sets more search parameters by suppressing coverage from Tatler or anything having to do with romantic relationships or the social scene. Now up pops a database maintained by the UK government that provides information on limited companies.

Perry was apparently a director of no fewer than half a dozen business entities.

Astrid clicks through to each company and discovers that most are under the umbrella of the Bathurst family holdings—Perry was being groomed to take over at some point.

A point that will never come now.

There is one company, however, that doesn’t seem related to the family businesses. It has a different address and features a codirector who is at least a fresh name.

Valerian de Villiers.

Someone sits down next to her. Hazel.

“Hi!” Astrid, happily surprised, side-hugs Hazel. “How are you? I thought you didn’t work today.”

“I don’t. My grandmother went to a potluck without me so I’m picking up some food next door.” Hazel looks Astrid over. “You look…energized.”

“Do I? I guess I feel energized.”

She turns her laptop toward Hazel. “Look what I found. Perry was involved in a bunch of companies related to his family’s holdings. But then there is this outlier.”

“Valerian de Villiers,” Hazel murmurs.

“What do you think—a man or a woman?”

“A man, I would say. Have you ever read Valerian and Laureline ?”

Astrid shakes her head.

“French space-opera comic—I read the English translation when I was twelve or thirteen. In that, Valerian is definitely a dude.”

“Okay.” Astrid feels silly to be relieved that for Perry’s sole venture outside the family aegis, his partner was not a woman—but she is relieved nevertheless.

Hazel turns the laptop toward Astrid again. “Good work.”

Astrid glances at her watch—her shift is about to start. All at once her heart pounds. “Today will be the first day I don’t speak with a Swedish accent at work.”

Hazel smiles. “Sounds like a great way to start the rest of your life.”

How many times did Astrid see the Today is the first day of the rest of your life poster in her high school library? Enough for the exhortation to have lost all its power. But now she feels it, the joy and urgency of a new beginning.

And this time she will rise to the occasion.

The shopping center next to the library is pretty white-bread—an H-E-B, a nail salon, a car wash, and an old-fashioned diner. The shopping center across the street, however, has always boasted a wide selection of ethnic restaurants and businesses.

Hazel stops before the door of the South Asian mart, pretends to look at her phone, and glances about from underneath her lashes. The parking lot isn’t the carnival of a 99 Ranch on a weekend, but cars flow, and shoppers and diners mill about in pairs and clusters.

She’s had some training in spotting would-be kidnappers, but Jason Bourne she isn’t, and she can’t pinpoint exactly what gives her that slight yet unmistakable sense of unease.

Inside the store, she wanders about and casts a look here and there out of the glass front of the establishment. Still nothing.

Giving up, she walks to the vegetable section to inspect a crate of bitter gourds.

“Hi!” says a man’s voice. “Hi, I thought it was you!”

She looks up. Elderly white male, comb-over, overkeen expression: the Fifty Shades patron.

“Do you come here regularly?” he asks eagerly.

“Occasionally,” she says. “You?”

“At least once a week. The samosas here are fantastic. Have you ever tried them?”

She has and likes them very much. “No,” she says. “I have to stay away from gluten, unfortunately.”

That does not discourage him. “Try the dhokla, then. It’s made from rice and lentils, perfectly gluten-free.”

“Okay. Thanks for the recommendation.” Might as well agree with him since she has no good objections.

The old guy grins, as if she’s given him all the approval in the world. “Do you still enjoy working at the library?”

“Yes, I do. Thank you.”

“Oh, oh, oh,” he cries excitedly, oblivious to her attempts at killing the conversation. “Were you there when a fight broke out at the library?”

“You know about the fight?” She doesn’t remember him being there that day. In fact, she’s pretty sure she hasn’t seen him since her first day of work.

“Didn’t see it in person but somebody in my neighborhood was there and put a video on Nextdoor. You’ve got to see it—I cribbed it and uploaded it to Facebook.”

“I’m not sure I want to relive it again,” she protests.

He’s too busy fiddling with his phone. “Let me open my Facebook app—”

A woman comes up behind him. Ayesha, who was at Game Night with her husband. And on her face is the universal expression of female sympathetic horror: Oh no, are you cornered by this guy too?

“Hazel!” She waves. “What are you doing here?”

Hazel drops a pair of bitter gourds into her basket. “Getting some vegetables. You?”

“Dal. They have a whole aisle of organic dal and spices now. You want to check it out?”

“Absolutely. Excuse me,” she says to Fifty Shades and ducks around him.

“Look me up on Facebook if you want to see the video—Gus Anderson is the name!” he cries after her. “And hi, Ayesha! See you ladies around!”

Ayesha leads Hazel nearly to the other end of the store before she rolls her eyes.

“Can you believe him? I was working at the library the other day. That fellow sat down at my table, started talking, and refused to take any hints. I had to flat-out ask him to please be quiet. He shut up but still wouldn’t go away until Ahmed came back from taking a call outside.

What a nuisance. The library is such a great place to work but because of him I almost didn’t go back the next day.

Thank goodness he hasn’t been around since then. ”

“Well, thank you for coming to my rescue today,” says Hazel sincerely. “That’s a lovely salwar, by the way.”

Ayesha preens a little. The gauzy green scarf over her hair flutters, the golden embroidery along its edge matching perfectly with the neckline of her fitted green tunic—very pretty, if a little formal for grocery shopping.

She asks Hazel the best way to cook bitter gourds. Hazel shares her grandmother’s practice of blanching in salted water to get rid of the bitterness but warns that Ayesha still might not like it.

Out of the corner of her eye Hazel spies Fifty Shades leaving, the large paper bag in his hand presumably full of crispy, delicious samosas.

Earlier she was more concerned with getting away from him.

But now she wonders why he wanted to show her the video.

Was it just an excuse to scoot closer to her?

Does he know that Perry is dead? Why was he interested in the video in the first place?

Jonathan, waiting for his weekly bowl at Peng’s Noodles, assesses his life.

He seems to be doing that a lot lately.

He isn’t in a bad place at all. He has his mom’s old house, his dad’s old truck, and a job he enjoys.

The poetry workshops, the open mic nights, and the young writers’ programs that he leads every summer are deeply gratifying—in encouraging others, he nurtures himself.

He is plugged into Austin’s large network of creatives.

Not to mention, a small university press published a slender volume of his poetry a few years ago, mostly poems that had already appeared in literary magazines and other anthologies.

Royalties have been negligible, but the satisfaction? Immense.

His lackluster romantic life has felt almost par for the course—half of his colleagues are single, as well as a good portion of his friends.

Even at the reunion, where presumably only those classmates who feel at least somewhat good about their lives showed up, there was a lot of commiseration about being on the dating app merry-go-round after ending marriages and major relationships.

But seeing Ryan again at the reunion upended Jonathan’s relative passivity.

To want someone with such intensity—to long for that spark, that connection—is disconcerting. Almost like being a teenager again. Jonathan is not exactly scared, but—

The door of the tiny noodle shop opens and in walks a man who makes Jonathan think that AI must have installed filters in his eyes—surely this level of good looks can only be achieved with pixel manipulation.

His hair, which Jonathan remembers as bouncy and a bit rumpled, has been sheared off.

The dark buzz cut serves only to emphasize the celluloid- ready angularity of his features.

He wears a white T-shirt under a structured charcoal blazer, but instead of jeans or trousers he sports a pair of charcoal joggers that taper at the ankles.

That is not a look most men should attempt.

But Conrad, Ryan’s roommate, has the long, lean physique and the slightly otherworldly air not only to pull it off but to convey the impression that he happened to be wearing the T-shirt and joggers at home and simply grabbed the nearest item of outerwear as he headed out the door.

Conrad stills and studies Jonathan for a moment before approaching his table. “Hi. Jonathan, right?”

Jonathan finds his voice. “That’s right. I thought you were out of town?”

That was what Ryan had said when Jonathan texted him after Game Night to tell him that he’d found someone who could be Conrad’s perfect match.

“I came back a few days ago. Ryan says he met you because your colleague was in some trouble with the police. Has she been cleared yet?”

The idea of Ryan mentioning him, even if in passing, makes Jonathan’s heart skip a beat. “We can’t be sure. At least she doesn’t seem to be in bigger trouble than before. So…small mercies.”

But what is Conrad doing in this part of town? Is Ryan with him, by any chance? Did they—or Conrad by himself—go to the library, which is right across the street, to check out Hazel?

As if Jonathan has conjured her, the door of the noodle shop opens again, and in strides Hazel.

She is dressed in the exact same color palette as Conrad, a figure-hugging sweater with white-and-gray Breton stripes tucked into a knee-length gray suede skirt.

With her bare face and pulled-back hair, she looks like Hollywood’s idea of an ivy league grad student, one whose arrival tolls the death knell for more than one department chair’s long-term domestic arrangement.

Conrad certainly stares as if he were a fellow student who has already jeopardized his doctoral candidacy for her.

She goes straight to the counter. “To-go order for Hazel, please.”

Her transaction takes all of thirty seconds. She turns around, spots Jonathan, and covers the distance between them. “Hi! I was in the library and didn’t see you.”

“I must have been in the back,” he answers. “I thought you didn’t have any hours scheduled.”

“I don’t. But I wanted to talk to Sophie and she wasn’t there.”

“She called this morning. She’s taking a personal day off.”

“I see,” says Hazel, some significance to her words that Jonathan can’t quite grasp.

Her gaze at last slides over to Conrad, who is still staring at her. But she gives this Adonis only a cursory glance before her attention returns to Jonathan. “You’ll be at work tomorrow, right?”

“That’s right.”

She waves. “Okay. See you then.”

And because Conrad still hasn’t stopped gawking, she acknowledges him with a slight nod as she makes her way toward the door.

Then she stops and slowly, very slowly, turns around.

This time, she studies Conrad as if she were a conservation biologist and he a species long thought to be extinct.

“Conrad?” she murmurs, her tone uncertain. She takes a step toward him. “It’s you, isn’t it? Madeira, twelve years ago?”

A look of wonder comes over her—wonder, astonishment, and no small measure of melancholy.

“I think so,” answers Conrad, his voice low and hesitant.

You think so? marvels Jonathan. You don’t know ?

At least five-nine, beautiful, stylish, and articulate. Asian. Mysterious.

That’s why he thought the words fitted Hazel to a T! A plastered Conrad had been describing none other.

And now they’ve found each other. After more than a decade.

Perhaps Hazel has just realized the same thing. She smiles, a smile that grows and grows until it reaches Julia Roberts–level wattage and the dingy interior of the noodle shop is suddenly a few thousand lumens brighter.

Jonathan had no idea that Hazel came with a more exuberant setting. No idea that she could radiate such hope and joy. Something catches in his throat at this flash of pure happiness.

“Are you busy? Can I buy you lunch—assuming, that is—” Her expression sobers. “Assuming that it won’t lead to any misunderstandings for you at home.”

“I live with a gay man,” says Conrad. “There will be no misunderstandings.”

The way they continue to stare at each other, as if the other person might evaporate at any moment—Jonathan’s chest constricts with a futile longing.

“Ah,” says Hazel, smiling again. “Let’s go, then?”

“Sure.” Conrad turns to Jonathan. “See you later.”

They leave. Jonathan’s name is called and he goes to the counter to get his bowl of tomato-and-egg noodle soup.

To eat by himself.