Page 35 of The Librarians

It had helped that Jo-Ann had put Sophie down as her sister and emergency contact, and that Sophie’s grief was real and palpable.

But still, it had taken lying, cheating, and document forging on a breathtaking level—thank you, Eileen Su and your cousins who knew everybody under the sun—for Sophie to become Elise’s mother.

At every step along the way Sophie had quivered like a Jell-O cube in a commercial, convinced she would be caught and sent to jail.

Instead of a too-merciful Almighty, as her mother had thought, had Sophie’s salvation been, ironically, the system’s indifference to the fate of little Black girls?

“I mean, obviously it was possible—you already did it. But why? That’s what I had to know. Elise is obviously flourishing—what an impressive young woman. And you guys clearly love each other very much. But why did you steal her?”

Jeannette sounds sincere rather than threatening. But the threat is ever present.

What business is it of yours? Sophie wants to shout. You were just Jo-Ann’s acquaintance. That you fell for her doesn’t give you any say in the matter.

But Sophie broke the law—she broke all the laws. And lawbreakers don’t get to claim privacy for their lawbreaking. All she can do is to somehow get Jeannette on her side.

A gust blows. Sophie took off her Nick Fury pleather coat even before the library closed and without it she shivers in the wind.

“I took Elise at Jo-Ann’s request—she realized much too late that she’d made no arrangements for contingencies.

Without my intercession, Elise would have gone to Jo-Ann’s mom in Jamaica, who’d disowned her for being queer. ”

Silence. The traffic light on the street beyond changes; a small red car goes through the intersection, then turns into the H-E-B lot.

“I never want to make another queer woman’s life more difficult,” says Jeannette. “But how do I know what you’re saying is true? How do I know that you didn’t steal Elise because you couldn’t handle the pain of losing Jo-Ann?”

Just Sophie’s luck that instead of a blackmailer, she gets a self-appointed arbiter of truth and justice.

Sophie’s voice turns hard. “I already lost Jo-Ann. All the times Jo-Ann waxed poetic to you about us? We were done. We broke up because I wasn’t ready to have a kid, so she went ahead and had one without telling me—until she needed the biggest favor anyone’s ever had the gall to ask.

“But if you want proof, I can let you listen to the last voice message she left on my phone, on the day Elise was born. The recording, however, is in a safe-deposit box at my bank. I can retrieve it tomorrow morning and you can come by my office at one p.m.”

“Fair enough.”

And then I want you out of our lives. There is another perfectly good branch library less than five miles away—use that one in the future.

Whatever good intentions you may have about other queer women’s lives, you’ve already made mine both more difficult and less secure.

I hope you understand that. I hope you understand that your sense of right and wrong and your need to know are the least important anything here!

All this and more races through Sophie’s mind. But she says only, “I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon, then.”

Sophie sits in her locked car for ten minutes before her mind, painfully over-revved on anger, frustration, and dread, can think about anything practical. She decides to go to the store anyway, because Elise might still be awake when she gets back and, knowing Elise, she will want a cookie or two.

She drives to a larger H-E-B closer to her house and buys fifty dollars’ worth of groceries. The brisk walk in a 100,000-square-foot establishment helps—she feels a little calmer, like she might be able to fall asleep in a couple of hours.

The worst has not happened. She has a problem on her hands, yes, but not a catastrophe.

Or at least, not yet. Jeannette has poked her nose where it doesn’t belong but she is still operating within semi-normal bounds.

Linguistically, lightning does not strike the same spot twice, but in nature, it does.

And Sophie just might prove lucky again, should Jeannette hold her secret long enough for Elise to turn eighteen.

She gets back to her car, loads the groceries in the trunk, and sees that there’s already a canvas bag there—the stuff she and Elise take with them every time they volunteer for park cleanups. It’s Elise’s job to take it back home to the garage but it’s one of those chores Elise sees as optional.

Sophie sighs and gets in the car—she can’t care about this right now. But she does glance at her phone, in case Elise texted about why she’s taking so long.

But the only new message is from Jeannette, whose number, though not in Sophie’s contact list, has now seared into her brain.

After an initial onslaught of panic—Jeannette has decided to condemn Sophie without listening to the recording and will call the police imminently!—Sophie sees that Jeannette has shared her location.

Without any explanation as to why.

A different set of alarm bells clangs in Sophie’s head.

Is this Jeannette demanding another meeting? Has she changed her mind? Is she a sociopath who pretended to be reasonable just so she could yank Sophie’s string harder? Or a fragile snowflake who was annoyed that Sophie wasn’t humbler and more obsequious in her demeanor?

Will she demand money? How much can Sophie afford to give her to keep her quiet for the next twenty months?

Oh, God, what if Jeannette doesn’t want money? What if the woman just wants to watch Sophie burn?

Sophie hangs on to her self-control. She resists the overwhelming urge to type What do you want?! in response. There must not be any trail of traceable writing from her to Jeannette.

Fine, so she’s been sent a location. It’s not that far, somewhere in Astrid’s neighborhood. She will go there, on the off chance that Jeannette made a mistake. These days people inadvertently send stuff to their contact list all the time.

She drives back in the library’s direction, crosses under the highway, and turns into an apartment complex half a mile further on. But she doesn’t see Jeannette’s distinctive orange RAV4—not at the exact spot indicated by the shared location, nor elsewhere in the complex.

The emotional whiplash of this day is taking a toll on her—her brain feels as sludgy as a drying-up mud puddle, yet she is also jumpy and paranoid. Her reaction to Jeannette’s car not being there is equally bifurcated: She is dying to go home to bed; she is convinced something is wrong.

She tries to tell herself that it was a prank.

But what if it’s not so simple?

She drives out of the apartment complex.

It is located on a street that leads out of a neighborhood onto a thoroughfare.

If she turns left, she will reach the thoroughfare roughly fifty yards away and be on her way home.

If she turns right, she will head deeper into a large subdivision from which the library draws a good share of its patrons.

She heads right, not because she knows what she’s doing but because the matter feels unfinished.

Northwest Austin is well-off and the entire district is generally considered safe.

Still, it can be spooky to visit an unfamiliar neighborhood at night.

The sprawl of streets, carefully designed to never be straight for long—to discourage speeding—starts to take on a warren-like quality, making her question whether she’s driving in circles.

Some of her agitation transmutes into uneasiness—or rather, an even greater uneasiness.

She makes another turn and suddenly an orange SUV looms ahead, parked in a shadowy spot, yet so gaudy it still gleams in the scant light.

Does Jeannette live here? Why is her car on the street?

Sophie parks but is reluctant to get out: This is Texas; no matter how quiet and sleepy a street looks, it’s always possible that a homeowner will materialize, firearm in hand.

Okay, she is going to peek into the RAV4, just to make sure that Jeannette hasn’t somehow dropped dead inside. Because if she did, then Sophie, probably among the last people she contacted on her phone, is going to be in a lot of trouble.

Sophie knocks on the rear of the car. No response. She inches closer, but it’s too dark to see much.

After a moment of hesitation, Sophie turns on the flashlight on her phone and shines the beam of light into the car—and screams, a short, shrill sound that immediately disappears, leaving her with her mouth open, her legs shaking.

A woman is slumped over on the back seat. Peasant dress, orange scarf—it’s Jeannette.

What happened? Did she go to a bar and get drunk in the time Sophie did fifty dollars of grocery shopping? Can anyone black out in that little time?

Or…did Jeannette get roofied? As in, she was lucky enough to realize that something wasn’t right and leave the bar just in time?

And if so, was it because Sophie’s number was at the very top of her messages that she sent her location to Sophie?

But why send Sophie one location when she was going to drive to a different one?

Gritting her teeth, Sophie pulls on the door and almost screams again when it opens readily.

Jeannette lies on her side, her legs drawn up. The orange scarf is on the floorboard. Her head pushes against the opposite door, her face obscured by her now loose hair. Sophie leans down and shakes her by one calf. “Jeannette, are you okay? Jeannette?”

No response. Sophie types Can you OD on Rohypnol? into her phone. Apparently so. And if that Rohypnol is mixed with alcohol and other central nervous system depressants, it can be fatal.

Sophie reaches in further and grabs hold of Jeannette’s limp hand.

Does her skin feel slightly cool to the touch?

Sophie digs her thumb into Jeannette’s wrist and fails to find a pulse.

That can’t be true. She must be pressing in the wrong place.

She tries again. Bottom of wrist, near the thumb.

But the familiar throb of the radial artery is missing.

Sophie shines her phone’s flashlight on Jeannette’s wrist to visually confirm that she is holding the correct spot—and tries one more time. Still no pulse.

Her heart thuds. She rounds to the other side of the car, opens the car door, and pushes the hair off Jeannette’s face.

The beam of light from her phone casts harsh shadows on pallid, slack features.

No blood; she just looks passed out. And—at least, judging by her clothes and the lack of a metallic smell—there seem to be no injuries on the rest of her.

“Jeannette!” Sophie calls her name sharply.

Maybe she should call 911?

But what if—what if Jeannette’s already dead? And if she’s already dead—under questionable circumstances—can Sophie trust the police not to pin the death on her?

Goddamn .

Sophie sprints to her car and takes her compact out of her purse. She runs back to Jeannette’s SUV and holds the compact under Jeannette’s nostrils.

Nothing.

She holds it under her own nose. Almost immediately a film of vapors obscures the mirror.

Her fingers shake. She holds the compact right up to Jeannette’s nose. Still nothing. Oh, God. She feels around Jeannette’s neck for a pulse. Nothing. She places her hand directly over Jeannette’s chest. It does not rise or fall. And there is no heartbeat.

She should call 911. Or the police. But can she do that without implicating herself? What if Jeannette left behind notes at home or on her devices? What if as soon as the police start the investigation, they find Jeannette’s musings on the greedy librarian who stole another woman’s child?

Low wails penetrate her consciousness. It’s her, keening in fear.

She dashes back into her own car again. Holding the steering wheel, she forces herself to breathe slowly, deliberately.

Okay, she’ll probably still call 911—her conscience will not allow her to just walk away if there’s an off chance that the woman is still alive.

But she has to first erase all signs that she’s ever been here.

How? How?

The bag of stuff for park cleanups that’s still in her trunk.

She climbs into her back seat and grabs it from the cargo area.

Among other things, the bag contains two pairs of rubber gloves and a pack of isopropyl alcohol wipes.

And—she looks into her purse—her emergency manicure repair kit is there, with its small bottle of acetone.

She takes out her phone and composes a list, looking stuff up as she goes.

Wipe down Jeannette’s left wrist, face, neck, leg—and any other part that I touched—with alcohol and acetone.

Wipe car door handles and any other part of the car I might have touched with alcohol, acetone, and a good rub with tissue.

Unlock her phone with her thumbprint and remove her phone from her car.

Use her phone to text 911 and give her location.

Disconnect battery from her phone and turn it off.

The police cannot find Jeannette’s phone, because that would lead them to Sophie. And just turning it off isn’t good enough, according to seemingly legitimate sources online. She must detach the battery altogether to avoid third-party tracking.

Sophie shakes worse than ever, but it’s time to execute her exit strategy.