Page 47 of The Librarians

About half an hour after Sophie gives the army medic’s name to Jonathan, he calls—and asks her to say nothing until she is out of her house.

Standing at the very edge of the golf course, a sea of darkness before her, she nearly screams when a herd of deer sprint past her.

But she repeats the directions Jonathan gives her, then goes back inside and gathers up Astrid, who is nonplussed to be asked whether she knows not just her home Wi-Fi network’s name and password but also the IP address of her router.

And by the way, could she pass along the code to her condo community’s gate too?

They drive Sophie’s Cooper to a park halfway to Jonathan’s house. There they stop and perform a thorough inspection of the car before continuing on their way.

On the driveway, they are met by the handsome and charming Dr. Ryan Kaneshiro.

Sophie likes him right away: He greets them with cheer and delight even though the occasion is sadly lacking in both; he relinquishes his bug scanner immediately when Sophie asks for it and gives her the time—and the illumination—to figure it out for herself; and he does not hesitate to get down on the concrete and shine more light on the undercarriage of her car.

She also can’t help but feel a stab of anxiety that he will hurt Jonathan without even trying to.

“We should also take apart the dashboard to look behind it,” says Astrid. “In case there’s something hardwired to the battery.”

“Wow,” says Ryan, “you know how to do that?”

Astrid shrugs, even as she smiles with pleasure. “I grew up in the country. My parents taught us all these things. My mom used to fix tractors, back when her family had a farm.”

“My mom was just thrifty—didn’t believe in paying anyone to do anything,” says Sophie. “Changed her own oil until a few months before she died.”

Jonathan comes out of the house. “Thanks for coming on such short notice.”

Astrid goes up and hugs him. Sophie does the same, but she has to first imagine herself as Elise to open her arms wide and not end up with a fist bump or some such. But ah, Jonathan gives five-star hugs—she feels completely enfolded, completely embraced.

“You okay?” Jonathan murmurs in her ear.

“Hanging on,” she tells him.

“That’s all any of us can do,” he says before letting her go.

“Your house is clean?” asks Astrid, biting her lower lip.

“I think so. No unauthorized devices hitching a ride on my Wi-Fi network. We shut off power and I did a sweep inside with this phone app for anything that emits radio or infrared frequencies and didn’t find anything suspicious there either.”

Sophie shakes her head. “How did this become Mission: Impossible , all of a sudden?”

“At this point, better safe than sorry,” chips in Ryan.

They walk into Jonathan’s house and Sophie feels as if she’s boarded the DeLorean and gone back in time. The dark paneling, the shag carpet, the framed covers of Life magazines—she hasn’t visited a house this ’80s since January 1, 1990.

“Wow, is this a set for Stranger Things ?” marvels Ryan.

Sophie agrees. She half expects to see a first-gen Apple Macintosh on a desk, and maybe an empty pouch of Capri-Sun behind the floral-patterned couch.

“It’s my mom’s house and she wants everything to stay the way it is. I’m not going to fight with her over décor when I get to live here for free.”

“Oh, I’d have fought her tooth and nail,” says Sophie. “No old woman is allowed to cramp my style.”

They all laugh, Ryan uproariously.

The doorbell rings. Ryan checks his phone and leaps up. “It’s them.”

Hazel and her long-lost beau glide into the living room. Sophie considers herself to have met plenty of genetically blessed individuals. Still, what a fantastic evening to have functioning eyes.

Besides her, Astrid looks beauty-drunk, and doesn’t recover her concentration until Hazel says, “Astrid, we need a huge favor. Would you consider going back to your condo? Tonight itself, if possible.”

Outside her condo, Astrid keeps backing out and reparking her car until it is exactly equidistant between the two white lines that delineate the spot.

She turns off the engine and closes her eyes.

The drive back to Sophie’s place for Astrid to pick up her Prius was silent.

It was only at the very end that Sophie said, You know, I’d probably have done it too, if I could.

Made myself out to be a hot, Creole-speaking babe from Reunion Island to live without my own baggage for a while.

Of course, my cousin was at the same college so it never happened.

But that version of me, she would have been a lot more chill.

Sophie did not absolve Astrid of the stupidity of her choices, but for her to say she got why Astrid did what she did—a thunderbolt of happiness had struck Astrid despite her thoroughly frayed nerves.

Now let’s get this behind us, so you can enjoy your new life , Sophie had added, before pulling Astrid in for a tight hug.

True, telling other people that she’s been an ass doesn’t seem all that daunting anymore. Now Astrid is only scared of how to put “this” behind them.

She elbows the car door open, grips the overhead bar, and hoists herself up and out. Inside her condo, she puts away her purse, changes into her pajamas, and brushes her teeth. All normal activities for someone who comes home late in the evening on a Sunday night, right?

Then she turns on her TV—a bit of streaming at this hour is also perfectly understandable. But before she sits down on the couch, she grabs a spray bottle, a microfiber cloth, and her potted aloe vera.

With one eye on the screen, she sprays and wipes down the plant, taking care not to scrape her fingers on the teeth of the spear-like leaves.

Then, frowning at the spots on two of the leaves, she pauses her K-drama, picks up her aloe vera and her phone, and ambles about the condo, turning on the lights in each room she enters.

Eventually she places the aloe vera on her dining table. Her phone buzzes. It’s a text from Hazel.

Could you give me a call if you haven’t gone to bed yet?

With an index finger that’s almost not shaking at all, Astrid jabs at the phone. Hazel picks up after a few rings.

“Hi, Astrid. Thanks for calling me. I hope it’s not a bad time for you.”

Hazel sounds strained. No, overcome. Astrid’s stomach twists. “No, not at all. I was just going around my house looking for a better spot for my houseplant—I think it needs more light.”

“Did you find it?” asks Hazel.

Astrid shakes on the inside until Hazel adds, “That better spot for your houseplant?”

“I’ve decided to put it on my dining table for now, because there’s a skylight overhead, but I won’t know for a few days whether that’ll solve the problem.”

Hazel is quiet for a moment. “You sure you can talk now?”

“Of course. I still have a couple of plants to clean—so it’s a perfect time for talking, actually. Hold on, let me turn on my speakerphone and bring them over.”

“Lucky houseplants.” Hazel’s voice, not just low, but almost hoarse, emerges from Astrid’s phone.

“Oh, they are—the pandemic taught me that I’m a great plant mom.” Astrid sets a spider plant and a snake plant on the dining table. “So, what’s going on with you?”

“Nothing really, I’m just…uneasy. But I don’t know. Never mind—I should go to bed. I’ll feel better about everything after a good night’s sleep.”

“No, no. Don’t keep it bottled up, Hazel. Let it out. What is it? And trust me, I’m not at all sleepy.”

She’s in a worse state: tired yet hopped up.

Noises arise on Hazel’s side—it sounds like she’s taking off a jacket in a small, confined space. Is she in a parked car?

“Has Jonathan told you, by some chance, that I’m a widow?”

“No, he hasn’t.”

But Hazel did, tonight, when they were all at Jonathan’s house.

“And I’m so, so sorry,” Astrid hastens to add.

Hazel is silent for close to ten seconds.

“The police raided our apartment in April, looking for evidence of financial crime. They arrived at midnight and didn’t leave until well after sunrise.

It was while they were there that my mom came by and told me that my husband died in a small plane crash off the coast of Scotland.

“It always felt like too much of a convenient coincidence for him to perish just as he was wanted by the law. I don’t think I was ever fully convinced of his death.

And part of the reason I moved to Austin—not a huge part, but still, it figured into it—was that I thought here, where nobody knows us, he’d find it easier to approach me.

“I wanted to see him face-to-face one more time; I wanted some kind of closure. But with everything that’s happened, now I’m terrified of that possibility, even as—even as it begins to feel more and more inevitable.”

It takes Astrid a moment to realize that her fingers are hooked tightly around the edge of a ceramic pot—this is not at all what she expected to hear. “Oh, Hazel,” she murmurs, to cover for the fact that she’s completely lost her place in the script.

“You’re right,” says Hazel’s disembodied voice, “I actually do feel a little better now that I’ve said it aloud, now that I’m no longer turning it over in my personal dark cave like Gollum under the Misty Mountains.”

What happened? Why is Hazel telling all this to Astrid? Astrid pushes her snake plant a few inches to the side and picks up her phone. “And it’s not inevitable, Hazel. That your husband might be alive is only a possibility, and not a very likely one. It’s fear that’s making you think like this.”

“I hope you’re right. More than anything else, I would love to be worried over nothing.”

Astrid brings her phone closer to her lips, as if that will somehow help Hazel. “Would you—would you like to talk this over in person? Sometime after work this week?”

“Yes, I would. I’m going to call my hacker friend in Singapore and see if she can find out anything that might either put my mind at ease or confirm my suspicions. And then I’ll dump it all on you. So thank you in advance, Astrid.”

“What are friends for?” says Astrid, something she has waited eons to say. “Good luck and don’t stay up too late.”

“Thanks. Good night.”

“Wait!” Astrid cries.

“Yes?”

Astrid rubs her temple—the tiny vein beneath her skin jumps madly. “Hazel, have you thought about what you are going to do if we do find your husband?”

“I don’t know,” says Hazel, her voice taut yet heavy. “I used to imagine that I’d listen to his excuses in great silence, passing judgment without ever uttering a word. But now—now I’m just afraid.”