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  Speaking calmly so as not to startle her aunt, Aggie said, “Is there something I can help you find?”

  As if she hadn’t heard, Cory was muttering, “I’ve lost it. I’ve lost it,” as she slid books to one side, scanning each one as she did so.

  Worried now, Aggie said, “What have you lost, Aunt Cory? Let me help you look.”

  “The book,” Cory said, almost frantically. “The book about the house.”

  “I remember you telling me about it,” Aggie said. “We’ll find it. Come down, please, and I’ll help you look.”

  Cory blinked down at her, seeming to just realize she was there. Slowly, she descended the ladder.

  “How long have you been looking?” Aggie asked, looking around the room at all the displaced books.

  “I don’t know,” Cory said, wringing her hands and looking near tears.

  Aggie wrapped a protective arm around Cory’s thin shoulders. “Let’s get some breakfast, and then we’ll start looking again,” she suggested.

  In the kitchen, Cory still seemed agitated and a little confused. Aggie kept glancing at her as she got the coffee going and pulled out a griddle.

  “I’m losing track of the days now that I’m out of school,” she said. “What do we have going on today?”

  “It’s Tuesday,” Cory said at once. “You said you would help me trim the hedges today.”

  “Oh, that’s right,” Aggie said, breathing a sigh of relief as Cory calmed down. She cooked up a batch of pancakes for them and set a plate in front of Cory as she took her own seat.

  “So, what made you think of this book all of a sudden?” Aggie asked as she poured syrup over her pancakes.

  “I dreamed about it,” Cory said.

  “You dreamed about a book?”

  Cory ate a bite of her pancakes before saying, “I dreamed about the day Helen gave it to me. I realized I hadn’t seen it in a long time.”

  Cory looked askance at her niece. “I’m not losing it.”

  “Yes, you are,” Aggie said. “You just told me you lost it.” Her joke was rewarded with a smile from Cory. She reached out to lay a hand on her aunt’s arm. “I can understand being upset at losing something that was really special. Don’t worry, we’ll find it.”

  They spent the remainder of the day searching methodically through the bookcases in every room of the house. Cory couldn’t remember the title, but “you’ll know it by the inscription,” she insisted.

  But by the end of the day, Aggie had to admit the book was nowhere in the house. “It must have been in the books that got sold at the auction before we stopped them,” she said apologetically.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Cory said, but she seemed distraught at the loss.

  Late that night, Aggie heard her going down the hall to her old room. “Let’s leave her be for tonight,” she murmured to Percival.

  Chapter 19

  “What do you mean you won’t be here this weekend?” Edith asked.

  When Beryl had returned the call to Ohio State, they had wasted no time in scheduling her interview.

  “I know this is short notice,” said Dr. Bartholomew Hudspath, the head of the Rare Books and Manuscripts Library, “but could you be here this Friday? Your qualifications are just what we were hoping to find in a candidate.”

  “I… I think so,” Beryl stammered.

  She’d gone to her supervisor to request the time off while Ridley did an internet search for flights to Columbus. She chose one from his list that would leave at a reasonable hour on Thursday morning and get her back to National Airport Sunday afternoon. “I still can’t make myself call it Reagan,” she muttered as she clicked through the reservation links.

  “Staying until Sunday is good. You’ll have extra time for some detective work,” Ridley said with a wink.

  “Now, I have to face my mother,” Beryl said, not looking forward to this at all.

  “You do remember we’re celebrating your nephew’s birthday this Saturday, don’t you?” Edith asked when Beryl stopped by after work on Tuesday.

  “That’s why I’m dropping off a card and present today,” Beryl explained patiently.

  “I don’t understand,” Edith persisted as she resumed icing a cake. “You’ve never been to a conference before.”

  “I don’t want to tell anyone it’s an interview,” Beryl had said to Ridley.

  “Well, I’m going to one now,” she said to her mother.

  “This seems very last minute,” Edith said, clearly suspicious.

  “The opportunity came up at the last minute,” Beryl said, a trifle impatiently. “Why are you giving me a hard time about this? Nick and Marian always have things come up and can’t come to some function or other. You don’t argue with them.”

  “I’m not arguing with you,” Edith argued. “Besides, that’s different.”

  Thursday morning, as they ate an early breakfast, Ridley insisted once again that he would drive Beryl to National to catch her flight.

  “I can take a cab,” she protested.

  “I want to do this,” he said.

  “You’re sure you don’t mind looking after Winston?” she asked worriedly.

  “We’re buds now,” he grinned. “We’ll be fine. Unless you’d rather take him to Claire.”

  Beryl’s expression darkened. “It seems impossible it’s only been a week,” she said.

  Ridley’s eyes narrowed. There had been moments when he could sense Beryl’s resolve wavering. “It hasn’t been a week; it’s been months,” he reminded her. “It’s only been a week since you said, ‘enough’.”

  The previous day, a card had come to Beryl in the campus mail. It was beautiful, full of emotional sentiments of love and forgiveness. Claire had signed it, “I’ll never stop loving you.”

  “What?” said Ridley when Beryl passed it to him to read. He tossed it back to her. “You’re not falling for this, are you?”

  Beryl didn’t know how to answer. She couldn’t honestly say she still loved Claire, but, “I promised. I said forever,” some stubborn part of her kept insisting.

  When she admitted those doubts to Ridley, he said, “She knows you. She knows how to work you.” When she didn’t look convinced, he said, “She’s all sentimental and sorry now. And it’ll last precisely as long as it takes to get you back. Then she’ll start taking you for granted and treating you like shit again.”

  “Maybe I shouldn’t go on this interview,” Beryl worried as they left the apartment Thursday morning. “This is all happening so quickly…”

  “The timing is perfect,” he countered. “You’re not tied to anything here. Except me, of course,” he added with a grin.

  Traffic was heavy getting to the airport. Ridley kept quizzing her as they crept along, “Got your directions and maps? And your suit for the interview?” He had talked her into shopping for a new suit, something professional. “The new Beryl is going on this interview, not the old one,” he’d reminded her. He tilted his head as they left the store, garment bag in hand, scrutinizing her. “And I think a haircut would be a good idea, too.”

  Beryl nearly panicked. “My hair is fine.”

  “Not so much,” he said not so gently. “You use your hair as camouflage when you want to hide from people. No more hiding, Gray.”

  “I feel naked,” she’d grumbled an hour later, as she left the hair salon with her hair shorter than it had been in years, but he grinned as he caught her appraising her image in mirrors as she passed. Not that she’d admit it to Ridley, but this looks better, she thought grudgingly.

  “Got the book?” he asked as he pulled into the drop-off lane outside the terminal.

  Beryl patted her backpack as she opened the car door.

  “All right. Go get ‘em, Marine,” he said, offering her, not a hug, but a fist bump.

  “Ooorah,” they said at the same time, laughing as she waved him off.

  * * *

  She was in Columbus by lunchtime. She found the car rental k
iosk at the Columbus airport and, ditching the rental’s GPS after it sent her the wrong way on I-670, pulled out the maps Ridley had printed for her off the internet. Eventually, she found her way to the hotel where the university had reserved a room for her for Thursday and Friday nights.

  “Plan on being here all day Friday for the interview,” Dr. Hudspath had said over the telephone.

  “I may need to stay an extra night, at my expense,” Beryl told the young man at the reception desk.

  “No problem, Dr. Gray,” he said with a smile as she did a double-take. It caught her by surprise to be addressed by her title.

  She dropped her bags off in her room and went to explore a bit of the campus on foot. She found the Thompson Library and grinned at the irony that the oldest and rarest books on campus were housed in one of the most modern buildings, its bowed glass façade reflecting the brilliant summer sky.

  Once she was confident she knew where she was to report the following morning, Beryl’s thoughts turned to Corinne Bishop. She walked back to the hotel where her rental car was parked, and, consulting her map again, she headed toward Bexley, now engulfed by the larger city of Columbus. She found parking on Main Street and wandered around the quaint downtown area.

  Curiously, Beryl explored the shops, searching for one which looked as if it had been around long enough for the owners to know the history of the area. She went into an antique shop and made some inquiries, but the owners had only been there a couple of years and didn’t know the name Bishop. As she exited, she nearly ran into a blond woman walking arm in arm with a thin elderly woman.

  “I’m so sorry,” she mumbled, and continued down the sidewalk. She turned to look again at the blonde, and was mortified to find her looking back also. Red-faced, but smiling to herself, Beryl made her way across the street.

  Spying a barber shop which looked as if it had been around for the last hundred years, Beryl ducked inside and felt as if she had stepped into another era. Only one man was in a chair getting a haircut, but four others sat along the wall, holding magazines or newspapers. All of them, the barber included, were elderly gentlemen who looked up in surprise as she entered.

  “Hello,” she said uncertainly.

  “Hello,” came a chorus from the men.

  “I was wondering if you could help me?” she said. “I’m looking for a family that, I think, has been in the Bexley area for a long time. The Bishops?”

  Beryl had expected nothing more than blank stares, so she was more than surprised when all the men broke out at once with reminiscences of the Bishop family.

  “I knew poor Terrence Bishop. Remember him at Long’s Hardware?”

  “I worked there as an assistant gardener when I was a kid.”

  “Who’s in the house now? Anybody know?”

  “Terrence’s sister, I think.”

  “My aunt was one of their cooks.”

  Excitedly, she interrupted them to ask, “Could you tell me where the house is?”

  Again, she got a chorus of conflicting directions as all the men tried to be helpful, but finally, the barber stepped forward and gave her definitive directions. “You’re only four blocks away. Go to the next corner, turn right and straight ahead three blocks, then left one block,” he said, pointing her in the right direction.

  “Thank you so much,” she said gratefully.

  Beryl decided to leave her car where it was and walk. The barber’s directions were good, and in a few minutes, she was standing on the sidewalk at the entrance to a long drive flanked by stacked-stone walls that extended along the sidewalk in either direction to the borders of the property. The drive curved around a large oak tree blocking her view of the house. She was surprised at how her heart was pounding at the thought that she had at last discovered Corinne’s home.

  A car beeped behind her, scaring her to death. Beryl jumped aside in time to see an older Honda pulling into the lane as the driver, a blond woman, stared at her curiously. Someone was in the passenger seat, but she couldn’t get a clear view of that person.

  Embarrassed to be caught standing there like a voyeur, Beryl hurried away.

  “Who was that person?” Cory asked as they pulled into the drive.

  “I have no idea,” said Aggie. “But we saw her. On Main. She almost ran into us. Probably just someone curious about the haunted house.”

  “If the house is haunted, you realize what that probably makes us,” Cory quipped.

  Aggie laughed. “Okay, I’ll have to rephrase.” She parked the car. “Are you okay getting inside? I want to go see if she’s still standing there.”

  She jogged quickly back down the driveway, scanning the sidewalk in both directions, but the woman was nowhere in sight.

  “That’s curious,” she muttered. It took her a second to realize she was disappointed.

  * * *

  “What do you mean you found the house?” Ridley asked excitedly later that evening when Beryl called him. “Did you go up to the door? Speak to anyone?”

  “No,” she admitted sheepishly. “I was standing in the entrance to the driveway and almost got run over by a car pulling in, and then I scurried away.”

  “You scurried?” Ridley laughed, trying to picture this.

  Beryl heard another voice in the background. “Do you have someone over?” she asked.

  Ridley was quiet for a few seconds and then said, “George is here.”

  Beryl’s mouth fell open in surprise. “Oh, well… tell him I said hello.”

  “It’s not what you think,” he said in such a low voice that Beryl had a hard time hearing him. “We’re just going out for dinner.”

  “I’d… I’d better let you go, then,” she stammered.

  “Would you mind if I tell him about our quest?” Ridley asked in a more normal tone.

  “No,” she said. “I’ll keep you posted.”

  “Call me tomorrow after the interview,” he said. “I want to hear all about it. Good luck.”

  “Thanks. Talk to you tomorrow. Bye.”

  Beryl felt a tumult of mixed emotions as she hung up. Ridley had been her lifeline these past weeks and through all the crap with Claire. She hadn’t realized how much she had come to count on him being there. If he and George became a couple, that would change… It always did.

  She pulled down the covers on the bed and settled back to watch some television. She had no idea how to prepare for the interview, not really knowing what they would want to talk to her about as she had no actual experience working with a rare book collection. Really, besides her doctorate and library work, her only practical experience was her research and appraisal work for Mr. Herrmann.

  Her cell phone rang unexpectedly. Expecting to hear Ridley asking some forgotten question, she answered without looking at the display.

  “Hi,” came Claire’s voice.

  “Hi,” said Beryl automatically as she groaned internally, cursing herself for not looking.

  “Did you get my card?”

  “Yes.” Beryl closed her eyes, trying to bolster her resolve, picturing Ridley mouthing reinforcements.

  “Can we meet and talk?” Claire asked.

  Beryl was quiet for several seconds. “We really have nothing to talk about.”

  “I don’t think that’s you talking,” Claire said. “That’s Ridley.”

  “Why don’t you think it’s me?” Beryl asked, getting a little angry.

  “Because you’re always willing to talk things over,” Claire said warmly. “That’s one of the things I love about you.”

  Don’t let her do this, Beryl thought. Aloud, she said, “Well, maybe you should have been more willing to talk back when I wanted to – before you cheated.”

  She expected an angry outburst from Claire, and was surprised when Claire was quiet for a few seconds before saying in a conciliatory tone, “You’re right. I was… I’ve been so confused. I don’t know why I did what I did.”

  This was not going well. Beryl knew she had never been a
ble to stay angry if Claire backed down. She had told Ridley she never won arguments, and this was one of the reasons why. It had become one of Claire’s strategies to get around her, and, though Beryl had seen it, knew Claire used it when she needed to, she had never been able to muster enough righteous anger to hold her ground. That’s probably the only reason we stayed together for eight years, she thought as all these things ran quickly through her head.

  “Where are you staying?” Claire asked as she sensed Beryl’s weakening and pressed her advantage. “I can come to you.”

  “NO!” Beryl nearly shouted. Staying with Ridley had felt safe precisely because Claire didn’t know where she was, couldn’t just show up unannounced. And she certainly wasn’t going to tell Claire where she was at the moment, or why. Taking a deep breath to calm herself, she said, “Claire, I do not want to see you. I do not want to talk to you.” She looked down and saw how tightly her fist was clenched. Giving up on calm, she said firmly, “I’m going to hang up now. Please don’t call back.”

  She could hear Claire’s voice protesting as she pressed the button to end the call. She immediately silenced her ringer and set the phone on the bedside table along with her glasses.

  Slowly, she sank down into the pillows as tears came, unbidden and unwelcome. What am I doing here? she asked herself, feeling utterly alone and lost as she sobbed for the first time since the night she had found the cards in Claire’s briefcase.

  She very nearly packed up and left that night, sorely tempted to run back to D.C. as fast as she could. The only thing that prevented her from calling the airline was the thought of leaving Dr. Hudspath hanging after he had been so kind to her when they arranged the interview. That and facing Ridley.

  * * *

  “Well?” Ridley demanded Friday evening. “Tell me everything.”

  Beryl decided not to tell him about Claire’s phone call. Or the crying. Or the sleepless night that followed as she checked the clock nearly every hour, afraid she would sleep through the alarm. When she did sleep, it was with disturbing dreams about Claire… dreams in which she stood there hurt as Beryl shouted and cursed at her until Claire turned and walked into a house where Leslie closed the door in Beryl’s face….