as her eyes. It didn’t quite manage the psychological boost of the red suit she’d donned three days before, but it was close. Fired with determination, she felt in control, competent and businesslike.
She had thought about everything that had happened when she met the professor the first time and decided that her reaction had been magnified all out of proportion. None of it had been real. When she saw him today he would prove to be an ordinary human being with eyes that saw nothing beyond the commonplace and a voice that held no particular power. He would come, they would talk, and hopefully Tyler would be able to build its new library. Afterward, she would go on just as she had always gone on, with one day following another.
Bea made no demand as Elise came downstairs. Giving in to curiosity, Elise peeked around the doorway into the family room. As usual, Bea was sitting in front of the television set, but instead of watching the broadcast game show, she had fallen asleep.
Elise paused, not wanting to wake her. But when Buttercup gave a meow of welcome and with feline grace jumped from the couch to the floor without disturbing Bea, Elise was drawn farther into the room. Chances to observe her sister unnoticed were extremely rare.
Bea’s blond head had no brace. She slept sitting upright, her slender body fragile in the dull-colored, shapeless dress. In repose, her features were soft, almost beautiful again. The ravages of bitterness and self-pity might never have been.
Elise studied her, then as shadows of the past began to dance before her eyes, she became very still. She saw Bea as she once had been: happy, smiling, unhampered...a flirt at seventeen. And she saw herself at eleven: half child, half budding young woman, who doubted herself even as she thought her sister one of the most magnificent beings in the world. Then had come a fateful Wisconsin winter, a snowfall, the gradual formation of ice....
A primitive cry sounded deep in Elise’s throat as her features twisted with pain. She tried to thrust the terrible memory away. It hurt too much! She loved her sister. She didn’t want anything bad to have happened to her. She didn’t want to remember!
Bea’s eyes opened with startling suddenness. In them, there was no question as to where she was or what was taking place. She looked directly at Elise and said, “You look like you’ve seen a ghost!”
Elise tried to control the trembling of her limbs. She tried to act as if nothing was wrong. But she knew that Bea could see through her performance. “No, I just—You were sleeping and I thought—”
Bea had perfected a certain smile over the years, a smile that combined innocence and raw power. It was a smile that instantly plunged Elise into distress without her being fully aware of the cause. Bea used it now. “I wasn’t sleeping,” she said.
“But your eyes were closed!” Elise wanted to run from the room. She always felt so exposed at these moments.
“I was resting, that’s all. Are you leaving again?”
Elise rubbed a hand across her brow. Her hard-won poise had disappeared as if in a puff of smoke. The meeting was going to be a disaster. Robert Fairmont would arrive in Tyler and all her worst nightmares would come true. He would tell her that cutting costs would be impossible. That she should stay in the old library and be jolly well glad that she had it...even if the town council did dig in their heels and refuse to spend any more money on it for needed repairs. Then he would look penetratingly at her and see everything that she kept hidden inside, see her deepest thoughts and desires. See her for the fraud that she truly was! “Uh... yes,” she stammered. “I have a meeting.”
“With that professor?” Bea lifted an eyebrow in speculation. “The way Josephine described him, he sounds a little too hoity-toity for my taste. He must think quite a lot of himself.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Elise murmured, glancing at the door and escape.
Bea saw the look and dismissed her angrily. “Oh, go on. Leave! You’re not exactly a scintillating conversationalist anyway. Just get me a pitcher of lemonade before you go. The house is on the warm side today.”
“Would you like me to switch on the air-conditioning?”
“What? And have me freeze? No, I should certainly say not. Just get me the lemonade.”
Elise wished that she had never stopped to glance into the room. If Bea was quiet, she should have taken advantage of the moment and slipped silently out of the house.
While mixing her sister’s refreshment, she tried to repair the damage that had been done to her assurance. But she knew the job remained only half-finished when, upon her return, Bea’s sniff of disapproval still caused her pain.
* * *
ELISE SWUNG her car into the rear parking area of the library that was usually reserved for the staff. This afternoon, however, a truck was parked close to the back entrance and the whine of an electric saw could be heard coming from deep within the building. Joe Santori and his young assistant, Lars Travis, were still hard at work.
Elise set the emergency brake and stepped outside. Under the guise of adjusting the shoulder strap of her purse, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Then, strengthening her spine, she set off, seemingly ready for anything.
The interior of the library was divided into individual rooms, just as it had been during its occupation by the Friedrichs, the family who had once lived there. The floors were oak, buffed to a well-worn luster by the custodian, Jimmy Randolph, and in what once must have been an expensive touch, prodigious amounts of geometrically carved moldings decorated the walls, the doorways, the windows and even the bookcases that had been built into the home’s private library.
Changes had been made to convert the building to public use, but most of the changes involved running electrical conduits along the floor to various work stations for the staff and filling almost all the rooms with shelves. No walls had been taken down and only a few added.
Elise hesitated in the doorway of the large front room that had served the Friedrichs as a combination living and dining room and that now served as the library’s main circulation area. Her gaze swept over staff and patrons. From the calm that had descended over the facility, no one would have believed that only a short time ago the area had been involved in such chaos. Delia Mayhew was at the circulation desk checking out books, Pauline was on her way to the Children’s Room, where the regularly scheduled preschool story time was due to start, and Rebecca Sinclair, new to Tyler but already a treasure as a volunteer, was wheeling a cart loaded with books to be reshelved. Several people were standing at the long card catalog, searching through the alphabetized indexes, while others sat at nearby tables with narrow catalog drawers at their elbows as they hastily jotted down information they needed.
A light frown touched Elise’s brow. She had already stopped by her office, expecting to find Robert Fairmont there. Before leaving for home, she had asked the staff to keep an eye out for him, to show him into her office when he arrived and then to offer him coffee or tea or whatever else it took to keep him entertained until she returned. But he wasn’t there. Her office was as empty as when she left it.
She caught Delia’s eye and lifted her eyebrows in puzzlement. Delia immediately glanced toward the card catalog, causing Elise to examine that area again. And sure enough, there he was, standing beside the massive file, gazing back at her with such knowing amusement that Elise felt her whole body burn with embarrassment. Had he been there all along? How had she missed him? His smile grew, as if he were privy to those thoughts as well!
Elise struggled to control her reaction. She had to deal with this
