Girl in the Blue Coat(22)

As the official business winds down, I glue my eyes to Judith and pull her aside the minute she’s not talking to anyone else.

“Judith?”

“Yes?”

“Can I talk to you for a minute?”

“We’re talking,” she says stiffly, but every syllable really says, I don’t know why Ollie let you come.

“I wanted to first apologize. For sneaking into the school like that, and for scaring you.”

“You didn’t scare me,” she says archly. “It takes so much more than that to scare me at this point.”

“Surprised you, then,” I compromise. “I’m sorry I walked into the school and didn’t tell you what I was really looking for.”

“You could have gotten me in trouble.”

“I was desperate.”

“We’re all desperate.”

If Judith was a soldier, now is when I would lower my eyes and talk softly about how she was right and I couldn’t possibly understand any of it. But Judith’s not a soldier. She probably deplores sycophants. “I’ve apologized,” I say. “And I meant it. And I can do it again if you want. But I came tonight because I wanted help, regarding a girl who was also one of the students at your school.” I stare at the bridge of her nose, which is easier than staring at her eyes, willing her to speak first. I’m stubborn enough to remain silent.

“Mirjam Roodveldt,” Judith says. The air between us parts. “She went to the Lyceum until a few months ago.”

“You knew her. Were you lying? I mean, when you said the photos were destroyed in a fire, is that the truth?”

“I wasn’t lying. The photos were destroyed in a fire. I lit it myself.” She juts out her chin, as if daring me to question this act. “I didn’t want the Germans to have one more list of all the students who were left. Not that it matters. They find everyone anyway.”

Something clicks in my brain. When the war first started and Germans burned down buildings, we hated them for it. But recently I’ve heard of public records buildings burning down, and I wonder if some of them are resistance jobs meant as acts of protection.

“You did know her, though? Dark hair? Petite? She might have worn a bright blue coat?”

Judith bites her lip. “I remember when she got that coat. She tripped and caught her old one on a rusty piece of fence and ripped a big chunk out of it. Ripped a chunk out of her knee, too. I remember thinking she was going to have a scar for life. She came back a few days later with stitches and the new coat. It was raining that morning and she asked me if she could come inside before the doors opened so it wouldn’t get too wet.”

“What else do you remember about her?” I can barely get out the words. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I didn’t expect to find anyone else who knew her. Some twisted part of me maybe believed that Mirjam Roodveldt was a specter created by Mrs. Janssen. But she is real.

“Why do you care so much about her?” Judith looks at me shrewdly. “Is she a friend?”

“No. I’m—I’m being paid to find her.” It’s technically the truth, and right now it seems easier than explaining everything else, about me, and Bas, about how finding Mirjam feels like a task that will put order to the world. I’m still embarrassed by how vulnerable I was in front of Judith when I met her at the school.

“Just her?” Judith looks skeptical. “You’re here because you’re looking for just one person?”

“Please, do you remember anything else?”

Judith sighs. “Not a lot. She was beautiful; I think she had a lot of admirers.”

“Anyone she was particularly close with? Was there anyone she might have gone to, or told where she was going into hiding?”

“I’m just a secretary. I only talked to the students if they came in late and needed a pass or something else like that. I’m sorry.”

“You don’t know anything else?”

“I did bring some things for you, though I doubt they’ll be of any help.” She leans over to her handbag and pulls out a rectangular white envelope, unaddressed and unsealed. “Just some old school assignments from her desk. Sometimes students disappear without having a chance to clean out their books or papers. I always think, just in case some of them came back… In any case, I went through my collection, and this is what we had of Mirjam’s.”

She hands me the envelope, and I quickly thumb through the contents. The top three pages are all math assignments, and the next two are biology quizzes. No photographs, nothing that looks immediately useful. I try to hide my disappointment; it was kind of Judith to bring this for me, and I don’t want to seem more petulant than I already did earlier in the meeting.

“Ollie says you have connections,” Judith says.

“It depends on what you mean by connections.”

“Ollie says you can find things. We need more vendors we can trust, and we need people who can introduce us to them.”

“That’s not why I came here,” I say.

“I see.” She’s staring at me evenly. It takes work for me not to return her gaze, to instead focus on Mirjam’s schoolwork in my lap. Before I can look more closely at the other papers, Ollie puts his hand on my shoulder, and I look up in relief.