The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections(31)

“Good man. Liesl, can I come see my book this afternoon?”

“Terrible delays with insurance,” Garber said.

“You really don’t look well,” Percy said. “Lawrence, does Liesl look right to you? Your skin is the color of one of Lawrence’s smoothies.”

Liesl, using the wall to stay upright, barely breathing as the intensity of her own pulse choked her, managed the only reply Percy wanted. “I’m fine.”

“I don’t think you are, Liesl,” Garber said. “Percy’s right. Why don’t you pop back into my office and have a seat. I’ll send my assistant back there to check on you in just a minute. Get your legs back. If you’re feeling better, come out and join us, but stay there otherwise. Maybe it’s best to give someone else at the library a call to come fill in. Max? I’ll have someone call Max, and you go on and have a seat.”

“My apologies.”

“None needed, Liesl. I’ll give you a call later about making my date to see the Plantin.”

Liesl held on to anything available as she stumbled back to Garber’s office, stepping through a crowd that made way for her but didn’t see her. Her head roared, her anxiety struggling to break free. She thought of the level of weakness she was displaying and only got more anxious thinking about it, and that rise in anxiety made her heart beat even harder.

Liesl crashed into Garber’s office chair and waited for the dizziness to subside. This didn’t feel like her. This felt like another woman. A woman who was casually lying to a billionaire. A woman who was ignoring her instincts to call the police. A woman who was expected to solve a half-million-dollar problem. A woman who had leaned back into a man who was not her husband. A woman who was hungover at work on a weekday. She waited for the dizziness to subside. She heard the crowd in the large meeting room next to Garber’s office get louder and then hush as the proceedings began. She heard applause as he took the dais. She heard the click of cameras. She waited for the dizziness to subside. The dizziness didn’t subside. She picked up Garber’s phone. She dialed her home number.

“John speaking.”

“John, it’s Liesl. It’s me, Liesl. Do you have a few minutes? Can you talk to me for just a few minutes?”

Back in the bad times, Liesl used to be able to push down the panic as a survival mechanism, to avoid Hannah having two parents with broken brains. Now that John had emerged from the fog, Liesl was more likely to descend into it herself occasionally. She had tried to calm the roaring with whiskey. That had worked to an extent, but it made parent-teacher conferences a bit of a mess, until one day John had noticed her peculiar shade of gray—he could recognize a fellow traveler—and began to try to calm her with his voice. The thing was, when you had spent all that time in therapy, you could get quite good at talking people off ledges.

“What’s going on?” John asked.

“I think I’m having a panic attack,” said Liesl. “And I hoped that you could talk to me in that way that makes me feel better when I get like this.”

“My darling.”

“It’s fine, just talk to me.”

The muffled speech through the office walls sped Liesl’s breath, her heartbeat. She laid her head down on the desk and laid the phone receiver beside her.

“Did something happen today?”

“The same thing that’s been happening.”

“Breathe.”

Garber’s desk chair was wood and leather and impractical for everything besides making a man feel important. She was sweating wherever her body touched it.

“The missing book,” Liesl said. “I was here half the night looking, and it seems like it’s my responsibility but not my choice how I want to handle it.”

He hadn’t asked questions about how late she’d come in.

“Does it make you feel better to talk about it? Or does it make the panic worse?”

“Better,” she said to his faint voice in the receiver. “When I’m not being blamed or told what to do.”

“Then tell me about it,” he said. “But first, how’s your pulse?”

She closed her eyes a moment to listen to the rate of the pounding. “Slowing.”

“Keep taking big breaths. Breathe like it’s June and someone’s just mown the grass.”

“It was stolen, John.” She sat up then, picked the phone back up off the desk. “I’m running around searching closets and bookshelves to keep myself busy. But it was stolen.”

“How do you know?”

“Things don’t disappear. I’m not stupid enough to have placed it in the wrong box or to have given it the wrong flier.”

He waited for her to continue.

“Dan’s not stupid enough to shelve a multivolume set incorrectly.”

“When we last spoke, you said it had been misplaced. Everyone else says that too.”

She began to sweat again, leaned forward so that less of the wretched chair was touching her body.

“I was wrong,” she said. “Or I was saying what I hoped was true. But everyone is wrong. It was stolen.”

He coached her through a few more breaths. She complied.

“Were you drinking last night?”

“I sipped at something while I was searching the stacks. Please don’t lecture me. I called you because I was having a panic attack, because you’re good at steadying my breathing.”