“Oh. That’s actually a pretty good idea. Thanks.”
“But let me ask my mom first. Save you the walk down to the library if she knows.”
He handed me what was left of his ice cream cone in that long, dark front hallway of his house.
“Don’t let it drip on the rug,” he said.
There was a runner of Persian carpet nearly the full length of the hall. I happened to know it was passed down through Connor’s family on his mother’s side. Might’ve cost more than everything in my house put together. It made me nervous to be charged with protecting it.
“Tell me the lady’s name one more time,” he said.
“Zoe Dinsmore.”
“Right. Right.”
With that he walked down the hall and into the kitchen.
The kitchen had big windows that let in a spill of sun. It was the only fairly light room in the Barneses’ house. I could see the shadows of Connor and his mother stretching out halfway into the hall, enveloped in that wide beam of light, as he said hi to her and she said hi back to him.
Connor’s ice cream was already starting to drip. It didn’t seem right to lick it, so I let it drip onto my hand and then licked it off my hand before it could drip onto the rug.
“So, hey, Mom,” I heard him say. Timidly, I thought. “You know anything about something that happened a long time ago with a lady named Zoe Dinsmore?”
Silence. I moved down the hall a few steps in case she was speaking but too quietly for me to hear.
“You’re not saying anything,” Connor added after a time. “Why aren’t you saying anything? Was that something I shouldn’t have asked?”
“Oh, honey,” she said, and paused. Her voice sounded as though the question had rattled her. Or just weighted her down too heavily. I couldn’t tell which. I just knew she didn’t like it and was trying to wiggle past it and squirt out the other side. “I do wish you wouldn’t ask me about those kinds of things. You know I don’t like to talk about things that are so sad like that. Life is sad enough without dredging up the worst of the past. Those poor families probably never got over it. The whole town never really got over it. But it was before you were born, so can’t you just grow up and be happy?”
If Connor answered, I couldn’t hear him. But it struck me while I was waiting—and licking—that it was a ridiculous question. Of course Connor couldn’t be happy. He hadn’t been happy a day that I’d known him. And I’d known him since we were three.
I looked up suddenly to see him walk out of the kitchen and down the hall to where I stood.
I reached out to hand him back his cone.
“You didn’t lick it,” he said. “Did you?”
“No. I didn’t lick it. That would be gross.”
“Okay. Thanks. You’ll have to go to the library, I guess.”
“Thanks anyway,” I said. “You know. For trying.”
Mrs. Flint was an interesting character, I thought. She seemed to have studied books and old movies and absorbed every possible stereotype about small-town librarians—and then imitated them to the letter.
She had mousy brown hair, pulled back into a bun. Oversized tortoiseshell reading glasses. She wore gray or brown skirt suits over starched white shirts with button-down collars. She looked like the fictional librarian in just about every film or television show ever made.
I stepped up to her desk, and she whispered to me. Because you whisper in the library.
“Lucas,” she said. “I don’t see you in here very often. Can I help you with something?”
“I need some information,” I whispered back.
All of a sudden I felt deeply in touch with how uneasy it made me to ask about this situation. Whatever it was.
“That would be my department, yes.”
“I need to know about something that happened in town before I was born.”
“Okay. Do you have the date?”
“Um. No. I just know it was before I was born.”
“If we’re looking in the microfilm of the county newspaper, we’ll need a date.”
“I know the name of the person it happened to. Or . . . I don’t know. Because of. Or something.”
She made a discouraging little noise in her throat and shook her head.
“It’s not like we can scan every paper for years’ worth of articles just looking for one name. Although . . . if it’s important enough to you, I can leave you in there and you can hunt around as long as you like. What’s the name? Maybe I already know something about it.”
“Zoe Dinsmore,” I said.
The silence that followed was a stunning thing. It seemed to zoom around the room. Bounce off the walls. I watched her face get a little whiter and her lips set into a long, tight line.
“December 18th, 1952,” she whispered.
“You know the date?” I might’ve said it too loud.
“Hard to forget that date. It was exactly one week before Christmas. It was the last school day before the children went out on their holiday vacation.”
I opened my mouth to ask her to tell me about it. But she got up from her desk.
“I’ll be right back,” she said. And walked away.
I waited.
And waited.
And waited.
I felt my heart bang around in my chest, but I wasn’t even sure why. I mean, this whole thing had nothing to do with me. Did it? I hadn’t even been born yet in 1952. Still I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was in it chest deep now, whatever it turned out to be. Whether I liked it or not.
I looked up to see Mrs. Flint motioning me into the back room.
I stepped inside and sat down in a hard chair in front of the microfilm machine. It was a big white box that projected one page of the
