She was startled to hear him say it.
The next morning at nine, Selene arrived at the archive with a police incident number in her bag and a terrible certainty growing in her chest.
The librarian handed her the requested box, signed a form, and left her under the reading room's white lights.
Inside lay thirty-six numbered folders.
Folder seventeen was empty except for a faded outline where a ledger had once been. On its cover, in Dmitri Rostov's unmistakable hand, was a title.
THE LANGUAGE OF FIRE
THE WOMAN BENEATH THE HONOR WALL
THE ROSES THAT REMEMBERED
THE NINETEEN NAMES.
*And the empty folder carried a second annotation—one that revealed her father's work had not ended with the warehouse fire.*
The annotation was dated six months after the Pier Nine fire.
TRANSFER TO N. MERCER, BY AUTHORIZATION OF THE BENEFICIARIES.
Below it was a signature and a postal address in Bridgeport.
Selene photographed the folder and asked the archivist for the transfer register. She did not accuse the staff of losing anything. A transfer could be legitimate. A missing folder could have been filed under another number. She had been on the receiving end of too many confident accusations to make one without evidence.
The register showed a lawful loan to a community archivist named Eleanor Mercer, known as Nell. The entry had been made twenty-eight years ago and never closed. Most of the trustees listed in the file were dead. One company named in the margin still existed: Orsini Maritime Services.
Dante called as Selene was leaving the reading room.
“We've been told to stay away from Pier Nine,” he said.
“By whom?”
“Carmine.”
“Did he say why?”
“He says we're risking a fight we can't win.”
“Does he know about the archive?”
“Not unless someone's telling him.”
Selene stopped beneath the library's stone arch. “Don't assume the person closest to you is the one who's informing him.”
“Who else would it be?”
“Somebody who knows you expect betrayal from close quarters.”
Dante was quiet, then gave a short, reluctant laugh. “I hired you to translate a page.”
“And the page keeps bringing up people. That's usually what history does.”
They went to Bridgeport without armed men inside the house. Selene insisted on that condition, and Dante agreed after one objection. Luca waited with the driver on the street. The apartment building had three concrete steps, a cracked railing, and a front door painted a cheerfully defiant shade of blue.
Nell Mercer opened the door with a dish towel over her shoulder. She was seventy-three, with a gray braid, bright eyes, and the kind of bearing that came from refusing to apologize for occupying space.
“I know who you are,” she told Dante. “You have your father's eyebrows. Come in, but wipe your shoes. And if you've come to offer me money to be quiet, save your breath.”
Dante looked at Selene. “Does everyone in your life begin conversations this way?”
“Only the people I like.”
Nell's apartment was filled with photographs. Men in work coats, women at union marches, children holding certificates beside a makeshift classroom. A framed photograph showed a summer picnic at the waterfront. On a folding table sat nineteen red carnations in jam jars.
“My husband, Thomas, died at Pier Nine,” Nell said, before either guest could ask. “He was forty-four. He hated celery, loved the Cubs, and played the harmonica badly. Nobody in your father's company ever knew any of that.”
Dante said, “I'm sorry.”
“I believe you are.” She gestured toward a chair. “It doesn't bring him back.”
Selene sat opposite her. “We found an archive loan in your name. My father was Dmitri Rostov.”
Nell's dish towel slipped from her hand.
“Dmitri's girl?”