“I’ll be right back,” said Helen. She exited through the sole door, leaving him alone.

Hudson paced. Afraid he’d revealed himself to be lying, or at least unsure of himself, he worried that Helen Guerneyser would see through him. So what? he asked himself. So what if she knows what you’re after? She might even be able to help.

He was tempted. Surely if anyone knew anything about the manuscript, it would be someone like the archivist. He might be able to solve the mystery with one question. But he knew it couldn’t be that easy. If what he had was what he thought it was, there would have been some mention of it somewhere. Something so important wouldn’t just appear out of nowhere.

Then maybe you’re wrong about it, said the voice of his doubt. Maybe no one knows about it because there’s nothing to know.

It was an old argument, one he’d had with himself time and again. But he didn’t believe it. He couldn’t believe it. There was something too real about the manuscript, something that urged him on, told him to keep digging until he found the truth.

The door opened and Helen entered carrying a large box, which she set on the table. “Here you are,” she said. “I’ll leave you to it. When you’re done, just leave everything here and come upstairs. If you find anything you want copied, leave it here and I’ll see to it later.” She walked to the door, pausing and looking back at Hudson. “Good luck,” she said, and left him alone with the box.

Hudson sat down. He pulled the box toward him, lifted the lid, and looked inside. A stack of notebooks rested inside, no two of them alike. It was as if Steinbeck had written in whatever was at hand, with no thought to uniformity. Hudson reflected, with only the slightest hint of annoyance, that writers were selfish creatures, seldom considering the needs of future researchers when amassing the bits and pieces that would one day represent their creative processes. How much easier it would be, he thought, if they would have the courtesy to compile indexes to their own lives, like those people who worked for the New York Times writing obituaries for the not-yet-dead.

He removed the first notebook. The cover, a grubby brown marred by splotches of grease, was the cover of any of a million identical notebooks. But when he turned to the first page, the book revealed its true beauty. There, in a compact, tidy script that filled line after line, were the inner thoughts of John Steinbeck.

He couldn’t believe he was holding a book that Steinbeck himself had held in his hands. His eyes ran over the words, making sense of none of them as his thoughts ran wild. What was in here? What would he find?