She nodded. “This afternoon it is.”

The library’s air-conditioning chilled me. I shivered and glanced around the room, where children sat at the far end in a semicircle, listening to the librarian read a story while someone dressed as Clifford the Big Red Dog sat in the middle of the circle with a child in its red-dog lap. To my right a door was cracked open. A sign read MICROFILM, and I opened the door, peeking in to see Hutch bent over a machine, his face pressed against the eyepiece.

I walked up behind him to watch for a moment before I tapped him on the shoulder. “Don’t they have the Internet for such things as this?”

He startled, yet when he looked up at me his smile was warm. “Hey, you.” He stood and faced me. “Are you okay? I am so sorry about last night. I hope …”

I held up my hand. “I’m fine.” I sat on the chair next to his. “You find anything?”

“I get it. You don’t want to talk about it. But don’t tell me you’re fine if you’re not.”

I patted the chair. “Sit, I promise I’m okay. Show me what you found.”

He also sat and shook his head. “Well, when you told me your mother was in on some planning meetings and maybe even a sit-in or two, I decided to just look through all the Bayside newspapers from those two summers. I have the details, but this exhibit and timeline are visual and I wanted some pictures … .”

“I get it,” I said, leaning closer.

“So, I have the one we found from the Freedom Ride, but you can barely see her face. But check this out.” He glanced back into the machine. “Hold on, let me find the photo again.” Turning knobs, Hutch quietly fine-tuned the machine.

I waited and held my hands together to keep from running my finger along his hairline, tracing the line from ear to ear at the back of his neck.

He reached his hand behind the chair while still staring into the machine. “Don’t go. Wait.” His hand found mine without even glancing backward, and I allowed him to hold me there until he said, “Got it. Look.”

The view into the machine took me to a place and time I had never known existed. There was my mother sitting at a lunch counter next to a black man on one side and a white man on the other. They were eating sandwiches, Coca-Cola glasses at the counter. Mother was glancing over her shoulder at the camera with a closed and resolved smile. I couldn’t see the two men’s faces because they were faced away from the camera. The caption below read, “Desegregation laws tested at Murphy’s Cafe.”

I glanced up at Hutch. “Wow.”