“Oh, it started out okay—she wanted me to call you. But it was what she wanted me to say that was all-out confusing. She said to tell you to find the man and save yourself. But that doesn’t make any sense at all, does it? Does it?” In the background, all the static noise of a hospital came through. I heard a muffled name gargle across an intercom, and the rolling wheels of gurneys. It made my uncle sound all the more alone.

Bitter, hot tears welled up in my eyes. My nose filled up and made my voice all soggy. “I’ve got to go.”

“Eden?”

“Dave, I’ve got to go. I’m going to take care of it.”

“What are you talking about? Do you know something? Dammit, what was she talking about? What do you mean, you’re going to take care of it? What are you going to do down there? And why don’t you come home, like she asked you to in the first place?”

“I’ve got to go. But I’m going to take care of it. You tell her to hang on, and I’m going to go get him. You tell her when she comes home from the hospital, I’m going to be waiting for her at the door.”

I pressed the “end” button. It disconnected us with an electronic blip, and the lights behind the numbers went dim. Harry reached out as if he meant to touch me in comfort, but I drew away, holding his phone out to him and lifting my head.

“Okay. You win. How do we find this goddamned book?”

IV

I spent the next hours sick at heart, tearing through Eliza’s house in a frantic search. Together, Harry and I turned every room inside out—we emptied cabinets, we broke plates, we dumped silverware onto the floor. We dragged out all the liquor bottles and tapped around in the wet bar, seeking any small hollow place. We went inch by inch along every wall, feeling each crack with the tips of our fingers, hoping to stumble upon some hidden spring or button. We lifted aside all the rugs and pressed the toes of our shoes into the floorboards, seeking some loose part that might come away.

We found nothing.

In the end, we returned to Eliza’s bedroom and scoured it once more before dropping ourselves to rest on the floor against her bed. By then it was nearing dawn. Both of us were exhausted and despairing, knowing that for once in her century-long life, Eliza had been telling the truth. She didn’t have the book.

“Then where could it possibly be?” I asked, fully aware that Harry didn’t have any better idea than I did.

“Anywhere. Nowhere.” He was fidgeting with the papers he’d removed from between her mattresses. I could now see that they were letters, in envelopes. They made me think of the bundle I’d pulled from the files at Pine Breeze.

“What are those? Besides the obvious, I mean.”