“The city of dreaming spires,” says Eddie, as if she’s read my mind. “That’s the common name for Oxford, but to me it’s the city of slumbering stories. There are more authors per square foot here than in any other spot on this earth—well, apart from Ireland maybe. Novels are born here, Sam, and some people even say that stories lurk in the shadows of the parks and houses and streets until someone walks past whom they trust to tell them properly. Then they attach themselves to that person and don’t let them go until the person has written them down. Many people only discovered here in this city that they could—or had to—be writers. You cannot decide to become a writer. You either are one or you aren’t, and those who didn’t make it either went mad or lived unhappy and restless lives.”

Her words tug at my emotions in the oddly familiar manner that I’ve always felt when I study the scrapbook or read my father’s articles. At the same time I’m assailed by a growing whirlwind of sensations: the city’s streets are full of questions, answers, and restless energy.

I contemplate writing something about my father or other things most people can’t detect because they’re on the outer edges of their sensory spectrum.

Eddie steers the car skillfully through the narrow lanes that wind around the high walls shielding the many colleges. She parks in a street behind the Bodleian Library, not far from the Museum of Natural History.

Maddie’s library is in a side street near Christ Church College and Balliol College. Most people are familiar with these institutions without knowing it: the dining hall scenes in the Harry Potter films were shot in their formal halls.

I imagine how Maddie might have left her imprint on this city. She must have passed Ben’s Cookies in the covered market and smelled the heady aroma of caramel. She’s bound to have looked up at the high college walls and seen the statues staring back at her. She surely skipped and danced along these streets.

We reach the small library.

“Would you like me to come in with you?” Eddie asks.

The library is nestled snugly between two residential buildings and has probably been here for eight hundred years. The windows sit in pointed arches, and the floorboards in the entrance creak. The tops of the outside walls are crenellated, of course.

Behind the counter sits a petite woman in a white-and-purple-striped jacket with a dark pageboy haircut and a kind expression behind enormous glasses.

“Hello, dear, what can I do for you?” she asks me in a friendly voice. The sign on the counter indicates that her name is Myfanwy Cook.