“Is he all right?” Dr. Johnson looked sour in his sudden confusion.

“We’ve come rather a long distance.”

“This is the new high school.” Dr. Johnson had turned away from Sharkey. “Your friend might have attended the old high school.”

“Where’s that, Doctor?”

“On Cherry Street. It’s a museum now.”

“How old are you, Doctor?”

“Forty-seven—and by the way, please call me Purnell.”

“Purnell, did you know a family named Mulgrave when you were a teenager?”

“I take it they were white folks?”

“Yes, sir,” Olive said, and heard Sharkey mutter “Haoles” through his teeth.

“I didn’t know any white folks at all when I was a youngster. I lived out at Yellville—but not in Yellville proper. Countryside. First white person I ever got to know was at college. I was around twenty then.”

“What about the yearbooks? He might be in one of them.”

“Maybe have a look at the school library. What did you say was the year this gentleman graduated?”

“’Sixty-nine.”

“Ancient history,” Dr. Williams said in a pained voice, tightening his face. “Library’s the big room on the second floor. Miss Ruffin will be glad to help you.”

Miss Ruffin, a soft-faced woman, chalky with makeup, was seated at a computer; her welcoming voice said, “Come right on in.” She tapped the keyboard with a gesture of finality, stabbing at it, then turned to face them and listen to Olive’s question.

“Excuse my apron,” she said. It was starched and white, with yellow flowers embroidered on the bib, and made her look like an elderly child.

Olive wrote Max Mulgrave’s name and his graduation year on a slip of paper and handed it to Miss Ruffin.

“Tell you one thing for certain,” Miss Ruffin said. “You won’t find anything of that kind on this here computer. All the yearbooks is over on those shelves. Ain’t got but one file copy on hand, and none of those early years been digitized.”

“So we came to the right place,” Olive said.

“Yearbook-speaking,” Miss Ruffin said, “you’re at ground zero.”

“That’s a lovely apron.”

“It’s to keep the dust off. Books are just a caution for dust.”

“Apron? Dust?” Sharkey said. “What is all this talk? What are we doing here?”

Hugging him, to comfort him, to restrain him, Olive felt the tension in his body, his hard arms tensed as though about to lash out. Soothing him, she heard Miss Ruffin speaking.

“The Apple Blossom, 1969,” the woman was saying in a new tone—brisk, efficient—selecting a blue volume from the far end of the shelf. “You can use it on the table yonder. Just return it to me when you’re done.”