Free The Book of Speculation by Erika Swyler Page B

archivists, information system architects, whatever that means. Even if I knew what it meant, there’s no way I could handle the commute. The Long Island jobs are slim, most calling for interns or budget wizards, of which I’m neither. At the bottom of the page is a small green box advertising a manuscript curator position with the Sanders-Beecher Archive, a specialty library in Savannah, Georgia. Clicking around takes me to the archive’s website, which reveals a beautiful old columned building. Photos of the inside show gorgeous dark wood shelves—walnut or cherry?—and rooms filled floor to ceiling with leather-bound books. A brief paragraph describes Sanders-Beecher as an archive with “a personal approach to broader history.” They lay claim to volumes from Georgia’s first printing press, diaries from early settlers, and a museum affiliation. I glance up at the whaling collection—a static snapshot of Philip Grainger’s obsession crammed into two sterile rooms. Something about Sanders-Beecher feels warm and alive. Maybe it’s the romance of distance causing rose-tinted longing. The miles between here and Savannah make the position more wish than reality, particularly when I’ve got the house to think of. And Enola coming home.
    “Hey.” Alice drops a stack of broken-backed books on my desk. She leans on them, petting the spines. Her nails are short and carefully filed; mine are chewed to the point of no longer being fingernails. Her pity comes with a sigh, and it’s all right. I want a little pity.
    “Hey,” I answer.
    “I’m sorry it wasn’t me.”
    “Nice of you to say, but you don’t have to lie.”
    “Okay,” she says. “I’m glad it wasn’t me but I’m sorry it was you. Better?”
    “Better.”
    “Tonight’s my treat, okay? As much as you want to drink, whatever. You can get sloppy, crash at my place, and I won’t tell anyone.”
    I don’t even know what I’d drink. “What do you drink when you’re let go?”
    “Rye, I think?”
    “That sounds awful.”
    She smiles. “Sounds about right.” We stay like this. Printers whir, copiers whine, fingers tap at keyboards. “You bring that book everywhere. Why?”
    I don’t exactly know. The notes and the sketches feel vaguely familiar. Then there’s the drowning, and why my mother knew Bess Visser’s name, and the oddness about the twenty-fourth; it’s becoming an itch. “The guy who sent it to me might be right. I’m pretty sure it has to do with my family.”
    Alice casts an eye toward the clock above the computer bank. Eleven o’clock. She needs to start setting up for a speaker soon. Don Buchman on salt marsh birds. She stretches. “You can’t find family in a book, Simon.”
    I shrug. “You can’t fix me with platitudes, Alice.”
    “No, you’re unfixable,” she replies. A soft chuckle—hers, mine. A curve of the lips. She grabs my hand and we both squeeze. “Is there anything I can do?”
    Maybe it’s because Alice said it, maybe it’s because Enola hasn’t shown up, but I want to find my family, in this book or elsewhere, and figure out what happened to us. “Would you mind doing a little more digging? I’m looking for anything you can turn up on two women, Verona Bonn and Celine Duvel. I’ve hit a roadblock.”
    “I was thinking something more along the lines of leaving early, but okay, sure. I’ll check out your future dates for you.”
    “It’s not like that—they’re relatives. There’s just something I’m curious about. I think they might fit into a pattern.”
    She arches a brow. “Care to enlighten me?”
    “It’s nothing really. I just need a project. You know me, I’m better with a project.”
    “I know.”
    The morning is lost to taping bindings and polishing grant language. At lunch I email r é sum é s. For the hell of it I send one to Sanders-Beecher, even one to a museum in Texas. The beauty of electronic applications is the fantasy—thousands of miles disappear with a click.