Harry smiled. “Lion Books. I suppose I couldn’t help but hold on to a vestige of my lineage.”
“I sent that letter and hoped for the best, and here you are.”
To find Pearl’s long-lost brother so soon after losing Pearl broke Sadie’s heart. The joy that he was still alive was tempered by the decades that he’d kept away, by choice, which Sadie simply couldn’t comprehend. After everything his mother and sister had been through, why had he remained estranged? Sadie couldn’t imagine abandoning Lonnie, LuAnn, and Valentina.
“Why did you stay away for so long?” she asked, finally.
As the courtroom emptied, the old man spoke of gangs and stolen books, of a city vastly different from the one they were in now. “Initially, I was too afraid to return home, and by the time I realized I had to face what I had done, Red Paddy—the gang leader—threatened my family if I stopped stealing books for him. He was a charismatic, dangerous sort, who brought me under his wing and then told me lies to keep me under his control. I hated that it tore us all apart, that I couldn’t make amends for my actions, but I didn’t think I had a choice. The world is a large place when you’re just a child, and I didn’t have any perspective on what was true and what was not. I only saw danger, and couldn’t find my way out. After I learned my father had killed himself, there was no returning to my family. I’ll never forget the look on my mother’s face. They were better off without me. There was no going back.”
Sadie watched, unsure of what to do or say, as he dabbed at his eyes with a handkerchief. “How did you eventually get out?” she finally asked.
“At some point a few years later, the police raided our hideout, and we scattered. I knew it might be my only opportunity, and so I hitched a ride out of town. The truck was going north, which was good enough for me, anywhere I couldn’t be found. Books were what I knew, so I got a job at a bookstore, working as an assistant, eventually taking over after the owner died.”
“And in all that time, you never thought to reach out?”
He shuddered. “No. I was too ashamed. I’d read about my mother’s budding literary career in London, and was happy for her. Once, when I was in New York years later for a booksellers’ conference, I looked up Pearl in the phone book and stood outside her town house. I saw her leave with you in tow. You both looked happy, safe. That was good enough for me. I couldn’t intrude. I figured Pearl hated me.
“I tried to make up for what I’d done by hiring at-risk teenagers to help out in the store. Most of them weren’t interested in the books, but Robin was different.” The quiet, devoted way he said her name suggested he had a soft spot for the girl. “She’d had a terrible childhood, and lost herself in reading from an early age. She said books had saved her sanity. One day she was sad, missing her sister, which made me miss my own, and I began to regale her with stories of living in a huge library, where we played baseball in the great rooms using books as bases until we got caught and yelled at, of secret elevators that took you to faraway places. Robin didn’t believe me, so I showed her an old article written about our family’s life that I’d unearthed at my local library.
“We connected, you see. Robin felt guilty at the fact that her younger sister was living in another city with another family, that they’d been split up, and I told her that I understood, having lost my sister as well. No doubt some of my residual bitterness seeped into our conversations, bitterness about being left behind when my mother and Pearl moved to England, bitterness that Pearl never tried to find me when she returned. Every evening as we closed up the shop, Robin would ask me for more stories, and somehow, in the retelling, my bitterness slowly faded away. I realized I also could have reached out, but had chosen not to.” He glanced over at the empty defense table. “One time I stupidly told Robin about the Tamerlane. I told her that it had never been recovered, and was probably now in the care of my sister, Pearl.”
Which had sent Robin on a mission to find her. Pearl had gone back to her maiden name after husband number two—Sadie remembered her saying something about how pleased her own mother would’ve been. With the information gleaned from the newspaper article, it would have been easy enough for Robin to look up Pearl Lyons’s address in the phone book, just as Harry had, and begin staking out the family.
“Robin was a good girl, early on,” said Harry. “Smart, hungry for knowledge. She was mad for Shakespeare, and I would read the sonnets out loud to her, just as my mother did for me.”
Sadie thought of the folio page. It had indeed been some kind of sentimental token. But Sadie felt no sympathy for the woman who’d put Valentina in danger. “Robin wasn’t forced to steal, she chose to do it.”
He remained silent, as if the storytelling had drained him of words. When he finally spoke, it was in a tearful whisper. “I can’t help but think that by telling the stories, I displaced my anguish onto Robin—who also felt forgotten—where it festered and grew into something terrible. We are both to be blamed. It should be me, not Robin, locked away.”
She sat for a moment, lost in her own grief. Finally, she put an arm around him. Strange how she was more willing to forgive her uncle than Robin, even though they both had done terrible things. Yet Harry had tried to atone for his actions by fostering a love of reading in customers and kids from tough circumstances, while Robin allowed reading to bring joy to her life, and then embarked on a crime spree that would take that love away from others. They’d made choices at every turn. No one was above reproach.
Harry’s face crumpled. “I blame myself, for all of this. For everything.”
“You were only a boy.” Sadie couldn’t believe she was comforting the library’s original book thief. But it was true. Unlike Robin, he’d been only a child.
“What a mess it all was.” He patted her hand. “But what a marvel you are. Tell me, how is your exhibit going?”
“Quite well.” In fact, she’d been named permanent curator just a few days ago, and after, she and Nick had celebrated with a night at the opera, lingering in front of the Lincoln Center fountain for a long, glorious kiss.
“I am sorry for this. I hate that these books were harmed. I’ve spent my life trying to make up for what I did back then. But it’s all been for naught.”
“No. This case was important. The judge made a stand, and because of that, any future book thieves will be held accountable. It took a while, but we’ve made a big difference.”
He nodded, still looking bereft.
The pent-up anger that Sadie had been holding in, ever since the first theft, finally began to dissipate as the secrets of generations of the Lyons family unspooled like typewriter ribbon.
“Uncle Harry, have you returned to the library since that day?”
He shook his head. “No. I couldn’t bear it.”
“Maybe it’s time. Since you’re in town, I’d love it if you would come by and visit the exhibit. I could give you a personal tour. I know my brother, Lonnie, and his wife and daughter would love to meet you as well.”
“Are you sure?” His voice shook with hope.
“Yes, I’m sure. You’re the connection that’s been missing all this time, the link I’ve been searching for between my mother and my grandmother. There’s so much I want to learn, if that’s all right. All the stories that I never knew. Will you share them with us, with me and Lonnie? Say, tomorrow at four?”
“I would, most certainly. It would be my honor. Tomorrow at four it is.”
She stood, reluctant to leave this man. Eager to find out more in the coming days.
Yet, no matter what, some questions would remain unanswered. What had it been like for Laura Lyons to leave her son behind, to move to another country and start a new life? Only a tiny sliver of what she’d experienced had been left behind in her note, the anguish and pain pulsing behind each word, behind each carefully chosen phrase. It was a crucial piece of literary history, recovered and now safely tucked away within the library’s walls. And a crucial piece of Sadie’s personal history, too. She was grateful that she was finally learning about her extraordinary grandmother, who had taken risks and pursued what she cared about, even when society didn’t approve. Sadie might not have quite as many obstacles, but she was proud to think that she’d overcome her fear, and was following in her grandmother’s footsteps.