The door sighed shut on unseasonably cold weather. A light scent of tea rose wafted into the library and settled like a perfumed fog over the card catalogs, the stacks, and the bent heads of students. The young woman who had entered continued past the circulation desk, though her gaze lingered on the silvery head of a librarian, who pressed her fingers to her temple and a headache that wouldn’t abate.

Her clothes were drab: a wool coat, a pleated skirt, tights and clunky shoes. Her hair was just shy of blonde. Mouse brown, a stylist once called it. There were anemic half-moons beneath her eyes. She climbed a staircase to a lesser frequented part of the building, a reference section where nonfiction books, government publications, U.S. geological surveys, and the like collected dust and silverfish.

She stopped behind Whistler’s chair and tilted her head.

Slowly, she leaned over his shoulder to place her fingertip on the map.

“This is where I live.”