the days wore on, the way puzzles became easier once you had the edges laid out, but instead the project only grew larger and more complex. Archivists were supposed to keep to the collection’s original order wherever possible, mimicking the creator’s logic, but Theo’s carelessness and Miranda’s sloppiness made ascertaining an original order nearly impossible. There was no rhyme or reason, even within individual boxes. Almost everything was loose paper. Whenever she tried to ask Theo what he wanted, he just repeated what he had said that first day, “whatever seems logical,” and left the room.
And then there was the collection’s sheer dirtiness. The dust wedged into folds of paper, dried ink splattered on bank statements, old lozenges melted into their waxy wrappers. Mold crept over entire folders. Foxing, the red stains of age, spotted papers like chicken pox. Kate tried to approach the mess with clinical detachment, but that was easier said than done. Her legs started itching again. Nothing at the museum had ever been in such terrible condition. Several times she had to go out onto the back porch and stare out at the woods, the sun, just to get away from the room for a minute.
Out in the wild bright air, she would put her hands on the small of her back and visualize the finish line. The part where she had contained the mess. The clean room, the labeled boxes. The perfected state, when everything was fully under control and the auction house’s truck would come and take it all away.
Of all the materials that had deteriorated through neglect, the photographs made Kate the saddest. Evaluating the photos was not officially in her purview—they would be sold individually, after being assessed and repaired by a team of conservationists at the auction house—but she did need to catalog them and transfer them to archival boxes for later transport. The percentage-based bonus was good motivation for doing this job well, and she followed conservation rules dutifully. Gloves on if she was handling photographs or negatives; tissue and foam layered delicately between each print. But many of the photographs were beyond saving. They were shoved in shirt boxes whose bottoms had gone black and ripe with mold. They were rotting, foxed, bleached partly pale. Dust was caked onto their satiny surfaces. Most prints from the Bottle Rocket series, which was well known and would have fetched a large amount at auction, had been housed together in a box that a mouse had nested in, and were now irretrievable.
“It’s disgusting,” she complained to her mother one night over the phone. She considered her parents and Natasha permanently exempted from the NDA. “Stuff is everywhere.”
“I’m imagining an episode of Hoarders,” Darcy said. “Oh, now I want to watch that.”
“It’s not quite that bad. There aren’t bugs.” Although actually just that day she had lifted a box and found an enormous millipede, each one of its many legs bristling and articulated. She had covered her mouth just before shrieking: she refused to give Theo the satisfaction of hearing her scream. “But think how much money they must have lost. Hundreds of thousands of dollars. Probably millions. How could they have just left it all sitting up here?”
“Not everyone is as neat as you,” her mother said. “And besides. Maybe there were just too many memories.”
* * *
Late on Friday afternoon, Kate was sitting cross-legged on the floor of the dining room, weeding her way through one of the boxes destroyed by mold and mice, when a small cough came from behind her. She turned and saw Oscar clutching the door frame.
“Hey, Oscar,” she said, stretching her back. “What’s up?”
“Want to see a mab?” he asked.
“A what?”
“A mab.”
“I don’t know what that is.” Kate squinted at him. “You have something on your cheek.”
He came forward for her to wipe it away. It was a long red streak. It looked like blood. Hiding her concern, she licked her thumb and rubbed the spot away. The skin beneath was intact, and the substance was sticky. Jam.
Oscar pushed his stomach out. “Come see.”
“What?”
“The mab. Come see.”
“Where is it?”
“Upstairs.”
Kate glanced at the door. Theo might swoop through it at any moment. “I kind of have to stay here,” she said. “Can you bring it down?”
He shook his head. “It’s stuck.”
“What do you mean, it’s stuck?”
“Come see,” he insisted. He was starting to sound agitated. His fingers knotted into his sleeves.
Jemima barreled through the door, nearly knocking her brother over.