19 / Ginny
After the incident with the intruders breaking into his house while his kids were home alone, Nehemiah Dunn asked the police department to send out an officer to watch his house during the afternoons and evenings when he wasn’t there. He thought again about leaving the whole business about the Correction behind. Keeping his children safe seemed like a good excuse for that. He couldn’t help but think that his late wife, Waverly, would never forgive him if something happened to Tonya or Cody.
His shift ended before his kids got home from school, so he drove by the house to make sure an officer had been stationed as promised. Across the street from his house was an unmarked car with heavily tinted windows. Nehemiah drove past slowly and nodded to the officer sitting in the front seat.
Nehemiah didn’t want to feel like he was giving up on something both his mother and father thought was important. At the very least, he owed it to them and to himself to find out exactly what he was handling — whether it was real history or wild fantasy. His father wanted him to have the book that was hidden in the lighthouse. When he had first laid eyes on it, he had felt that it was something enormous, huge, bigger then himself. But, now, as he looked at the old, leather-bound, handwritten book resting in the passenger’s seat of his SUV, he felt that it was only a small piece of a very large puzzle. Now, he had to find out about the other pieces of the puzzle.
As he turned north on the New Jersey Turnpike, he felt like he was finally getting a grip on the mystery. Doing something made him feel like he was in control.
............
It was late afternoon when he arrived on the campus of Columbia University in the City of New York. He found his way to Fayerweather Hall — a six-story building that housed the Department of History. He parked on a side street, tucked the book underneath his arm, and entered the building. The door of the first office he came to was ajar. He knocked.
“Can I help you?” said a woman who was sitting at a desk with her back to him. She didn’t turn around.
“Yes,” said Nehemiah. “I’m looking for Ginger Boone. She teaches here.”
The woman held up two fingers. “Go up the stairs. Second floor. Fourth door on your right.” She paused a moment and then said, “She likes appointments, so if you don’t have one, you’ll probably have to come back.”
Nehemiah hadn’t thought about calling ahead. “Thanks,” he said to the woman and turned back to where the stairwell was by the entrance. As he walked back, students leaving and entering the building gave him strange looks, and he realized he had been in such a hurry to get there that he hadn’t changed out of his police uniform. With all the violence on school campuses, he couldn’t blame them for thinking that something was up with a man in uniform walking the halls.
When he arrived on the second floor, the fourth door on the right was closed. He knocked.
“I don’t have any scheduled appointments this evening, so if it’s not important, please put your name in one of the available time-slots on the board by the door,” a lilting voice said.
Nehemiah scowled at the magic marker board hanging by the door. A gray nameplate hung above it; “Dr. Ginger A. Boone” was printed on it in white letters. He pushed the door open.
An elderly woman sat behind a nondescript office desk that was cluttered with papers and books. Her gray hair was gathered in a messy bun atop her head. A pair of emerald flyaway glasses sat on her nose. She peered over them at Nehemiah standing in the doorway. “If you’re here to arrest someone, you have the wrong lady,” she said.
