Chapter 2 - My Father Wasn't in the Museum Records
Victor was arrested.
The museum closed for the afternoon.
That should have simplified things.
It didn't.
By five o'clock, lawyers had arrived.
Board members.
Security consultants.
Public-relations people.
Everybody wanted the same thing from different directions.
Control.
Julian wanted information.
I wanted Leah away from all of them.
He compromised.
One hour.
Then we could leave.
We sat in a conference room on the sixth floor.
Leah drank hot chocolate.
I held my father's paper.
Julian had already ordered his staff to search Thomas Carter.
Nothing.
No employee record.
No consultant profile.
No published acknowledgment.
Then Owen Brooks, Julian's chief of staff, found one line in a digitized expense ledger from 2003.
T. Carter — translation/cultural liaison services.
Nine days.
No description.
Payment authorization:
Edward Mercer.
Julian looked at me.
“You genuinely didn't know?”
“No.”
“Did Thomas speak Arabic?”
“Yes.”
That was all I had known.
My father served in the Army for twenty-six years.
Jordan.
Kuwait.
Iraq.
Several assignments he never discussed.
He taught Arabic phrases to Leah as a game.
I knew enough from childhood to order food badly and recognize when somebody insulted me.
Leah learned far more.
“Grandpa said languages change depending on who's translating.”
Julian looked at her.
“What does that mean?”
She shrugged.
“He said sometimes the dangerous word isn't the one somebody changes.”
“What is?”
“The one they leave out.”
I stared at her.
“Your grandfather told you that?”
“Yes.”
Apparently Dad and my daughter had conducted an entire parallel education while I thought they were reading bedtime stories.
Julian examined the page.
Most of it was Arabic.
At the bottom:
T. Carter / E. Mercer
And one English sentence.
Temporary custodianship pending safe restoration.
Julian looked at Owen.
“Is that phrase anywhere in our provenance records?”
Owen searched.
“No.”
“What do they say?”
“Permanent donation.”
There it was.
Two phrases.
One collection.
Two entirely different meanings.
Then Leah asked:
“What's provenance?”
Julian answered:
“The story of where an object came from and how it got here.”
She thought.
“So if the story is wrong, does that make the object stolen?”
May you like
Nobody answered quickly.
That was probably why she asked better questions than the adults.
