The Drowning Tree by Carol Goodman

“Don’t you have to pick up Bea from school?”
    I look down at my watch and am amazed to see it’s almost three. It’s taken seven hours to release the Lady. “Damn, I don’t even have time to go home and take a shower. I promised Bea I’d take her shopping …”
    I look down at my clothes, which are covered with a fine dust that is mostly putty but also some lead from the decaying cames. I’m always lecturing the guys on washing up after handling lead.
If you don’t want to end up brain-dead by forty
.
    “Use the showers down by the gym,” Ernesto suggests. “Don’t you keep a locker there for when you go swimming?”
    One of the perks of teaching a stained-glass class here at night is that I get to use the campus pool. “Yeah, that’s what I’ll do. I’ve got some exercise clothes in the car. Can you guys handle the rest of this?”
    Ernesto and my dad exchange an amused look. Robbie is already sweeping the dust off the floor. I start to toss the papers in my hand into a loose garbage bag when I notice that in among the shredded newspapers are heavy cream-colored sheets folded into quarters. I unfold one and hold it in the light that’s now flooding through the gaping hole in the wall. The light’s almost too bright—bleaching the old paper clean—but I can just make out fine pencil lines, a sketch of a face, and an intricate tiny script running along the edge of the paper like a mouse scurrying along the rim of a baseboard.
    “Look at these,” I say, holding the pages out to the men.
    “Looks like discarded sketches for the window—got jammed in with the putty—saw something like it in that window we did down in Irvington,” Ernesto says.
    “Might be a message,” my dad says.
    “A message?” I ask. My dad doesn’t usually wax so mystical.
    “From the previous craftsman,” he explains, “to the restorer. Which would be you, Junebug. Medieval craftsmen did it all the time. Notes on how and when the glass was made, what kind of caming was used. Then when the window was restored they’d stuff some notes in on what they did so the next restorer would know what was original, what was restored.”
    “So these could be notes from Augustus Penrose, or Eugenie …” I gather up all the cream-colored sheets, counting twelve in all. Because they’re covered in lead and putty dust I seal them in a garbage bag.
    “Or just trash,” my dad finishes my sentence for me.
    “I’ll have a look at them later,” I say, checking my watch again. “If you guys can really handle the rest …”
    “Go!” the three men shout at me.
    So I do. Halfway down the hall, though, I turn back to look at where the window was. Through the stone arch I can see the Hudson and the long, sloping ridges of the Hudson Highlands. For a moment I wonder why anyone would ever want to hide that view with colored glass, but then, I remind myself as I turn away, I’d be out of a job if they didn’t.
    I STOP IN THE MIDDLE OF THE MAIN QUAD AND CALL B EA ON MY CELL PHONE TO TELL her I’m running late. She says no problem, she’ll head down to the gym and work out on the rowing machines. At her age I would have spent the spare time out in the woods behind the track smoking Marlboros with Carl Ventimiglio, the juvenile delinquent I dated my last two years in high school.
    Old Gym—so called since the college built a multimillion-dollar field house on the edge of campus—is deserted. Finals ended last week and most of the students have already packed up and left for home. The pool, though, has been kept open for faculty members still finishing their grades. I run into Umberto Da Silva, my old Dante professor, who’s now assistant to the president, on the steps coming up from the basement, his thin gray hair combed in damp strands across his forehead, his usual pipe tobacco and licorice mint smell mixed with chlorine.
    “Ciao Bella,”
he says, leaning toward me to give me the traditional European kiss on both cheeks. I