The canvas had at one time been stapled to the wooden frame. On two sides of the rectangular canvas, the staples were in place. But on two sides they were missing, and instead had been replaced with gobs of glue at inch-long intervals, some of which had seeped out and hardened onto the wood. Lyra and the other replicas had spent too long at Haven searching for places to hide their limited belongings not to suspect that the picture Nurse Em had given Sheri was in fact concealing something else behind it.
Nurse Em had told Sheri she could take the damn things apart. What if she had meant that Sheri should take the damn things apart?
The phone had stopped ringing, and Sheri’s voice, muffled by the walls, was now nothing more than tones. She must have closed a door. Before she could lose her nerve, Lyra pried a corner of the canvas from the frame and ripped.
“What are you doing?” 72 reached out and seized Lyra’s wrist as if to stop her.
“Nurse Em gave these pictures away before she died,” Lyra whispered. “Maybe she was hiding something.” Fearing both that she would find something and that she wouldn’t, she slipped a hand behind the canvas. Almost immediately, her fingers landed on several loose items, glossy-slick. Photographs.
72 stared as she laid them out on the table. There were three of them, each showing Nurse Em with a tall, dark-haired man who had a beard and a sour expression. In one photograph, Nurse Em was sitting on his lap and he was turning away from the camera. In another, she was kissing him on the cheek and he was lifting a hand as if to block them from the lens. But in the last one she’d caught him square on, or someone else had. They were standing in front of a nondescript stretch of highway. There was a scruffy range of blue hills in the distance. She was holding on to a straw hat and looked happy. Lyra felt sick for reasons she couldn’t say.
“Dr. Saperstein,” 72 said, naming him first. Lyra could only nod. The man in the pictures was unmistakably Dr. Saperstein, whom Lyra had always thought of a little like the humans thought about their God: someone remote and all-powerful, someone through whom the whole world was ordered.
Lyra could no longer hear Sheri talking. But after a minute, there was a quick burst of laughter from the other room and she knew they still had a little time.
“Quick,” she said. “Help me check the other frames.”
She flipped over the second picture. Like the first, its backing had been pulled away from the frame and then reglued. But this one had been done more carefully and was difficult to detach. 72 leaned across her, knife in hand, and neatly sliced the canvas, barely missing her fingers.
“It’s faster,” he said, and leaned across her to slit open the back of the third picture.
They found, behind the second picture, a folded sheet of paper that looked at first glance to be a list of names and a typed document, although Lyra didn’t have time to try and read it. She didn’t have time to check the third picture frame, either. At that moment she heard a door open, and Sheri’s voice, suddenly amplified.
“I’ll call you tomorrow,” she was saying. “I’m being rude . . .”
Sheri would only have to glance at the frames to know what they had done and to guess, probably, that something had been removed from behind the pictures. Without speaking, she and 72 stood up from the table and moved as quietly as they could to the back door, which opened out onto a little patio. Sheri was still trying to get off the phone. Lyra saw her pass momentarily into view and froze, one hand on the door handle.
“I have guests,” Sheri was saying. “But I was listening, I promise . . .”
Then Sheri, who was pacing, passed out of view again without looking up.
Lyra eased open the screen door, wincing when it squeaked on its hinges. 72 ducked outside onto the stone patio. One of the cats was still staring at her, unblinkingly, and for a terrifying second Lyra thought it might open its mouth and let out a wail of alarm.
But it made not a sound, and so Lyra slipped after 72, closing the door behind her.
Turn the page to continue reading Lyra’s story. Click here to read Chapter 12 of Gemma’s story.
THIRTEEN
LYRA HALF EXPECTED SHERI TO come running after them, and they were several blocks away before she thought that they were probably safe. They found another park, with several dirty sandboxes and a rusted swing set at its center. But there were trees here, and shade, and they were alone.
She examined the pictures again, one by one. She’d seen romance on the nurses’ televisions, of course, and heard the staff at Haven talk about boyfriends and girlfriends and wives and husbands. She knew about it. But knowing about what humans did, the kinds of relationships they had on TV, was different from seeing and holding proof of this. Dr. Saperstein had struck her not so much as human but as some bloodless stone deity come to life. She had never once seen him smile. True, he wasn’t smiling in these pictures, either, but he was dressed in T-shirts and striped shorts and a baseball hat, like he could have been anybody. This made him more frightening to her, not less. She thought of the snakes at Haven that left their long, golden skins on the ground, brittle and husk-like.
Nurse Em was hardly recognizable. She looked so happy. Lyra thought again of the last time she’d seen her—sobbing into Dr. O’Donnell’s arms. And she had killed herself, using a rope instead of a knife, as Pepper had.
What had happened?
Sheri had mentioned men in suits visiting Nurse Em before she died. Was Dr. Saperstein one of them? Before looking at the photographs, Lyra had never seen him in anything but a lab coat.
She unfolded the list. 72 leaned over her. He smelled sweet, as if he was sweating soap. “What does it say?” he asked impatiently, and she had the sudden, ridiculous urge to take his hand, to tuck herself into the space between his arm and shoulder, as Nurse Em and Dr. Saperstein were doing in the picture.