Miriam had been pregnant with Adrien when she began playing opera CDs on her endless bouts of chauffeuring the older two, hoping appreciation would come with repeated exposure. When she first left her job at the Homeless Persons Representation Project, she had tried listening to Italian language tapes, but her thoughts ended up drifting. She decided music might require less concentration, permitting her to check in and out. Like a baby in a womb, stereo speakers blasting Mozart at mother’s convex belly, she drove around in her Volvo, willing the music and foreign words to wash over her.

But so far, the only thing she had learned was how many little bits of opera had entered everyday life, like common foreign phrases so familiar they were no longer regarded as foreign. Miriam recognized melodies from Carmen because they had been incorporated into an episode of Gilligan’s Island, and she could hum Pagliacci’s lament only because it had been used to tout the wonders of Rice Krispies when she was a child. No, it was Adrien who sang along to Madame Butterfly, whose face brightened when a car commercial included that famous strand of notes from Lakmé.

Oh, to have the spongelike mind of a child again, to soak up knowledge as easily as you popped a Flintstone vitamin. Jake was at that stage where he wanted to know everything, everything, and he used his knowledge with an almost unattractive aggression, correcting Miriam until she got a bit sharp with him. Sascha was beginning to seek forbidden information in secret. Sascha being Sascha, this meant a copy of God’s Little Acre under her bed. Really, the girl was almost quaint in her attempts to rebel.

Blessed Adrien remained incurious about the world, content that it would reveal its mysteries to her soon enough. Which was fine with Miriam. Childlike wonder was a bit wearying the third time around.

Her CDs chosen- La Traviata and Manon Lescaut-Miriam checked out the new acquisitions, best-sellers all, and a table of for-sale items, last year’s best-sellers. Back in the children’s section, Sascha was lost in The Red Fairy Tales, the world forgotten as she leaned against the shelf, a piece of hair drawn between her lips. It was a lovely tableau, even with the hair-chewing bit. An incomprehensible teenage habit, yet Miriam had done it, too. Tasted her hair, split the split ends, plucked out one strand at a time, just because she could, because it was her hair to do with as she wished, and because this drove her mother crazy. For a moment, Miriam saw Sascha as a perceptive stranger might, a girl poised between childhood and adolescence. You rushed so hard to grow up, Miriam remembered-until you realized you had no choice. Then you wanted to slow down, draw childhood out, go back to simpler stories and simpler games.

It took her a second to register the fact that Adrien was nowhere to be seen.

“Sascha,” she said, feeling a mild irritation at the girl’s thoughtlessness, “where’s your sister?”

Sascha looked up, needing a moment to surface from her imaginary world. “Adrien? She’s right here. I mean, she was right here. Maybe she went off with Jake.”

Perhaps because it was a library, and perhaps because Miriam, too, loved fairy tales, it still didn’t occur to her to feel anything more than impatient.

But when she found Jake alone at one of the library’s computers-trying to hack his way past the filters, just to see if it could be done-a slight panic began a skipping beat somewhere between Miriam’s stomach and heart. Where had the baby gone? The three Rosens split up, looking everywhere. Adrien was not in the children’s section, or in the rest rooms, or curled up in an aisle’s cozy dead end. Miriam’s hands began to shake, and she had to exert enormous control not to yell at someone, anyone. Sascha and Jake, for their carelessness. The library staff, for running such a chaotic bazaar instead of a hushed, serious place for study. The other families, for daring to be whole.

The children’s librarian, who knew the Rosens well, made an announcement on the seldom-used PA system. If anyone sees a little girl with long curly hair in a green T-shirt and pink plaid pants, please bring her to the Information Desk. Yet the amplified voice could barely be heard over the buzz of the library. Ten minutes passed, fifteen, twenty. Miriam, hands shaking ever harder, insisted on calling the police despite the staff’s assurances that this happened every now and then, and the children always-always-turned up.

“Not always,” an old man muttered. “In California last week…” But no one wanted to listen to him.

The police took their time getting there. They still had not arrived when Jake had the idea of searching the lower level, used primarily for storage and the board’s monthly meetings. “There’s nothing scheduled down there today,” the children’s librarian said, “and the room is usually locked when it’s not in use.” But it was something to do, a way to keep moving forward, a way to still the doleful voices in Miriam’s head, the ones predicting the end of life as she knew it.

The three Rosens descended the stairs together, mother in the center, hand in hand. In the time it took to walk to the lower floor, Miriam saw every assumption she had made about her life torn from her. Twenty minutes ago, asked what she feared, she might have said that she hoped her children stayed away from drugs, that they would be spared cruelty, that they would go to good colleges and make happy marriages. Pressed to the outer limits of her imagination, she could have envisioned the horror of a sick child, or an injured one. But not a missing one and certainly not-but she couldn’t say it, even to herself. Don’t do this to me, she instructed God. Don’t you dare. Her nonobservant life-her so-so Seders, her refusal to fast on Yom Kippur-came back to haunt her. But even in utter despair, she could not vow to change, to love God more if he would bring her daughter back. She didn’t want to make a promise she knew she would forget to keep.

“Mom-” It was Jake, his voice careful. “You’re muttering.”

At the bottom of the stairs, they found themselves in a small foyer. Miriam reached out and placed a palm on the double doors that faced them, the way you were supposed to do in a fire. The doors were cool to the touch. She pulled and they balked, seemingly locked. But she yanked on them again, and the sticky lock disengaged, opening to reveal an empty meeting space.

Adrien was sitting quietly on the floor in a corner of the room, a picture book in her lap, other books scattered around her in a haphazard semicircle.

“Baby,” Miriam said, running toward her, arms outstretched.

Adrien frowned and sat where she was. “Not baby,” she corrected.

“Why are you down here? How did you get here?” Miriam had pressed the girl so hard to her shoulder that she couldn’t answer until she wiggled around, freeing her mouth.

“Lady said.”

“What lady? One of the librarians?” Miriam indicated the staff members who had crept down the stairs behind her.

Adrien studied them gravely, then shook her head. Because of her long amber curls and green eyes, she was used to admiring glances, but she had never had so many people watching her at once. She seemed to like it.

“Gone,” she said, with a dramatic sweep of her chubby little arm. “Lady gone.”

The police arrived as the Rosens were gathering their things. Miriam made a report only because she felt so sheepish. If she didn’t make a report, then she was a silly hysteric who had acted on groundless fears. A report made it true. She told the officer that she had left the baby under Sascha’s supervision-not to blame Sascha, she told herself, but to establish a record, in case it happened again. Someone had lured her daughter to that basement room, probably some dotty old lady. Still, she wouldn’t want another family to experience the panic she had just known. And there was the question of how the room had come to be unlocked, which seemed to bother the library staff even more than Adrien’s disappearance.