“Mentally ill.” It was as if someone had just very gently placed a bomb in my lap. I didn’t know how to dismantle it, but I knew no matter how scary it might be, there was a key inside it-a key to all the hard days and locked doors and crying jags.

“Haven’t you ever heard those words?”

“Yes,” I said meekly.

“Haven’t you ever connected them with your mother?”

I had used the word “crazy” but never “mentally ill.” “Crazy” didn’t seem so bad. “Crazy” was a simple word like “shy” or “tired” or “sad.”

Tosh jumped off the couch, sensing Mr. Forrest’s desire to move. I stood.

“We’ll look at books and make you a G &T,” he said. “You don’t owe your life to your mother, you know. Nor does your father, for that matter.”

“You just said she was mentally ill.”

“Your mother is a survivor. I’ll no doubt send you home with a book or two that she wouldn’t know about otherwise, and you’ll return the photograph as a favor to me.”

Tosh, Mr. Forrest, and I all went through the dining room and into the kitchen. After the two other rooms, the kitchen was a shock. It was all white and incredibly utilitarian. Nothing was out on the counters that would suggest he’d eaten or prepared anything to eat in months.

He opened his fridge while I leaned against the sink.

“You can give Tosh a treat,” he said with his back to me. He found the bottles he wanted and opened the freezer. “They are in that white porcelain bunny jar by the sink.”

While I fed an ecstatic Tosh treats that looked like miniature bunnies, Mr. Forrest made me a drink.

“Why are you friends with her?” I asked.

“Your mother is fascinating. She’s incredibly witty and beautiful.”

“And mean,” I said.

“Regrettably you and your father see a good deal more of that than I ever will. We have books. We can keep on that level, and then I leave.”

He handed me my drink. “Imagine, if you will, the demise of all the fucking bastards of the world,” he said, and knocked his glass to mine.

“What about my mother?”

“Your mother is not a fucking bastard. Fucking bastards are simple by nature. Now drink up, because soon you’ll be in a room where no liquids are allowed.”

The G &T was better than the port, and cool. We drank as Mr. Forrest led me down a hall that ran off the kitchen.

“Somewhere in this hallway I turn into another person,” he said. “But for your sake I’m going to try and remain tethered to reality.”

We reached a doorway that was half glass, through which I could see small spotlights in the large room on the other side.

“Let’s put our drinks down here. Are your hands clean?”

I placed my drink next to his on a built-in shelf.

“I think so,” I said.

He reached up to a second shelf and brought down a wooden box. Inside there were several pairs of small white gloves made of cotton.

“Here, wear these.”

I put on the gloves and stared at my hands. “I feel like Mickey Mouse,” I said.

“Minnie,” he corrected. “Are you ready?”

“Yes.”

He turned to Tosh. “Sorry, boy.”

He opened the door and flipped a switch to his right. In a circle all around the room, the spotlights were joined by small lamps that were connected to the upright beams of bookshelves. There were no windows in the entire room.

“I think of this as my city,” Mr. Forrest said to me. “I shut the door, and the world falls away. I can be in here for hours, come out, and have no idea what time it is.”

He brought me over to a long table. I couldn’t resist running my hand along its shiny surface.

“It’s from New Zealand,” he said. “Made from an old railroad bridge. Heavy as hell and it cost me a fortune, but I love it.”

He stooped over to the center of the table and drew toward him a large, flat box made of cardboard.

“These are archival boxes,” he said. “I keep color plates in here and some letter prints, which arrived yesterday. They were horribly packaged in recycled freezer bags. The horror!”

He opened the box. The first letter I saw was an H under a cloudy sheet of what I took to be tracing paper.

“See, it’s perfect that you came today. Though I admit I’m partial to the S in most medieval alphabets.”

He picked up the H by swiftly lifting it in what he explained was its protective vellum, then opened it in front of me.

“See their faces?” he said. “Usually they are so stoic. But this artist challenged convention by making the characters within the letters have expressions. I didn’t know it until I saw them in person, but I won’t be able to sell these. At least not yet.”

Mr. Forrest reminded me of a geeky kid I knew at school. He spent most of his time in the audiovisual room, tinkering with sound equipment. In the cafeteria, he had once spoken so excitedly about the qualities of static that everyone grew silent until David Cafferty, a jock who was missing his two front teeth from being kicked in the mouth during football practice, began the avalanche of laughter that buried him.

“How old are these?” I asked.

“Sixteenth century, but besides the faces, what makes them special is that they were drawn by a monk who’d taken a vow of silence. I like to think this was the only way he could communicate. Wait, you’ll see.”

Mr. Forrest quickly took each letter out of the box and arranged them down the length of the table in their folded vellum.

“It’s a story,” he said. “I haven’t figured it all out yet, but from the lance one of the figures carries and the frequency of certain colors, I believe the monk was telling his own story.”

I looked at the H in front of me. Two figures comprised the verticals. Across the horizontal, one figure was passing something to the other.

“Is this food?” I asked. I thought of my mother’s ruined casserole.

“Good, Helen,” Mr. Forrest said. “That would be grain. The plates tell the story of the harvest, which was very common, but they also tell this other story. There, now, we have them in order. Come follow the plates with me.”

Mr. Forrest circled around the other side of the table and joined me at A.

“This is the figure to watch,” he said, pointing at a male figure who had what looked like a bowl cut. “See how he’s dressed in blue and gold?”

“Yes.”

“He will be in almost all the letters. This was very unusual. These alphabets are largely decorative, and to draw too much attention to any repeating figure was not done.”

“Here he is again,” I said, pointing to the C.

We walked slowly down the length of the table together. I studied each letter and followed the blue-and-gold figure.

“I take it your father isn’t home?”

“He’s supposed to be in Erie.”

“How is he these days?”

“If I could get my driver’s license, I could at least do the grocery shopping.”

I reached the X and leaned in close. On the slant that began on the left, there was a figure who could have been sleeping. On the slant that began farther right and crossed over the body of the sleeping figure was the blue-and-gold figure. He held only the handle of the lance. The rest was buried in the sleeping figure.

“He murdered someone!” I said.

“Bravo, Helen! Very good! It took me much longer to see.”

The Y was the murderer imploring the Gods, his arms raised up and his head visible only from the pitched-back chin as he screamed. And the Z had no human figures in it at all, only a series of lances interconnected over and over again, and at the very end, an anvil.

“You make money this way?”

“Yes. I travel to different antiquarian book fairs, and I try and find things at estate sales. I always take a pair of gloves along. I’ve plundered just about every nook and cranny within a hundred miles.”

“How much is this worth?”

“Do I see a burgeoning collector before me?”