All she could do was smile weakly at his greeting, returning the squeeze of his hand on hers all to quickly before letting go. He looked decidedly still-employed, if that was a thing a person could look like, which was good. She'd been keeping an ear out, knowing Harvey would have likely said something if Tyb had been let go from the team, but hadn't heard anything. So far that was the only reassurance she'd gotten, aside from her conversation with Lucinda earlier in the month that at least her cousin wasn't saying anything to anyone else. It was a small victory in an otherwise hopeless battle she couldn't even begin to fight.

Elsie still had no idea what to say in the situation, countless hours of thinking about it had left her more frustrated than anything else and no closer to a real solution to the problem. "I understand." Neither one of them knew what they were doing, there had to be time to let the dust settle, but they did also need to know what to do next. Part of the reason she'd been unable to come up with some idea of what to do was because she couldn't make a decision on her own. This required the two of them figuring it out together and though the stacks of the library were not the ideal place, what else could they do?

The question of what to say still remained. They lacked the privacy to speak candidly and Elsie still didn't know exactly how to put into words what she was feeling, but she had to find something. "I'm sorry." Was all she could think of to start. Sorry Lucinda had threatened his job, that she'd cornered him after Elsie had left, that everything had gotten ten times more difficult, that she hadn't written, the list when on and on.