comets she’d found had been small and of interest primarily to other astronomers, but this tenth one promised to be spectacular. Although it was currently little more than a fuzzy speck in a good telescope and would not be visible to the naked eye for a year and a half, she’d been immediately deluged with awards, speaking engagements, media attention and offers to fund any research she chose. Meanwhile, Ray was collecting his rejections. Her success, she now feared, was a knife in his side.
She heard Ray climbing the stairs in his slow, measured pace. In a moment, he was in the room and he sat next to her, his arm around her shoulders.
“I’m very sorry,” he said. “Forgive me, Laura.”
“No,” she said. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I’ve been caught up in my own life too much lately. I haven’t given enough of my time to you and Emma.”
“No, no,” he protested. “I didn’t mean any of that. I was just—”
“I think you did mean it, Ray. You were angry and your true feelings finally came out. I won’t go to Brazil during the summer.”
“Oh, Laurie, I really didn’t mean for you to make that sort of change in your—”
“I don’t want to go,” she insisted, and she meant it. Ray had compromised his needs for her over the years. It was her turn now. “I’ll take a break after this coming semester. We’ll go to the lake house and just play, all summer, the three of us. All right?”
Ray hesitated. “And you won’t bother with that woman in the retirement home?” he asked finally.
“She won’t take much time,” she said. “I just need to check on her. Make sure she’s all right, like Dad asked me to do.”
His arm fell from her shoulders. “Please don’t.” His dark eyes pleaded with her.
“Ray, I won’t let it interfere with us,” she said. His distress seemed so out of proportion to what she was suggesting. “I know Dad was demanding of me, but he was also my inspiration and my greatest champion, and now he’s gone.” Her voice cracked. “I can’t let him down. I can’t have promised him something, something so simple, and then not follow through on it. You understand that, don’t you?”
He sighed and stood up. “I’m going down to my office,” he said, and she knew he was through with the conversation.
She watched him pad out of the room in his terry-cloth slippers and thought of following him, but exhaustion stopped her. Better to wait awhile, anyway. Maybe later they would both be more rational.
She undressed quietly and got into her side of the bed. It was cold between the sheets, the sort of cold that no amount of covers could relieve, and she felt alone. Her father was gone. She had no family left, except for Emma and Ray. And at that moment, the Ray she had known and loved seemed lost to her as well.
3
EMMA WAS SITTING ON THE FLOOR OF HER ROOM, ABSORBED IN her new tropical fish puzzle, a gift from her teenage baby-sitter, Shelley. Laura hunched down next to her. It had been two weeks since Christmas, yet this was the first time she’d seen Emma play with the puzzle. It was taking her some time to get over Poppa’s death.
“I’m going out for a little while,” Laura said, tucking a strand of Emma’s hair behind the little girl’s ear. “Daddy’s downstairs in his office.” It was good that Emma was so wrapped up in the puzzle. She would be little bother to Ray.
Emma held up a piece of the puzzle. “I know what this is,” she crowed. “Do you, Mom?”
“Fish scales?” Laura asked as if she weren’t quite sure.
“Right! And it goes right here!” Emma dropped the scales into the picture. “Are you going to work?” she asked, reaching for another piece of the puzzle.
“No. First I’m going to drop off my broken necklace at the jeweler’s. Then I’m going to visit someone.” She stood up. “I won’t be long.”
“This one’s an eye,” Emma said. “I can’t wait till when I have it all done. Can we put paste on it and hang it up like we did with the other one?”
“Sure, if you like. But then you won’t be able to play with it again.”
“That’s okay.” She looked up at Laura. Her eyes were the same color as her pale blue sweater. “Mom?” she asked.
“Honey, I really have to get going.”
“I know, but do you want to look at one of my books with me?”
“Tonight. Before bed.” She bent over to kiss the top of Emma’s head. “I’ll see you in a little while,” she said.
“’Kay,” Emma said, returning her attention easily to her puzzle. She was an independent child, far more independent than other five-year-olds Laura had encountered. People had been surprised to see her at Poppa’s funeral, but Laura had prepared Emma well for what she would see and hear, and she was certain she’d made the right decision in taking her. Emma finally seemed to understand the permanence of Poppa’s death after attending the service. Her daughter hadn’t cried during the funeral, but she’d put her little arm around her mother in comfort each time Laura began to tear up.
Downstairs, Laura found Ray in his office, his manuscript on the desk in front of him, but his attention focused on something out the window. She put her hands on his shoulders, the gray plaid flannel of his shirt warm beneath her palms.
“I won’t be long,” she said. She looked out the window herself, trying to determine what had caught his eye, but saw nothing other than the row of town houses across the street. Each of them was identical to the house in which they lived, each of their slanted roofs was covered with a thin layer of snow.
“Please don’t go,” Ray said, his gaze still riveted outside, and she knew he was slipping into one of his dark moods. She’d known Ray for ten years and had been married to him for nearly six. During that time, he’d seen several psychiatrists and taken a myriad of antidepressants, but nothing could hold off the darkness for long.
In the two weeks since her father’s death, Ray had apologized repeatedly for his outburst, assuring her he was not upset about her career. Still, the words he’d said that morning echoed in her ears, and she didn’t believe his retraction of them. In his moment of anger, he’d finally spoken the truth. Wanting to honor his feelings, Laura had tried to set her father’s request aside, and she was able to do so with reasonable success until the call from her father’s attorney.
“Who’s this Tolley woman?” the attorney had asked her. He told her that her father had paid the entrance fee for Sarah Tolley to move into Meadow Wood Village five years earlier. Not only had he continued to pay her monthly rent, he’d also left a large sum of money in trust for her so that she would still be taken care of after his death.
“I don’t have a clue,” Laura had told him, but her father’s arrangements left her even more certain that Sarah Tolley had somehow played a significant role in his life. She had to see her. When she told Ray her plans, he grew sullen.
“I’m leaving,” Laura said now, bending over, pressing her cheek to Ray’s temple. “I’ll
