Brandon.” Sarah’s expression did not change.
“He died a few weeks ago and he’d asked me to…visit you. He wanted to be sure you were all right.”
A small cloud of confusion slipped over Sarah’s face. “That was nice of him,” she said. “I can’t remember who he is, though. I don’t remember things too well anymore.” She looked apologetic. “What did you say his name was?”
“Carl Brandon.”
“And where do I know him from?”
Laura smiled. “I don’t know. I was hoping you could tell me. He didn’t say. I figured maybe you were old friends. He pays for your apartment. And he still will, of course,” she added hastily, not wanting to worry her. “He set up a trust for you in his will.”
“My!” Sarah said. “I thought my social security paid for it.” She pressed her fingers to her temples. “I truly must be losing my mind. I just can’t remember him. Where did you say I know him from?”
“I don’t know, Mrs. Tolley. He was born in New York City in 1918. He grew up in Brooklyn. I think he moved there when he was about twelve and lived there until he was in his early twenties. Did you ever live in New York?”
“New Jersey,” Sarah said. “I grew up in Bayonne.”
“Well, maybe you didn’t meet him in New York, then. How about Philadelphia? He moved there when he was twenty-four or so, and he worked as a physicist at Allen Technologies. He had a passion for astronomy—everyone who knew him knew about that. He married my mother when he was around forty. My mother died when I was a child, and my father never remarried. I don’t know if he ever dated anyone or not. But maybe he knew you during that time? Could you have gone out with him at some time?”
“No, I don’t know how I knew him, but I’m sure that wasn’t it. I only went out with one man in my whole life.” Sarah’s gaze drifted to a photograph on one of the end tables. It was an old, sepia-toned picture of a good-looking young man.
“Was that the man you…went out with?” Laura asked.
Sarah nodded. “Joe Tolley. He was my husband. The love of my life.”
Laura sensed something in the tone of her voice. There was a long story behind that photograph, and she didn’t have the time to get into it.
“So, you didn’t date my dad, then,” she said. “Could you have worked together?”
“I was a nurse,” Sarah said. “And I never lived in Philadelphia. I lived in Maryland and Virginia most of my life.”
“Well, this is a challenge.” Laura smiled, trying not to let her frustration show. “If you were a nurse, could he have been your patient? He was sick for quite a while before he died. He had cancer, and was in and out of hospitals.” She realized how ridiculous it was to think that Sarah, in her seventies, could have been her father’s nurse. “I guess that doesn’t make sense,” she said.
“I grew up in Bayonne,” Sarah said again, and Laura guessed she was seeing the Alzheimer’s at work.
“Yes,” she said.
“I was a nurse on cruise ships.” She stood up and handed Laura another framed photograph. This one showed Sarah, in her fifties, perhaps, standing beneath a palm tree, a cruise ship looming behind her in the distance.
“That was in St.Thomas,” Sarah said. “Or maybe St. Lucia. My favorite was Alaska, though.”
“Well, what a wonderful job,” Laura said. “You got to see the world.”
“They have an Alaska show on the TV sometimes.” Sarah picked up the TV Guide from the end table and began flipping through it, and Laura felt antsy. She thought of Ray at home, staring gloomily out the window of his study, and Emma playing with the puzzle in her room. Looking at her watch, she realized she’d been gone well over an hour already.
She stood up. “I have to go, Mrs. Tolley,” she said.
Sarah looked at her in surprise. “Oh, you do?”
“I’m sorry we couldn’t solve the mystery of how you knew my father.”
“Did you say he was a doctor?”
“No. A physicist. And an amateur astronomer.”
Sarah looked as though she didn’t quite understand what Laura was saying, but she nodded. “Well, you come see me again, dear,” she said, walking toward her apartment door.
Laura only smiled, unwilling to make that promise. She had no more idea of why her father wanted her to take on the responsibility for Sarah Tolley than she did before her visit.
4
SOMETHING WAS WRONG. LAURA KNEW IT THE MOMENT SHE stepped out of her car in the town house garage, although she couldn’t have said what triggered her sense of dread. As she neared the door, she could hear a child crying inside the house. Was it Emma or some other child? The sound was unfamiliar. A wail. A keening.
Panicked, Laura struggled to fit her key in the lock, finally managing to push the door open. Stepping into the foyer, she found Emma sitting on the bottom step of the stairs, hunched over as though her stomach hurt. Her wailing turned to screams, and she leapt from the step into Laura’s arms.
“Sweetheart!” Laura tried to keep her own voice calm. “What is it? What’s wrong?” Maybe Emma had bugged Ray to read to her and, in his sour mood, he’d yelled at her, but this seemed an extreme reaction. Emma was usually more resilient than this.
Emma didn’t answer her. She clung to Laura, standing now, but pressing her head against Laura’s hip.
Laura looked through the living room toward Ray’s office, a patch of cold forming at the base of her neck. Emma’s screams could not mask the stillness in the rest of the house. “Where’s Daddy?” she asked as she walked toward the office, Emma clinging to her more tightly with each step. “Ray?”
The office was empty, the pages of Ray’s manuscript still piled on his desk. “Ray?” she called as she walked back toward the foyer and the stairs.
“Stay here,” she told Emma, gently pulling the little girl’s arms from around her hips. “I’ll be right back.”
She climbed the stairs, the cold patch at the back of her neck spreading down her spine. She walked through the doorway of the bedroom she shared with Ray. It was empty. Ray must have gone out. He’d left Emma alone. That’s why she was so upset.
That would not be enough to undo Emma, though, and Laura remembered seeing Ray’s car in the garage. She was about to leave the bedroom when she noticed a stain on the wallpaper on the other side of the bed—a red stain in the shape of a butterfly. Biting her lip, she walked slowly around the foot of the bed. Ray lay on the floor next to the window, his head in a pool of blood, a gun in his hand.
Staggering backward, Laura crashed into the dresser, knocking her jewelry box to the floor. She scattered the jewelry with her feet as she fled from the room and down the stairs.
Emma’s
