After I'm Gone

July 3, 1986

Saks. Why had she said Saks? She was flustered, too flustered to lie. “I’m going to Saks,” she told Chet. Why? he had asked. In a mild, curious way, but they were fully booked for the holiday weekend and they were doing dinners for the guests, testing out Chet’s recipes.

“To buy bras,” she blurted out. Why? Why did she say bras? Perhaps she thought the very word, “bra,” would keep him from following up. But Chet was not a man who was easily embarrassed.

“Is this urgent?” Teasing her. “You’re dressed to impress, I see.”

“It’s just that the ones I have are all too big.”

“Yes,” he said gravely. “That is a problem.” And then he let it go, although he asked her to make a stop at the restaurant-supply place and she agreed, because what else could she say? They had a teasing rhythm, not quite brother-sister, more like a boy who has a crush on an older girl but knows it won’t go anywhere. It had developed very quickly, a by-product of their mutual animosity toward Bambi Brewer, who, Chet reported, had nickel-and-dimed the catering company to death over costs for Michelle’s bat mitzvah. Julie, in return, regaled Chet with stories about Bambi’s extravagances during the marriage. Not that Felix had ever told her such stories, but he told Tubby, who told Susie.

Michelle. Julie still remembered the shock of her birth thirteen years ago. Julie had been Felix’s girl for a little more than a year, and while she assumed he still had sex with his wife, it had never occurred to her that they would have more children. Then, one day, she had come into the office and there they were, the three amigos, puffing on cigars, drinks in hand, and when Julie had asked what was up, they had shared a look among themselves before Felix said: “And, lo, the Lord has delivered unto me another girl. What are the odds? Well, I’ll tell you. They were one in two, even after having two girls. That’s what a lot of people don’t understand. The odds, each time, are one in two, while the odds of getting the same result three times in a row are one in eight. Longer, but not improbable.”

That had been a shock. Almost as shocking as the first time she had seen Bambi. She had expected her to be attractive, but not that attractive. She was older than Julie, of course. But not as old as Julie would have liked. And so very beautiful. Possibly more beautiful than Julie, an assessment that she was not in the custom of making. Julie had the better figure, though. No contest there.

Then. She had the better figure then. Would Felix mind that she was skinny now? Chet had been joking about the bras, but it was a problem. Felix remembered a different body. The weight loss had taken a toll on her face, too. Susie thought it was hilarious that Julie had this hot-shit chef and barely ate anything all day. But food tasted like dust in her mouth.

For ten years, Julie had sleepwalked through her days, yet not slept at all at night. He had promised they would be together, but he didn’t say when. She had filled the waking hours-what the rest of the world believed to be waking hours, all her hours were waking ones-with work. First the coffee shop. Walking up and down, back and forth, walking, walking. Clean the counter. Check the inventory. Write the schedule. And as her savings grew, she looked for something else, a business even more demanding. Innkeeper. If she had to take care of others, she wouldn’t have time to think about herself. So she bought the house on the water in Havre de Grace and spent her days, most of them, making breakfasts, changing linens, taking calls, overseeing her bookings. And when that became too automatic, she decided to open the restaurant, knowing there was a spectacular failure rate, but that was part of the lure. She wanted to succeed. With everything she did, she imagined Felix’s approval and admiration. She was as good at business as he had been. She wasn’t extravagant. She worked.

And still she mourned, stuck in time, forever trapped in her sister’s truck as Felix walked across the tarmac to the little plane that took him away. She couldn’t believe he didn’t want her to come with him. Bert had thought he would. Bert had made the fantasy possible, getting her a passport so quickly. She had assumed he knew something. But, in the end, Bert had been as in the dark about Felix as everyone else.

Everyone else. Including Bambi.

But now he had sent for her. Ten years later, but he had sent for her and she was still young. Younger than Bambi had been when he left her, and if Julie looked a little harder, a little worse for wear-that would change. She would sit in the sun with him, although perhaps in a hat, and eat whatever they ate there, fish and fruit.

I won. He loves me, he loves me, he sent for me. Not you. Me.

She was honest enough to concede that Bambi could not go, given that Michelle was only thirteen. Plus, she was a grandmother. The oldest girl had to have given birth by now, given her size at the bat mitzvah. Still-Julie had won. He had chosen her.

She wanted Bambi to know. That was mean of her, and Julie was not, by nature, a mean person. But she was meaner than she used to be, hardened by ten years of living with a heart that was not so much broken as shredded.

She was almost to the exit for Saks, near Reisterstown Road, an exit she knew well, for it led to Felix’s house, not that she had ever been inside it. How many times had she driven past the house in Sudbrook Park? It had started early in the relationship with Felix, when she still lived with Andrea. She would sneak out in the middle of the night, get in the VW bus despite not having a license. Just seeing the house had stoked her fury-and her longing. It seemed like a castle to her, its circular driveway a moat. A castle for the queen and the two princesses, then three. Bambi had to share Felix with Julie, but no one could get between Felix and his daughters. It was the daughters that had kept her from him.

Daughters. At least Julie’s surveillance had been respectful, undetectable. When Felix’s daughter showed up at the inn last week, she had broken the rules in this game. Calling her a thief, a whore. As if Julie had two hundred thousand dollars, just sitting around. Why had Bambi told her daughters such outrageous lies? Worse, what if Felix heard these stories? She couldn’t bear the idea that he would think her so low, so craven. Her only thought was to make sure that Felix didn’t believe these stories.

And he didn’t. The call had come at last. It’s time. Time to disappear as he had, traveling light. Had Chet noticed her absurdly large purse? She would pick up a shift and a bathing suit at the mall, if there was time, but right now all she had was a cosmetic bag, the usual things. It had been stressed to her that she must disappear as if nothing had been planned. No trail, she had been warned. Some cash is okay, but it can’t appear that you’ve made any arrangements. People have to believe you’re dead.

She had thought: No, I was dead. Now I’m going to be alive again.

She had driven swiftly, foot pressed so hard against the accelerator that she had averaged seventy, seventy-five miles an hour. She was more than forty-five minutes early and she knew she mustn’t linger at the meeting spot, draw any attention to herself. She could run her errands, but that wouldn’t take fifteen minutes. Maybe buy a bathing suit, although she didn’t want to see her thin, pale self in a three-way mirror, didn’t want to think how sad Felix would be to see this wisp that used to be Juliet Romeo. Felix would probably make a joke about it, plying her with piña coladas and-she tried to make the dream specific. Conch? Shrimp?

She would drive by the house one more time, say good-bye to it for Felix, say good-bye to the space it had taken up in her head, all these years. The brick inn by the water was a rambling version of this very house, not that anyone had ever noticed. Maybe she would even stop this time, park in the circular driveway, march up the walk and knock on the door, bold as you please, and announce: He chose me, Bambi. Me!

March 26, 2012

2:30 P.M.

Bambi had known she was fibbing when she told the girls she didn’t expect to be away long, but even she was surprised to be sitting, three hours later, in an interview room at the downtown police headquarters, having yet to speak to a detective. The man who appeared to be in charge-such sad green eyes-had greeted them and said he was waiting for another detective before he could proceed.

“They’re bringing someone in from the county because they think the case will end up there,” Bert told Bambi. “Only it won’t, because there is no case.”

“How many years do you think I’ll get, Bert? If I confess and enter a plea?” She could do five, she thought, maybe even ten. Would they actually give a seventy-two-year-old woman more than ten? Especially if she claimed she was provoked, did it in-what was the phrase?-the heat of passion. Say she served ten-the number stuck in her head because Felix would have done no more than ten, probably less. She would be out at eighty-two and, based on her mother and aunt’s longevity, she could expect another decade, maybe more. Crummy for the younger grandkids, humiliating for the older ones, but it might not be too bad. She could be like the woman who killed the Scarsdale Diet doctor, devote herself to good works while inside.

“Stop it, Bambi. You are not going to confess, you are not going to enter a plea. You are going to sit here and let me talk while they do whatever stupid dance they’re going to do.”

“Bert, I want to talk.” Could she order him to leave? If she told him everything, would he be obligated to do as she wished? Probably not. She had been impulsive, back at the hospital, but she had no regrets. After thirty-six years of limbo, it felt good to do something, anything.

“Bambi, I know you couldn’t have done this.”

“Bert, with all due respect, there’s a lot you don’t know. I appreciate your kindness, but-it’s time. It’s time to put things to rest.”

The door opened.

“Aw shit,” Bert muttered.

“What?” Bambi realized there was a young woman behind Sad Green Eyes. Well, youngish, plump and blond, with a big sunny smile.

“Nancy Porter,” Bert whispered to her. “I’ve seen her work before. She’s very good.”

“They don’t need someone good when all you want to do is confess,” Bambi whispered back.

She hadn’t considered the possibility of a woman detective, though, and it set her back. She had been counting on a man. Someone like Sad Green Eyes there. She could wrap him around her finger forty times and have enough left over to make curtains as Felix used to say. Two men would have been even better. She would have played them off each other. But not a man and a woman, and definitely not this cheerleader shiksa.

“Hello, Mrs. Brewer,” the girl said, as if greeting her homeroom teacher on the first day of school. “We really appreciate you coming in today to discuss Julie Saxony with us. There are just a few things we’d like to go over, a few new facts that have come to light, especially since you granted us permission to search your apartment yesterday-”

“You what?” Bert asked. “You let them in with a warrant and you didn’t even call me?”

“I didn’t see the harm,” Bambi said. She hadn’t. She still didn’t. The shoebox they had carried away might contain evidence of something else she had done, something not quite kosher. But it wasn’t enough to leverage a murder charge.

Unless the person were already inclined to confess. And she couldn’t see what other choice she had.

Back in the hospital, in the car on her way here, she had thought it would be so easy to say I did it. Yet she couldn’t, she didn’t. For one thing, she couldn’t help being curious about what the detectives thought they knew. She would hear them out, although not because Bert had told her to. Bert had his agenda, she had hers.

“On July third, Julie Saxony left Havre de Grace, telling her chef that she was going shopping. She was never seen alive again. Well, she might have crossed paths with a gas station attendant or gone through a fast-food drive-through. But the last person who saw her alive was probably her killer.”

Bambi couldn’t help herself. “In homicides, isn’t the killer always the last person to see the victim alive?”

The girl nodded and smiled, pleased with Bambi. Bert glowered. “Good point. So let me ask you, did you see Julie Saxony that day?”

“I did.” Bert grabbed her arm. She shook him off.

“Where?”

“She came to my home.”

“Invited?”

“No. I can assure you of that. No. She showed up, out of the blue.”

“And what happened?”

Bambi did not answer right away. “She told me that my husband had arranged for me to have access to a large sum of money after he left, but she had taken it.”

“And?”

Bert grabbed her arm again, hissed into her ear: “Bambi-a word, please. I need to speak to you privately because if you continue down this road, I am obligated to recuse myself. I cannot allow a client to lie.”

3:15 P.M.

Sandy and Nancy retreated to a lunchroom, where they shared coffee from a thermos that Sandy had brought. On a day like today, they would probably end up drinking the house swill, but they didn’t have to start with it.

“It’s high-octane, the real deal. I make my own at home. I always brought a thermos, all the years I worked here. I could never get used to the crap that machine makes. The other guys laughed at me, said I was prissy. They thought I was prissy about a lot of stuff and busted my balls for it. But once they had my coffee, they would wheedle me for some. By the time I retired, I was carrying the biggest thermos they made.”

She widened her eyes. “Wow-it is strong. I’m a wimp. I hope you won’t be insulted if I cut it with a little Sweet’N Low.”

“Not at all.”

He wasn’t because he liked her. So far. Nancy Porter had been recommended to him by Harold Lenhardt, who had done his twenty in Baltimore City, then bounced to the county and was halfway to his twenty there. Lenhardt was a good police and he swore by this girl, the daughter and granddaughter of big Polish cops, one of the few youngsters who used the old vernacular, a police.

The mere fact that she was willing to help was a big point in her favor: Most detectives would be reluctant to take on a twenty-six-year-old homicide that wasn’t their case to begin with. More risk than upside. But Nancy was intrigued by what yesterday’s warrants had produced. Not quite the smoking gun-smoking earring-he had hoped for, but as good as. As good as.

“You’re lucky she did consignment shops, all nice and legal, as opposed to pawn shops. Probably wouldn’t be that much detail on a pawn slip from 1986,” Nancy said now. She was struggling with the coffee, he could tell. But she had manners, unlike so many young people today.

“Yeah, and lucky that the match didn’t disappear from the evidence room all those years ago. As the slip proves, it was worth quite a bit.”

“Probably worth more than she got for it. Jewelry stores, when they buy back diamonds-it’s a total rip-off. I had a girlfriend, had a nice ring from that store in Towson, over by Joppa? She and her husband busted up, they paid her, like, twenty cents on the dollar for the same ring, all the time saying: ‘You know, we like to say, it’s not the ring’s fault.’ I did some research on that earring online. David Webb was a big deal, back in the day.”

Sandy thought suddenly of Mary’s jewelry. Not that it was of significant value, not at all. But he had kept her engagement ring and wedding ring, her other good pieces, in part because he could not imagine anything sadder than trying to sell them. Although maybe having no one to give them to was the real sadness.

“Well, the store she went to, back in ’86, down on Baltimore Street-it’s gone. But the bill of sale matches to a T. One diamond-and-platinum earring was found in Julie Saxony’s purse. We looked past that, all these years.” He thought he was being generous with the “we.” He hadn’t looked past it. “You see an earring in a purse, you think, ‘Oh, she lost an earring, put the mate in her bag, and forgot about it.’ But where are the earrings she was wearing that day? That’s the part that was overlooked.”

“Killer could have taken the earrings.” But Nancy was just being fair, excusing the work of the previous detectives.

“Could’ve. But one was in her purse-and the other one was sold a week later.”

“Do you think she killed her there, at the house?”

“I can’t make up my mind on that. Twenty-five years out-it was a lot, hoping to find a casing, anything like that. I almost wish we hadn’t searched the house because Gelman will pretend that proves definitively it didn’t happen there. And maybe it didn’t. I can see it going down lots of ways. I can see her getting angry, taking a swing-that would have knocked the earring loose, maybe, and she finds it later. But you know what? I can also imagine her hiring someone to take Julie out. And maybe they brought the earring back to her as a trophy or, you know, proof.” He was thinking of Tubman again. “She might have asked her husband’s old friend, the bail bondsman, if he knew some guys who were available for hire. See, I kept thinking he was mooning over Julie, all these years. But maybe he was just guilt-ridden because he helped to kill her. She leaves Bambi’s house, some guy follows her-if she’s really lying, as her lawyer says, it might be to cover for Tubman.”

3:20 P.M.

“Bambi, I’m sure you have a reason for doing this, but you have to understand that I could be disbarred if I permit you to lie.”

“I’m not lying.” A beat. “Besides, how can you know that? You can’t know I’m lying.”

“We were all in Bethany that week-you drove over to spend time with Lorraine and me, at the beach house.”

“Not until the evening. I had all day to myself.”

“But you came over on the evening of the second, not the third.”

Hell, was that possible?

“I’m pretty sure I drove over on the morning of the third.”

“No. No. We had a party on the second. It was Lorraine’s birthday. It was her forty-first. Remember? She refused to have a party for her fortieth, so we had a surprise party for her at the beach, on the second, which was two weeks late-but what could be more surprising than that. We were all there. You, Michelle, even Linda and Henry made it, although Noah was a newborn. You went home on the fourth, after dropping Michelle at a friend’s place in Rehoboth. You said you wanted to be alone.”

“Your memory’s playing tricks on you. I wasn’t there.”

“We have photos. I’m almost sure. Jesus, Bambi, I don’t know why you’re lying about this, but you have to stop. You have a perfect alibi, which isn’t something I’ve been able to say to many of my clients over the years. Just say nothing, okay?”

She felt at once deflated and relieved. She had been relishing the idea of confession, accepting guilt, serving the sentence that Felix had failed to serve, showing him how it was done.

“Okay, I won’t lie, Bert. But I want to hear what they have to say. They know something, something new. I need to know it, too, Bert. Don’t ask why.”

She had known Bert for so long-Lord, more than fifty years now. They had long ago reached a point where she didn’t treat him as she treated most men. He was Felix’s friend, Lorraine’s husband. But he was her friend as well, her only true male friend. So she didn’t widen her eyes, or smile her little half smile, or do anything flirtatious. She simply held his gaze until he nodded.

“Follow my lead,” he said. “Please don’t lie.”

“I’ll try not to,” she said, thinking, No lies that Bert can catch. That’s the new rule. It’s only a lie when someone knows it’s false.

4:00 P.M.

They brought the shoebox with them on the next trip into the interview room. Brown-and-white-striped Henri Bendel’s. Size 7 and a half.

“Fancy,” Nancy had said when she saw it. “And look at the price-two hundred and fifty dollars. That was a lot of money for shoes in 1986.”

“Isn’t that a lot of money now?” Sandy asked, knowing he was making a joke. He had priced Belgian loafers recently and discovered they were over $400. He’d just have to keep taking care of the old ones.

The key receipt was bagged, separated from the others. They wouldn’t let her see that right away. First, they were going to talk about the box itself. Sandy would have to take the lead because he had been the one who accompanied the officers with the warrant. He had taken the box with him because he figured that no one moved that kind of stuff from a house to a condo unless it was deeply meaningful. The receipts were old-some went back to the early 1980s, and they continued through the year 2000. But one receipt stood out. All the other stuff that had been sold had been complete, unbroken-and not particularly valuable. And this slip was for a different store from the rest, a not-quite-as-nice jewelry store downtown. The receipt had stood out like, well, a diamond in a dustbin.

“We’re curious about these receipts. You sold a lot of stuff over fifteen years. Was it yours?”

“I sold those things at my aunt Harriet’s request. She died in September 2001, right after 9/11.”

Right after 9/11. Was that gratuitous detail supposed to import some gravitas?

“Yes, but all these things were sold before that date.”

“You see, she was in a retirement home for almost the last twenty years of her life. Things were tighter for her than people realized, and I was her favorite niece.” A wry smile. “Also her only niece. I was supposed to be her sole heir, so what did it matter if I sold the things before she died. I would sell things for her, and we would split the proceeds.”

“Fifty-fifty?”

“Oh, no. Aunt Harriet wasn’t that generous. I brought her the money and she decided, based on some internal formula I never understood, how to divvy things up. I sometimes got as little as ten percent, sometimes as much as thirty, but never more than that.”

“And you used this place”-he squinted at the slip, as if reading the printed name for the first time, but he knew it by heart-“the Turnover Shop.”

“Yes. They were great to work with.”

“And you went there every time?”

“I went to several places, but that was my favorite.”

“Like jewelry. Did you sell any jewelry?”

“Some.”

“But did you sell it to them?”

“No, I went to a Pikesville jeweler for that. Weinstein’s. I knew the owner back in high school.”

“Yeah, Weinstein’s. We saw those receipts, too. But we found one receipt, and it wasn’t from there.”

“Well, sometimes a piece isn’t right for a certain retailer. They don’t anticipate demand for an item. That’s how consignment works. As you see from the slips, I sold a lot of clothes, too, over the years, but I went down to D.C. for that. People in D.C. are better about the value of clothes. And the clothes were mine, not Aunt Harriet’s.”

“But for jewelry you went to Weinstein’s. Except this once, when you went down to Baltimore Street. Why didn’t Weinstein’s want this piece?”

“I can’t remember.”

“Was it because it was just one earring, one without a mate?”

“Could be.”

Bert was looking at her, trying to get her to meet his eyes. She couldn’t. Her heart was rising like a skyrocket, up, up, up. She saw herself on her hands and knees, dusting. Cleanliness had been Bambi’s only weapon against the house’s encroaching seediness. Down on all fours, trying to get a dust mop under that long buffet in the living room. It was a beautiful piece. She should have sold it. French, antique, worth a lot. But Felix had loved it so. He was never happier than on a holiday when that buffet was piled high with food. Above it was a family portrait, commissioned pre-Michelle, which always irked her petulant youngest. Once, when Michelle was four, she attempted to add herself to it. Luckily, Bambi had caught her before she had a chance to touch a single crayon to the oil paint.

So there Bambi was, on her hands and knees on a wretchedly hot July morning, air-conditioning off because she had learned to pinch pennies until they bled copper, and there it was, winking at her, the beautiful diamond in the distinctive David Webb setting, her tenth anniversary gift from Felix.

Her first thought was: I didn’t even realize I had lost one of these.

Her second thought was: I didn’t. I wore them just last week at Lorraine’s party.

Third thought: Did Felix buy all his women the same earrings? Now that she had it in her palm, she saw that it was slightly smaller than the ones she wore, but otherwise an exact copy.

Fourth thought: Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit.

And now, twenty-six years later, she felt again everything she had felt then. Surprise, correction, muted fury, fear. No, something worse than fear, something primal and huge.

Bambi looked at the detective, the male detective, in the eye: “I killed Julie Saxony. She came to my house on July fourth, and I killed her. Not July third, July fourth. And, no, I don’t know where she was during the intervening twenty-four hours.”

5:00 P.M.

“Mama?”

The word still had the power to shock Rachel. It seemed to surprise Tatiana, too. Even now, eight months after she had joined them, there was a testing quality to it. The question mark at the end seemed to encompass a dozen questions: Are you there? Still? Will you be there tomorrow? Are you really my mother? Is this really my life?

Rachel put her hand in her daughter’s and said: “Yes, I’m here, Tatala.” Rachel had called her daughter Tatiana, a choice that surprised everyone, because she wanted to use the endearment Tatala without confusing a little girl who was already on her second name, possibly her third. True, “tataeleh” was meant for boys, but Rachel had always liked the sound of it. She had justified “Tatiana” to Joshua by saying she had found a similar name in one of the Chinese dynasties. She didn’t tell him it was the name of a consort.

Tatiana’s Hebrew name was Mazal-the equivalent of Felicia. Bambi had raised one careful eyebrow at this, but said nothing. But, yes, Rachel believed her father was dead. She couldn’t explain why. It was a feeling that had come over her the day that Tatiana was placed in her arms. Felix was gone, his energy was no longer a part of this world, but there was someone new to fill that void.

Only now she was in danger of losing her mother. What was her mother saying to detectives? Why was she doing this? It was crazy, it wouldn’t stand. Rachel had to assume that Bambi’s “confession” would be seen through quickly enough, then the matter would be over. But what if she managed to persuade detectives of this monstrous lie? How much would Rachel have to tell? Did they know that she had gone to see Julie?

It had been such an emotional time. She had left Marc and promptly lost her job, as she had prophesied. No job for the girl who was divorcing the only male Singer. Marc wanted to reconcile, but he continued to lie about his infidelity, deny anything had happened. How could she return to him as long as he was lying? She was living at home with her mother and Michelle, feeling like such a loser. It was in this state that she first read the article about Julie Saxony’s “second act” as an innkeeper and soon-to-be restaurateur. The article ran in the Star, an afternoon paper that was a little more down-market, and it included a photo of Julie in her glory. “Saxony at the height of her fame as a Block dancer, in 1975, where she performed under the stage name Juliet Romeo. A year later, her boyfriend, Felix Brewer, would disappear, leaving her only the deed to a small coffee shop on Baltimore Street. Saxony used that opportunity to learn the hospitality business.”

So much to hate in just a few words. “Her boyfriend”-no mention, not in the caption, of the wife and three children he also left. “Only the deed to a small coffee shop.” That was more than he had left his family. “The height of her fame.” What was she famous for? Dancing in pasties and a G-string? Sleeping with her boss?

The more Rachel thought about it, the more it made sense: Julie had their money, just as Mother had always said. Even if all she had received was the coffee shop-that should have been theirs. Commercial real estate downtown wasn’t exactly moving in 1976, but by 1980, with the opening of Harborplace, the land might have been worth something. Julie had sold it for a profit she “preferred not to disclose.” How lazy of the reporter not to find it out, Rachel thought, reading the article in dull fury.

And next thing she knew, she was driving to Havre de Grace.

Julie Saxony led her into a breakfast room, empty at this time of the day, although Rachel could hear someone banging about nearby, possibly in a laundry room of sorts. A dryer was humming, whump-whump-whump. Whump-whump-whump.

“You know who I am,” she said. Flat, not sinister, but also not a question.

“Yes,” Julie Saxony said. She sat in a dining-room chair, but she didn’t invite Rachel to sit. Her posture was impeccable, her hands folded in her lap. Oh, aren’t you the lady, Rachel wanted to sneer. In some part of her mind, she realized she was having the fight with Julie that she couldn’t have with Marc, much less his piece on the side. But that was okay, she reasoned. Being angry would help her get what she needed.

“Why were you at my sister’s bat mitzvah?” It wasn’t where she had planned to begin. She realized she had no plan, not really.

“I told you-I was observing the caterer. I hired him. He’s going to be the chef here. He’s already trying out menus and we hope to open this fall.”

“So it was just a coincidence.” Julie Saxony said nothing. “I didn’t think so. Did you spy on us a lot?”

She thought of her own mother, taking the older girls by Horizon House, pointing out Julie’s apartment. But that was just once. That didn’t count as spying.

“Did you?” she repeated. Her words had real authority to her ears. She felt dangerous, and it was thrilling.

“Certainly, I was interested in Felix’s family.”

“Don’t say his name.”

“I think,” Julie said, “this is going to be a difficult conversation if I’m not allowed to say his name.” A pause. “More difficult, I guess I should say.”

“You stole my family’s money. My mother told me.”

“I’m sorry, but that’s a lie. If your mother couldn’t live on what was provided, then that’s probably because she wasn’t willing to economize.”

“Economize? Economize? You try to economize with three daughters in private school, with college tuitions and a house that’s falling apart at the seams. You try to find a job when you dropped out of college at eighteen and became a mother by age twenty.”

“I didn’t even finish high school,” Julie said.

“Yes, but you had an advantage my mother doesn’t have. You were willing to sleep with another woman’s husband.”

Her words hurt, she was sure of it, although Julie’s composure did not crack. She said only: “I loved your father very much.”

“Then you should honor the woman my father loved and give her the money that is rightfully hers.”

“There is no money. What I had, I invested, and it was mine. I’m sorry, but that’s true.”

“My mother’s about to lose her house. She’ll be humiliated. Don’t you get it? She’s not just an ordinary citizen who can be foreclosed on in private. The house will go to auction when her balloon note comes due and the papers will write about it and it will all be dredged up again, just like the stupid article about you dredged it all up. My father loved my mother, above anyone. I don’t care what he told you or promised you. He loved my mother. You weren’t the first, you know. You wouldn’t have been the last.”

Julie licked her lips. “I don’t have any money. I just don’t have it. Not that I would give it to you if I did. I’m sorry if your mother has been improvident-”

“Such big words from the stripper,” Rachel said. Who was this person? Who had she become? It was horrible. It was strangely delightful, too, like playing a villain in a play. She was channeling the fury she felt for Marc, for every woman who had been cheated on.

“I’m sorry if your mother has been improvident.” That word again. “I really am. But it’s not my fault. What’s mine is mine.”

“If only you had been so clear about ownership when you started sleeping with my father. He loved her, Miss Saxony. Her and his daughters. Not you, never you.”

She sensed this was her best weapon, the only way to hurt Julie Saxony. And if Julie Saxony wasn’t going to help her, then Rachel wanted to hurt her. Men couldn’t cheat without women’s cooperation. Sure, there were men who lied, who misled their partners into unwitting adultery. But not her father. And not Marc. Believe someone the first time they tell you who they are. Marc had been a player in high school. He had been famous, Rachel remembered in wretched hindsight, for breaking up with girls by starting new relationships, then waiting for his ex to confront him. Everyone knew what he did, and every girl assumed it would be different for her.

The difference now was that Marc wouldn’t admit his behavior. He called her every night, asking her to come back, but he wouldn’t confess to his indiscretions, Rachel realized now, because they were going to continue. Just more discreetly. Marc loved her, but he had no intention of changing. Instead, he said: Have a baby. Please have my baby. If we have a baby, everything will be okay. The thing was, he thought he was speaking theoretically, about a baby that did not yet exist.

“Rachel-”

“Don’t say my name.”

There was a spike of fury in Julie’s words now. “Don’t say your father’s name, don’t say your name-why are you so proprietary about names? What’s the big deal? Brewer probably wasn’t even your father’s family’s real name, back in Russia or wherever they came from. I’ll tell you this much-if your father had stayed, if he hadn’t been forced to leave, I’d have his name by now. He loved me. He wanted me.”

“Keep telling yourself that,” Rachel said. “Tell yourself whatever lies you need to tell to get through.” She had an inspiration. “He knows you stole from us. He couldn’t do anything about it, where he is, but he knows. He never loved you, not really, and now he hates you. You destroyed the thing he loved most of all, his family.”

Finally, she had gotten a rise out of the woman. She was quite livid, almost in shock.

“He-he talks to her? To this day?”

“To this day.”

She left Julie’s inn with that feeble, hollow victory. The situation hadn’t changed, despite her triumph over Julie. Her mother needed money, now, or she was going to lose the house. And Rachel knew what she would have to do to get it. It took a little longer than she anticipated, almost a week, but when her mother returned from the beach, Rachel was able to present her with the money she needed.

“Where did you get this?” her mother demanded.

“Let’s just say that Julie Saxony made good on her debts,” Rachel said. It felt like a safe lie at the time. But Rachel was an inexperienced liar and did not know all the ways even a safe lie can go wrong. Maybe she should have asked Marc for some pointers as part of their settlement, a settlement brokered by her mother-in-law, who was very happy to void the prenup if it meant Rachel would grant the get that Mrs. Singer desired, then go away forever-and take the stain of the Brewer name with her.

5:30 P.M.

The minute she said July 4, Bert had demanded another conference. Bambi granted his wish out of courtesy, but her mind was made up.

“Bambi, I may have to withdraw as your counsel,” Bert said, “if you insist on going forward with this.”

Was that all he had? “Then withdraw. I’m ready to tell this story, with or without you. You can’t say what happened on July fourth, can you, Bert? So you’ll just have to listen.”

A tape recorder was set up. Both detectives made eye contact in their individual ways. Nancy Porter was bright and focused, the kind of grade grubber who sat front and center back at Forest Park High School. The sad-faced one looked as if he knew every unfortunate thing that had ever happened to Bambi. Lugubrious, Bambi thought. That is the only word for how he looks. She decided to look at neither detective as she spoke, focusing on a point between their heads. They probably thought she was trying not to cry. Well, she was trying not to cry.

“She came to my home on July fourth. She brought me money, quite a bit. I needed it to pay a balloon note on a mortgage. You see, I was very foolish and these one-year ARMs, they were quite new then. I didn’t understand how it worked. I just knew that if I took out this mortgage, I would get a very large lump sum. Enough to pay for Michelle’s bat mitzvah, repairs to the house. So I took out this loan. I didn’t realize that I had to pay it back in a year, that I had to find the cash equivalent in the form of another mortgage, and I had-well, I had bad credit, I thought it just converted. I… I froze. I didn’t know what to do. I felt so stupid. I owed on the mortgage, I had maxed out my credit cards. I needed money fast.”

“Jesus, Bambi,” Bert said. “You could have come to me.”

“But I was always coming to you. Always. There had been ten years of coming to you at that point. I tried my mom, my aunt Harriet-they couldn’t help me. But then I saw in the paper how that… that Julie Saxony was expanding her bed-and-breakfast into a proper inn with a restaurant, and I thought: She has money. She should give me the money I need. She came to my house that day to give me the money.”

Something changed, then, in the detectives’ faces. Sad-face scribbled something on a piece of paper and passed it to the girl. She had a poker face. Bambi couldn’t discern anything from it. But maybe it was just that she was a woman and Bambi had spent so much of her life trying to understand men and what they wanted. The two got up and went outside.

“Stop lying, Bambi,” Bert said in a low tone. “They know you’re lying.”

“I’m not lying, though. Julie Saxony did provide the money. That’s true. You could probably look up the bank records, see when I paid off the note. In cash.”

“She didn’t come to your house on the fourth. You’re saying that because you know you were at the beach until the night of the third. We were all at the beach.”

“Yes. We were all at the beach on the third. Agreed. But I met Julie on the fourth. On the tenth anniversary.”

“You didn’t. Why are you lying about this? What are you trying to prove?”

“Bert, you’re fired. Please leave.”

“I can’t-”

“You will. You are. Go.”

He looked lost, confused, two expressions that Bambi had seldom seen pass across Bert’s face. Of course he was confused. Because she was lying, but what else could she do? She had run the numbers. Something, someone, had to be sacrificed. It was as if another onerous financial commitment had come due again. But this time she was going to take care of it. What a fool she had been, how inept. She had gone from her father’s house to her husband’s. She had lived in denial for years about what things cost. Thrown away her father’s money on a semester at Bryn Mawr. Let Felix throw money around, too, and never asked the price of anything.

About two weeks before he had left, Felix had sat down with her and their checkbook. “Going forward,” he said, “you need to write down everything, keep the balance. Because-well, you’re just going to have to keep track. Because once I go away, the money, it will come in at a different rate. There will still be money, but it will be different, okay? You’ve got to learn to budget, Bambi. Can you do that?”

She could have. Only, after he left, there was no money coming in. Twenty thousand dollars. That was what had been in their joint checking account in July 1976. Twenty thousand dollars. It had been gone in less than a year.

Besides, at the time, she thought Felix meant prison when he said he was going away. It was not until the night before that she understood he was going somewhere else. She had been putting things away and discovered a pair of cuff links was missing from his drawer. Cuff links she knew well, for she had given them to him for their fifteenth anniversary. Yet there was Felix, in short sleeves-because it was, after all, July. He was packing, she realized. Squirreling things away, getting ready to go. She didn’t ask any questions. She didn’t want to know. And not because she feared the police and their questions. She could not bear to hear Felix tell her that he was a coward.

Bert left the interrogation room, his broad shoulders slumped. Lord, how she had leaned on him over the years. Lorraine had been kind about it. But then Lorraine pitied Bambi. In the early days, the pity had been a way for her to mitigate all the things she envied about Bambi, and that had been okay. She had pitied Bambi because Felix had other women, then pitied her because he was gone.

Bambi had forgiven Felix his indiscretions. They had been there from the first. The cowardice-that was different. Felix had slept with other women, but that didn’t mean he didn’t love her. Perhaps the opposite. Sleeping with other women was the only wedge he had against his love for her. Sure, she knew that sounded like a rationalization, but some rationalizations were true. No, it was in his flight that Felix had betrayed her and their children.

The detectives returned.

“For the record-you are speaking to us without a lawyer at your own behest,” the girl intoned into the tape recorder.

“Yes, for the record I am.”

“Okay,” said the sad-eyed detective. “You contacted Julie Saxony-when? How?”

She looked at him long and hard. “I sent my daughter Rachel. On my behalf. She went to speak to her the week before. I’m not sure of the exact date.”

“You sent your daughter Rachel, she asked Julie for money, and a week later, Julie brings you money? On the Fourth of July?”

“Yes.”

“And how did she get the money? Banks would have been closed. And, as you must know, Julie Saxony’s financial life was pored over. There’s no record of any big cash transaction in the weeks before she disappeared.”

“I haven’t a clue. All I know is I got the money I needed.”

“We should probably speak to your daughter.”

“My daughter’s at the hospital.”

It was the first sign of genuine emotion in the female detective’s face. So she was a mother. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s not major. Her child needs cleft palate surgery. She’s adopted, from China. It’s pretty common now. For the children to need this surgery. If you don’t agree to a special-needs child, it’s much harder to adopt from there.” She found her speech speeding up. She was chattering, as if she was nervous. Why was she nervous? She had already done the hardest part. “It didn’t used to be that way. Foreign adoption has changed so much. And Rachel and Joshua, because they live in the city-well, it seemed unlikely that they would get a child domestically, in the city, and they were over forty, which makes them too old for most U.S. adoptions, and then Guatemala closed and Vietnam had problems and-well, China was it.”

Nattering, nattering, nattering. Gathering her thoughts even as she appeared to be fraying. Maybe she shouldn’t have sent Bert away. What were her rights now? Did she get another phone call, could she demand a new lawyer? How could she get word to Rachel?

“Look, I said I did it. Can’t you just arrest me? The sooner you do that, the sooner I can get before a judge, see if bond can be arranged. My granddaughter had surgery today. I can’t possibly spend the night here.”

But in the end, that’s exactly what she did. They took her into custody and drove her out to Towson, locked her up in detention there and told her to be grateful for that. Granted a phone call, she swallowed her pride and called the Gelmans’ home, praying Lorraine would answer.

For the first time in a long time, a prayer was answered.

“Bambi-Bert told me what’s going on. He’s beside himself. What are you thinking? How can you turn your back on his help when he only wants what’s best for you? Why-”

“Lorraine, you have to get to Rachel. Tonight. I think I bought her some time, but the police will come for her tomorrow. Whatever happens, she has to insist she was not at my house on July third, or that she didn’t see anyone there.”

“I don’t-”

“Lorraine, she’s my daughter. She finally has the only thing she ever wanted, her own child. Her life is worth more than mine, in so many ways. I know that I can’t say such things to Bert. He can’t allow me to lie, which is why I’ve had to let him go. But you’re my friend and a mother, not a lawyer. You have to let me do this. Whatever Rachel did-she did it for me. Now I have to do this for her.”

July 3, 1986

Her room was as she had left it, a scant six years ago. It was not so much tribute as inertia. Her mother was fighting a running battle with Michelle, who wanted to claim one of her sisters’ rooms, then begin a costly redecoration. Easier to keep everything as it was.

The thing that bothered Rachel, however, was that she felt younger and stupider than the girl who had left this room to attend Brown. That girl had been skeptical of her high school classmate, Marc Singer. That girl had high intellectual standards. She read serious books and aspired to be a poet. The “woman” who had replaced her was now spending her afternoons watching All My Children, One Life to Live, and General Hospital. She hadn’t washed her hair or taken a shower since Monday. She knew she was being foolish, that she shouldn’t be depressed about the decisions she had made. She was right to give up on Marc, to erase everything of their life together. She deserved better. He was never going to be faithful to anyone. She couldn’t live her mother’s life.

But that thought, which occurred to her as she stared into the refrigerator, despite knowing its contents by heart by now, seemed treasonous. Her mother was such a good person. Who was Rachel to feel superior to her, to demand something better? It was her mother who deserved better, and now Rachel was going to give it to her. Wipe out her debt once and for all.

She found a jar of olives and took it back to the sofa. If she had gone to the shore with her mother and Michelle, there would be crabs and Silver Queen corn and gorgeous tomatoes, hothouse at this time of year, but still good. The Gelmans entertained so well. A little showily, but that was okay. Her father, too, had been extravagant when it came to parties. He believed there was no point in having money if people didn’t know you had it.

The corollary, as best Rachel could work out, was that people should never know that you didn’t have money. That was how her mother had lived for the past ten years, and that was what had brought her to near ruin this summer. But Rachel had saved her. At some cost to herself, but she believed it wouldn’t feel that way in one, two years. She would meet the right man, they would have a family. She was going to get a do-over. Marc was the wrong person for her. He wasn’t a good person. Her father broke the law, made his money from the poor and weak, cheated on her mother. Yet, somehow, he was a good person. Marc sold commercial real estate, was at his parents’ home every Friday for Shabbat dinner, cheated on his wife-then lied about it. Then acted as if she were the crazy one when she confronted him. That was evil. That was cowardice.

She remembered a year ago, going to see a film purportedly about a group of young friends not much different from herself. Recent grads of a good school, making their way in the world, anchored by a perfect-seeming couple, a pair of college sweethearts. But the man was cheating on the woman. “What about your extracurricular love life,” she snapped at him, at last, each syllable as sharp and hard as a little karate chop. A year ago, Rachel had found the whole thing hilarious. There were no such people. Now she was living it. She may have said those very words to Marc: What about your extracurricular love life?

Really, one could argue that watching soap operas was downright redundant at this point. But how could she live with a cheater and a liar?

Her parents-that had been different. Her mother never confronted her father, not to Rachel’s knowledge. But then, her mother was trapped. Three kids. No work experience, no college degree. She, at least, could have expected alimony. No prenups in her mother’s day; wives still got alimony. They didn’t have to negotiate for what they deserved-

The doorbell roused her from the couch, from the land of Luke and Laura. She couldn’t imagine who would be coming by. Almost everyone she knew was at the ocean, even Linda, with her sweet new baby boy, Noah. Rachel wasn’t ready to be a mom, not yet, not given her circumstances. But holding Noah, seeing Linda’s love for him-she hoped she wouldn’t have to wait too long.

“Hello,” said Julie Saxony. “Is your mother at home?”

She was perfectly dressed. At a time when hair was big and skirts voluminous, Julie wore a throwback of an outfit, a pink linen shift with a matching bolero-style jacket over it. The dress looked like one that was stowed in Rachel’s memory. My mother had a dress like that. Her going-away dress, the night of her wedding, purchased for the trip to Bermuda. There was a photograph of her in it, somewhere in this very house. And, possibly, in her father’s office, although her father had never allowed his wife or children into that part of his life.

The only false note was the overlarge purse, which looked cheap and plastic, a very bad imitation of an old-style cosmetic bag.

“She’s away,” Rachel said, aware of her baggy shorts and stained T-shirt. But at least her T-shirt said BROWN on it.

“Oh. Will she be back soon?”

“She won’t be back at all. And if you’re here to make good on what I asked last week, it’s too late. I took care of it. We don’t need your money. Our money, I guess I should say.”

Julie pushed past her, as if she didn’t take Rachel at her word. She took in the hallway, the living room beyond it. Out of date, but still pretty and comfortable. Bambi had longed for more modern furnishings, but Felix had argued that they wouldn’t work. He believed in comfort, anyway, found the seventies-style furniture too low-slung. The living room looked like a lounge in a country club, but an unstuffy one, a place to sit and smoke, although no one had smoked in this house for ten years.

“I always thought it would be… nicer,” Julie said. “I’m sorry,” she added, as if embarrassed by her own rudeness. “It’s just that I thought a lot. About where you lived. But I never got to see the inside.”

“That’s because there was no reason for you to.”

“Are you sure your mother won’t be back today? It’s very urgent that I speak to her.”

“No, she won’t be back today. And I can’t imagine you have anything urgent to discuss with her.”

Julie looked disappointed, almost the way a child would. She shifted on her feet, looked around. “I can’t stay. But I want her to know-Felix sent for me. For me.”

“You’re lying.”

“No. I’d tell you more-the arrangements made, where I’m going-but, of course, I’ve been asked not to. He sent for me. He loves me.”

“No, he doesn’t.” Rachel grasped for something to say, something hurtful and scarring. “You’re just a whore with no life. A thief, too. When my father finds that out, he won’t want anything to do with you.”

“You said he already knew. So I guess you’re the liar, after all.”

Julie lifted her chin, the proper lady, and began to walk out, making a grand gesture. A line from a movie, an old one, popped into Rachel’s head: You’re much too short for that gesture. But it wasn’t even true. Julie was tall and slim, five-eight or so, taller than their father. Rachel was the shorter of the two, a twenty-four-year-old woman who had just agreed to divorce a man she still loved because that was the only way to get the money she needed to save her mother. And for what? What had she done? Preserved this stupid life, this frozen life, like something out of a fairy tale, where everyone was suspended, waiting, waiting, waiting for the man who never came, never called, never did anything to prove he truly cared for them.

Rachel had been going into high school the year that Felix disappeared. As a cost-saving measure, her mother had petitioned to enter her in Western High School’s A-course that fall by using her parents’ city address, assuring Rachel it would be only for one semester, that the financial situation would work out and it wasn’t fair to pull out Linda, who was a senior. Rachel’s freshman year at Western had actually lasted less than a week. She had been jumped at the bus stop by another girl for reasons that she could never discern. Jumped from behind in a hair-pulling, kicking, scratching melee that had lasted all of a minute but that felt like an eternity. It was the only physical encounter of her life. Until now.

She sprang at Julie Saxony’s back as her onetime combatant had pounced on her, swinging wildly at the woman’s head, arms flailing, intent on bringing her to the ground. Rachel’s only thought was to make sure the other woman didn’t look so damn perfect when she got off the plane wherever she was going. To run her hose, to scuff her shoes.

She hadn’t planned to actually bloody her, but when that happened-well, it happened.

March 27, 2012

9:00 A.M.

Sandy actually felt bad locking Bambi Brewer up overnight. But what else could he do? She was lying her head off, and if he let her go home, she was going to brief whoever she was protecting. The only choice was to isolate her, lock her up too late to get before a judge-and get to the one daughter as quickly as possible.

And, yeah, he felt like a bum, going to see a woman whose daughter had surgery the day before. But it wasn’t life-threatening, according to her mom. The kid had already been discharged.

Rachel Brewer lived maybe a mile, as the crow flies, from where Bambi Brewer had grown up, but a crow would cover a lot of distance in that mile between the once-grand homes of Forest Park and these modest brick rowhouses on Purnell Drive. Sandy found it interesting that she was the kind of person who didn’t mind being in the minority. Hard to know, but he would guess that this stretch of houses was mostly African American. Middle-class, solid citizens, but it wasn’t a situation that most white people he knew sought out. Not that Sandy could ever decide if he was white. Sure, he looked white and Cubanos were technically Caucasian, but did that make him white? Coming up, before there were so many Latinos in Baltimore, the world had basically been black-white-Asian, and Sandy was white. But now, although he had not changed, he would be called “Latino,” a word that meant nothing to him.

It was the July fourth thing that had done it. Not impossible. But it made no sense. Where had Julie Saxony been for twenty-four hours in that case? Not driving, based on her car’s odometer. Not at home, not checked into any motel or hotel uncovered by detectives, or ferreted out by the reward money dangled by the Havre de Grace Merchants Association. So Bambi was lying about that. But why? And also lying about sending the daughter to do her bidding, based on what Susie recalled of the conversation. The daughter had said explicitly that her mother didn’t know she was there. Okay, Susie’s memory could be wrong on that point, or the daughter could have been lying to gain some perceived advantage. But the mother was definitely lying, and the daughter was the one person who could contradict her.

The woman who answered the door to Sandy and Nancy was not the beauty her mother was. It was only then, allowing himself that rather ungallant thought, that Sandy realized he did find Bambi Brewer very beautiful for a woman in her seventies. This one was pretty as middle-aged women go, her features roughened by whatever her father had contributed. But likable, younger looking than her age, even with no makeup and those deep circles under her eyes. She hadn’t slept last night. Well, she had a sick kid and a mother in lockup. Those dark circles were earned.

They did the little dance of introductions, the pretense of hospitality. They were keen that she not lawyer up, but it was tricky, playing her this way. He hoped she would be looser at home, more relaxed. He hadn’t factored in the demands of a toddler.

“Your mother confessed last night to killing Julie Saxony.”

“She’s lying,” Rachel said.

“Why?”

“No idea. But I know it’s a lie.”

“How?”

“Because I saw Julie Saxony on July third. I was alone at the house. She came by, she wanted to speak to my mother, I sent her away.”

“Did she come by with the money? The money you asked her for a week earlier?”

A beat. “Yes, that’s exactly what happened. She came by with the money.”

“How much was it?”

“Three hundred and fifty thousand.”

“That’s more than your mother’s mortgage and debt. Based on the papers we’ve seen.”

“Really?” She was surprised they knew about the mortgage. “Well, maybe it was the exact amount she stole.”

“Have you ever seen three hundred fifty thousand dollars? It’s a lot of money to put in a suitcase. Julie Saxony’s sister has described the piece of luggage your father handed to Julie that night. She says there couldn’t have been that much in there. And no one saw Julie put anything in her car that day. Why are you so convinced that Julie stole it?”

“My mother said she did.”

“Your mother told us she killed Julie Saxony, and you have no problem saying that’s a lie.”

“I told you, I saw Julie on July third. I was at home. No one else was. She left, end of story. I thought-well, it doesn’t matter what I thought. She left and someone killed her.”

“She could have come back. The next day. I mean, if she really wanted to see your mother-”

“But she didn’t.”

“Again, how can you be sure?”

The child began chanting then: miljews, miljews, miljews. Sandy couldn’t begin to make it out, but it apparently referred to milk and juice, as the woman got up and fetched two cups, the kind with lids that don’t spill, whatever those are called. Sandy would probably know those kinds of things if he were a grandfather. He could tell the mother was happy for the distraction, because she made a big production out of it, probably using the time to think about what she wanted to say.

Only liars and very polite people need that much time to decide what to say.

“Do I have any-I don’t know-I mean, not confidentiality, but can I tell you things that you won’t tell my mother?”

“Maybe. It depends.”

She sighed. “Julie Saxony came to tell my mother that my father had sent for her. Of course, that wasn’t true.”

“How do you know?”

“Because she was found dead.”

“But that doesn’t mean she was lying. You’re working backward from a known fact. She might have been going to your father, wherever he was. And someone might have killed her to prevent that from happening. Maybe your dad wanted her dead.”

Rachel was clearly having trouble processing all this. Again, it might have been the fatigue, or it might have been that she had held back this piece of the story for so long that she hadn’t thought about how others might arrange the same facts. Felix had summoned Julie Saxony, but Julie was found dead. In this woman’s mind, those two things weren’t connected.

Sandy believed they were.

“But I didn’t-” She stopped.

“You didn’t kill her? I mean, you hit her hard enough to knock her earring out, the one that your mother found and sold a month later, but you didn’t kill her? Your mom thinks you did.”

“She didn’t tell you that.”

“No, she just confessed to a murder she probably didn’t commit. Possibly to protect the person who did.”

She wasn’t having problems focusing anymore.

“I need a lawyer.” It was a statement of fact, flat and plain-spoken. By force of habit, Sandy tried to forestall the inevitable.

“Look, we’re still just talking here. If you say you didn’t kill her, you didn’t kill her. Maybe you just, I don’t know, knocked her out, called one of your father’s old buddies, like Tubman, to help you? And you didn’t know what he did or how it ended. That’s okay. We’re just talking. You bring a lawyer in, we’ve got to go out to headquarters, you’ll want to find a babysitter and here’s your kid, just getting over something really major-”

“No, I need a lawyer. We can drop Tatiana at my sister’s house. Michelle, the younger one. And I’ll call Bert Gelman before we leave. Is that a problem, Bert representing my mother and me? Is he allowed to be my lawyer, too?”

“I have a hunch,” Sandy said, “it’s what your mother wanted when she fired him last night.”

Noon

Michelle had a nanny whom she called a babysitter. She wasn’t fooling anyone, including herself. The woman lived in a private apartment above the garage, worked almost sixty hours a week, with Tuesdays and Sundays off. Michelle felt guilty about this. But Hamish wanted her free to go out, to focus on him. She missed the children when she was out, yet she also dreaded Tuesdays and Sundays, which seemed to last forever. It never stopped. Two was so much harder than one, although thank God Hamish III was in school now. Still, that left her with Helena, who was more outrageous than most three-year-olds.

Helena’s high-maintenance ways were thrown into sharp relief by Tatiana’s temperament. A by-product of being in an orphanage, Rachel had said once, and Michelle had said: “Do you think there’s an orphanage where I can drop my kids off for a week or so?” She thought it was funny. Rachel, not so much.

Today was a Tuesday, but she hadn’t mentioned that when Rachel had called. She had said, “Sure, bring her over.” And that had felt good. Until a few years ago, she had so little to offer her sisters. It was nice to be the generous one, the bountiful one. To have the biggest house, to hold the family gatherings, to be able to help out financially. She was especially keen to do anything she could for Rachel.

Rachel’s one was so dainty, alongside Helena. Of course, she was younger and, well, malnourished. But there was something in her movements, something delicate and fine. Michelle watched her examine Helena’s cache of toys in the den-and watched Helena become instantly passionate about any toy that Tatiana touched. “Mine.”

“Be nice,” she said. “Share.”

Tatiana didn’t seem to mind. She just moved on to the next toy, which Helena promptly took, saying: “Mine.”

She was her mother’s daughter all right.

Although the house was toasty warm, Michelle pulled her sweater tighter around her, took another sip from her homemade cappuccino. Why are you going to talk to the police now? she had asked her sister. What is going on?

It’s going to be okay. It’s just crazy. No one did anything.

Did Mom-

No, no.

Did you-

No, Michelle. I think Mom thinks she’s protecting me or something, but I didn’t do anything. Honest, I didn’t. I mean, I didn’t do anything really bad.

But Michelle had. Michelle had done something very bad. She had come so close to telling Rachel, the day of the shower, before Hamish III was born. But she had a moment of-what to call it? Clarity. She wanted to confess to Rachel because it would make her feel better. She wanted to tell her sister about the worst thing she had ever done, in hopes of forgiveness that she didn’t deserve. She still yearned to be forgiven-and still understood that she didn’t deserve it. That was the price she had to pay. For six, almost seven years now, she had tried to persuade herself that her life was proof that she had done the right thing. Hamish, the children-a bad person would not be given these things. And a remorseful person was not bad, right? She used to be bad, but she wasn’t anymore.

“Mine,” Helena said, snatching another toy from Tatiana’s hands. Tatiana never countered, never complained, just went searching for something else. Was Michelle supposed to check her bandage soon? She needed to read the sheet Rachel had left for her.

She sipped her cappuccino. She was really enjoying being nice, if not the Nice One, the role that still belonged to Rachel. It had been a revelation, learning that being nice wasn’t for suckers, that living a life in which one could like one’s self was akin to being softly massaged, all the time. Every “please,” every “thank you”-it was like a coin dropped into a bank. No-a coin tossed into a fountain, like the old wishing fountain at the Westview Cinemas. You gave the coin away. It was no longer yours. It had no currency. And yet you still felt rich somehow, in the moment you released it. I can afford to surrender this quarter. I can afford to say please and thank you and no, you were ahead of me, because I can afford to be nice now because someone finally loves me. Someone I don’t deserve. If Hamish knew-if Rachel knew-if her mother knew-

“Mine,” Helena said again. Tatiana moved on, unperturbed.

She probably should call Linda.

1:00 P.M.

Sandy felt as if he had been working with Nancy Porter forever. He had never been partnered with a woman before. There had only been two in homicide, and one of them was a head case. But Nancy Porter was the real deal. He had trouble remembering she was a woman, even though she was pretty girly. She was good police. Even had the old-school Baltimore accent, all those vowels.

Plus, she agreed with him, most of the time. That never hurt.

“How do you want to play this?” she asked now, very deferential, although it seemed increasingly evident that it would be a county case. Later, if it got written up in the papers-and this case was definitely going to get written up in the papers-his decision to execute the search warrant on Bambi Brewer’s apartment would be called a hunch. True, he hadn’t known what to expect. He just believed that Julie Saxony went to that house on July 3, 1986, and probably died there. He had thought he might find a gun among Bambi’s possessions, maybe even a casing in the old house. But it was the oddity of that one shoebox, in what was otherwise a very uncluttered, serene apartment. An accumulation of papers so meaningless that they had to be meaningful.

“She’s not an experienced liar, this one,” Sandy said. “Her mom’s not very good, either, but she’s even worse. She’s a nice lady, she’s used to doing and saying things that people want to hear. I think everything she’s told us is the truth. She stopped talking, though, when things got serious. She shut down fast.”

“Is it possible that she thinks her mom did it?”

“I think it’s more likely that she realizes her mother suspects her and is trying to save her. Mom probably thought it was slick, but it gives us more leverage. This isn’t a girl-”

“She’s a woman,” Nancy said, manner mild. “She’s fifty.”

Why had he said girl? “But she seems young, doesn’t she? Younger and older than she should be.”

Nancy thought about this. It was another thing he liked about her, how she wasn’t a rat-a-tat, wisecrack person. He had never been good with those types.

“She takes care of others,” Nancy said. “Even more than an average mom would. I can see why she wanted to be a mother badly enough to do it so old. I’ve got two kids now and I can barely keep up with them and I’m only thirty-five. I had this aunt, whose father died when she was really young, eleven or so, and she had to become her mother’s mainstay. That was my mom’s word-poor Evie, she’s the ‘mainstay.’ If Rachel didn’t do this, she knows who did, or thinks she knows. She’s still in protection mode. She knows something and she’s desperate not to tell us.”

“Desperate enough to take a murder charge?”

Nancy smiled. Lenhardt had told Sandy that she particularly loved interrogations, especially with women. It was a specialty of sorts with her. “Let’s go find out.”

1:00 P.M.

Bert met Rachel at the Baltimore County police headquarters. He looked as exhausted as she felt. They were left alone in a room that was far more like the rooms she had seen on television than Rachel would have thought possible.

“Bert, why is Mother claiming she killed Julie? She couldn’t possibly have.”

“Of course she didn’t do it. But she was clever enough, if you want to call it that, to say she did it on July fourth, not third. She was at the beach until the evening of the third. She couldn’t have been home much before eight or nine.”

Rachel sighed. “I was there. On the third. Julie Saxony came by and said our father had sent for her. I hit her, Bert. I actually tore an earring out of her ear. I was so mad-first our money, now our father himself. I know it’s not her fault that Daddy got arrested, or even that he ran away. But everything else, all the hardships-that was because of her greed. And for Daddy to send for her-”

“She was probably lying, just to hurt you. Your father’s women-look, I can’t change the fact that they existed, but none were special. The girls were like Cadillacs to him.”

“You mean, he drove them for two to three years then traded them in.” She was trying to make a joke, but her mouth crumpled and it was all she could do not to cry.

“Yes, pretty much. But-it was changing, Rachel. He was changing. Do you want to know why? It was because of you and Linda. As he saw you come into womanhood-I mean, Julie was what, seven years older than Linda? I think, in some ways, running was part of changing for him. He saw a chance to start over, to be a better person.”

“Mother said he was a coward.”

“Well, he wasn’t brave. But he didn’t think he would survive prison. He had some blood pressure stuff, cholesterol. A family history of diabetes. He wasn’t built to serve time, Rachel. He knew that about himself. Your dad, whatever his faults-he never had any bullshit about who he was. Your mom is a thousand times braver than he is. That’s why she’s willing to go to prison for you.”

“But I didn’t do anything. I mean, okay, yes, I assaulted her. But you know what I did then? I apologized. Yes, I apologized to my father’s girlfriend for what I had done. Helped her clean up, offered to take her to an ER. And you know what she said? ‘That’s okay, I’m headed to Saks. I’ll buy something nicer. And I’ll be on the Pacific coast of Mexico before the day is through.’ ”

“She said that?”

“Yes. Uncle Bert-for years, for fifteen years, I assumed that she was with Daddy and it broke my heart. Then her body was found and I was, like, ‘Oh, so she was lying.’ I decided she must have ripped someone else off. I mean, if she stole from us, then she might have stolen from any number of people. I figured she burned someone and finally got what was coming to her. I didn’t see how it could be connected to Daddy. But the detective said, ‘Why not?’ and now I wonder: Why not? Did he set a trap for her? Did she have something on him? Maybe he found out what she did and arranged for her to be killed. He would have been angry, right, if he knew that she had stolen our money?”

“Yes-he would have been very angry about the money. But Rachel, baby, no one has heard from your father, ever. I can guarantee you that. Not me, not your mother. He’s gone. He was gone from our lives the day he left.”

Rachel allowed herself a smile at the way that Bert, after all these years, would not admit to having any knowledge of her father’s planned flight. God, Bert was loyal.

“Rachel, there is one thing I have to ask you. You told your mother and your mother told the police that Julie Saxony gave you money. Is that true?”

“I don’t want to tell you, Bert. I know you’re my lawyer and you’ll be bound by the usual rules, but you’re also a family friend. You’ll have trouble being just my lawyer. As my uncle, my mother’s friend, you’ll want to tell her. She must never know, Bert, how I got that money.”

“You can’t lie to the police.”

“Okay, so I’ll just tell them I made an arrangement that has nothing to do with this. That’s true.”

“I can keep secrets,” he said. “You’d be surprised at what I can compartmentalize.”

Rachel had an image of her younger sister, sitting on a gleaming white toilet, a glass of champagne in her hand, a napkin full of cookies spread on what little lap she had.

“Michelle’s problem. With the IRS agent. Did she tell you who her lover was?”

“Just that he was married.”

Rachel smiled. “Ah, but, see, you’ve already told more than you should. You should have said, ‘What problem with the IRS?’ You should have feigned shock. Married lover? Michelle had a married lover? And you’ve probably told Mother everything, long ago. I can’t afford to tell you this, Bert. I can’t. Because if my mother knew how I got that money, the decision I made-she would blame herself. And she shouldn’t, she mustn’t. It was absolutely the right thing to do and I’ve never regretted it.”

“Rachel, we’re talking about murder.”

“Yes, but I didn’t kill anyone. So I hit her. So what? You think they would go to trial with so little evidence?”

“Yes, they might go to trial. Especially if you don’t tell them where you got the money to pay your mother’s mortgage. It will be expensive, a trial. And what if they petitioned to lock you up without bond? You’ll miss work, too, and I know your household can’t afford that. You don’t have to tell them everything, but I need you to tell me everything. It’s the only way I can represent you effectively. Today, they are going to run back and forth between us and your mother, comparing notes, looking for every discrepancy. What if they decide it was a conspiracy, or that your mother is an accessory? She did find the earring, apparently, and she did pawn it. She assumed you had done something to Julie. And when Julie’s body was found-that’s why it hit her so hard. Not because of the publicity, but because she had worried, all those years, that you had done something awful, and here was the proof.”

“Look, Uncle Bert, I’m not scared. I didn’t kill anyone. And the money I gave my mom all those years ago-it was legal. Perfectly legitimate. I even paid income tax and gift tax on it, made sure everything was on the up and up. That’s why I said a different amount.”

“Really, that’s interesting because-” Bert stopped himself.

“Because it didn’t come up? When that IRS agent decided to go through Michelle’s filings, then Mother’s? He had the fact that Mother paid it off, but as the recipient, she wasn’t obligated to report anything and he probably didn’t think to pull my file, or Linda’s. Because he was just some stupid guy, in a snit over being rejected by Michelle. His own bosses saw that much, right?”

“Your sister got lucky. The agent’s misuse of his position was more of a problem than some married ku fartzer who, unlike you, didn’t follow the letter of the law and report a car, a watch, and a fur coat as gifts.”

“Ku fartzer.” Rachel laughed. “You never speak Yiddish, Uncle Bert, unless you really dislike someone.”

The detectives knocked, entered without being asked. It was their room, after all.

“Are we ready to talk?”

“Yes,” Rachel said.

They did their stage business with their tape recorder, got out their pads.

“Late in the morning of July 3, 1986, Julie Saxony came to my mother’s home, where I was staying alone. She told me she had been summoned by my father and that she was going to him. I got angry, I hit her, I knocked a pierced earring from her lobe-the right, I think.” She mimed the fight for herself, the leap from the back, the ineffectual punch, the grab-yes, it had been the right. “I was shocked at myself. I had never drawn blood on another person in my life. The sight of the blood-I went to get a towel. I even offered to try to wash her dress, or pay for the dry cleaning, but-” She stopped. “Am I allowed to ask you questions?”

“You’re allowed to ask,” the male detective said.

“What was she wearing? When she was found? I mean, the clothes were there, right? Even after fifteen years, there would be some trace of the fabric?”

The detectives didn’t answer.

“Okay, I’ll tell you then. If Julie Saxony was not found in a two-piece pink linen dress, a sheath with a matching bolero-style jacket, then she changed clothes after I saw her. She said my father would buy her a new dress. She probably bought something herself. She wouldn’t want to go see him looking less than her best. That’s the last thing she said to me. ‘I’m headed to Saks. I’ll find something nicer.’ I’m right, aren’t I? She wasn’t wearing a pink outfit when she was found.”

The detectives looked unimpressed. Then Bert said: “They would rot, Rachel. After all that time. Her clothes would rot.”

“But we’ll try to match your description against the statements taken at the time,” said the male detective. “I think she was wearing a pink outfit, according to her chef.”

“What about the purse? I remember-she was all matchy-matchy. Really, a little tacky, like someone’s idea of what a lady should look like. I know you found the purse because it was reported, her ID was in it. It was more of a makeup bag, the old-fashioned kind, for traveling. Pink, to match the dress. If she bought a new outfit, she might have bought a new purse, too.”

The detective flipped a Polaroid at her. “It was the same purse.”

“Well-maybe she just bought a dress, but found one to match the shoes and purse. Maybe-”

“Maybe,” the female detective said, “maybe, we should stop playing the home version of What Not to Wear and go over this once again. Because the only thing you’ve managed to get right, for sure, is your description of this purse. That’s dead-on perfect. So, congratulations, we’re convinced: You saw Julie Saxony the day she was killed. What are you not telling us, Ms. Brewer?”

“I’ve told you everything I know. Julie Saxony came to my mother’s house. We had a fight. I never saw her again.”

“And a week later”-the male detective consulted his notes-“your mother paid off her mortgage. With money Julie Saxony provided you, before or after you tore out her earring.”

“Okay, that was a lie. The money wasn’t from Julie. It was mine, but I prefer not to talk about it.”

“You taking the Fifth?” Detective Sanchez smiled as if that were hilarious.

“No, not exactly. Exercising my rights to privacy, I guess.”

Two pairs of eyebrows shot up at that, almost comically in unison.

“Maybe she did have your father’s money,” said the woman, Nancy Porter. “Maybe she shows up and she has your father’s money and she tells you that she’s going to him with his money. Now that’s a reason to hit someone, pull out an earring. You were trying to stop her.”

“I was very emotional.” Rachel paused. “I mean, more than you might realize. I was just… emotional.”

“Sure.” Detective Sanchez jumping in. “Because here’s this woman and she’s got your family’s money and she’s come to rub it in your mom’s face. Your mom. I mean, I don’t know how you grew up, but where I grew up, someone said shit about your mom-tu madre-kaboom!” He banged his fist into his palm.

The woman detective nodded. “I know. Same with the Polacks, my people. I mean, it’s universal, as far as I know. People can say anything to me they want. But my mom? My mom or my kids. I bet you feel the same way. I mean, you were the one trying to take care of your mom. You put yourself on the line for her, right, going to see Julie Saxony the week before? Bad enough to have this woman say No, I’m keeping your daddy’s cash-”

“To be fair,” Rachel said, “she said she never had it.”

“And you care about fairness, don’t you, Rachel?” Sanchez now. Rachel felt as if she were in some dizzying dance, an Apache, being tossed back and forth between two partners. “It matters to you. You’re a very principled person. Here was this woman who, even if she didn’t have your father’s money, she slept with him. A married man, with three daughters.”

“He didn’t have three daughters when it started.”

“See, there you go again, being fair. People think empathy is a good thing and it is. But, sometimes, when you’re feeling what everyone is feeling-being fair-you lose yourself a little. There you were, in your mom’s house-why were you in your mom’s house?”

“I had left my husband and lost my job. I didn’t have anywhere else to go.”

“So that’s why you were emotional. I mean, no wonder.”

Rachel paused. “Sure,” she said. “That’s why I was emotional.”

“You say ‘sure’ like you’re being polite. Like that’s not it, but you just want to make this conversation go away.”

“No, you’re reading too much into it. Yes, I was emotional. Marc-I had been in love with him since I was sixteen.” Rachel had never admitted this to anyone. But here, in this room designed to elicit confessions, it made sense to say the things she had never said to anyone. She had been in love with Marc from the moment she had first seen him. She had not thought herself worthy. Then one day, five years later, he deigned to notice her, to ask her out, even though he was superior in every way. Handsome, the better student, the better poet, from the better family. Marc’s only flaw was that he couldn’t keep his dick in his pants. Then, faster than seemed possible, she was twenty-four and she had given up the love of her life, and all the dreams that went with it. From a distance of twenty-five years plus, on the other side of what she now knew was her right life, her correct life, she could see the folly of it. But at twenty-four, she was raw and crazy and shortsighted and she jumped on the back of her father’s girlfriend and tore an earring from her ear.

Later, in the bathroom, there had been spotting. On her T-shirt, but in her underwear, too, and that had perplexed her. How could there be blood in her underwear? And then she remembered-oh, yeah, they said there could be spotting. They also had recommended against vigorous exercise. Did jumping on your father’s girlfriend count as vigorous exercise?

“I left my husband because he was unfaithful to me. He wanted me to stay. But his mother was delighted. She had hated me, hated being associated with my family. When I learned of my mother’s financial problems, I went to his mother and said I would leave him, if she would tear up the prenup and give me three hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Most of the money went to my mother, the rest to taxes. I needed some, to tide me over until I found a job. And for other things.”

“Other things.”

Rachel looked at Bert: “You can’t tell.” But she didn’t wait for him to agree. She took a deep breath and said out loud the thing that no one knew about her. Not her mother, not her sisters, not Joshua. “I was thirteen weeks pregnant. My mother-in-law didn’t know. But my husband did. I had an abortion, and I told him. I wanted to hurt him. I wanted to make things final between us, over forever and ever, with no hope of reconciliation. And I did. I had an abortion on July first, then went to my mother’s house to recuperate.”

She became aware of a strange sound in the room. It was Bert, weeping.

“Florence Singer, my mother-in-law. I’m sure she’ll verify my account. About the money. And if you must, ask Marc if I told him I had an abortion, that I wouldn’t carry his child. I wonder if he even remembers. He was remarried within six months, a father the year after that. But I saved my mom from losing the house. And if I had to do it all over again, I would, no regrets. But she can’t know. She must never know. She carried us for so long. You know what? I almost wish I had killed Julie Saxony. But my mother wouldn’t have wanted that. She wanted my dad, and that was the one thing I could never give her. Please-whatever happens, could we not tell her about the abortion or where I got the money? Or that Julie said those things about my dad sending for her? Can’t we just leave things as they are? I didn’t kill Julie. My mom didn’t kill Julie. Can’t you just leave my family alone?”

The detectives left, making no promises. Bert, the kind of man to have a silk handkerchief, took it out and wiped his eyes, but otherwise made no acknowledgment of his own tears. Time slowed, but it felt comforting. Rachel thought about her attempts over the years, all failed, at serious yoga practice, at meditation. For the first time in her life, she was living in the moment, but oh, what a moment. She didn’t want to leave this room. As long as she was here, none of this had happened. Bert would tell her mother. She knew he would. Bert could never keep anything from Bambi. Or he told Lorraine, who told Bambi. Same difference.

The detectives returned. “We’re going to check out what you’ve told us,” the man said. “And, for now, we have no interest in sharing it. But if it comes to a court case, we can’t control information. Things will get out. That’s not on us. You control what people find out-if you confess.”

“Why are we talking about court or confessions?” Bert asked. “Everything Rachel has said has been consistent.”

“This final story has been consistent. She changed up several times getting there, didn’t she?”

“Are you going to charge her or not?”

“She’s free to go. But her mom, down the hall? She’s still adamant that she did it. And at this point, we’re going to let her have her way and be arrested for it. Nothing this one says negates the possibility that Julie Saxony came back the next day. Hey, maybe she sat in an ER for the next twenty-four hours, got treated under an assumed name.” Sandy pushed a piece of paper toward Rachel. “This is the press release we plan to issue later this afternoon. Feel free to scan it for any possible factual errors.”

4:30 P.M.

When Linda learned what was up, she couldn’t believe she was the last person in the family to know. And she wouldn’t even have found out if she hadn’t called Michelle to ask if she had heard from Rachel about how Tatiana was doing. Linda had been calling Rachel’s cell, going straight to voice mail, and sending e-mails that went unanswered, unusual for Rachel. She wasn’t the quickest person to respond to things, but she would want her sister to know that Tatiana was okay. Plus, they had to talk about their mother, this insanity. Linda thought Bambi might be exhibiting some kind of dementia. Bert was great, no worries as long as Bert was in charge, but what if they had to pay bail? With Uncle Tubby long out of the business and certain legends still vivid in people’s minds, local bail bondsmen might not be inclined to write a bond for the wife of the man famous for skipping. Or the judge might deny bond altogether. But they clearly hadn’t charged her yet, which was interesting. There wasn’t a whisper of it on television or the Beacon-Light’s Twitter account. Of course, the police reporter was, like, twelve, but 2011 had been the thirty-fifth anniversary of Felix’s disappearance, so it wasn’t that long ago that the paper had run something. It had been almost snarky in tone, ho-ho-ho, whatever happened to Felix Brewer?

“Oh, Tatiana’s great,” Michelle assured Linda when she called her. “Rachel dropped her off this morning. But she had to go out to Baltimore County because of this whole thing with Mom.”

“What’s she doing that Bert can’t do?”

“She said the cops want to talk to her, too.”

“What? And you didn’t call me?”

“Rachel said it was no big deal, that she was just being supercautious, making sure she had a lawyer with her, that Dad always said that, never talk to the cops without a lawyer.” A pause. “Did he really say that, Linda? It seems like such an odd thing to say to your teenage daughters-”

“Jesus, Michelle, I don’t know. I mean-what the fuck? You just sat there and didn’t even think to call me?”

“I,” Michelle said with wounded grandeur, “have been watching Tatiana and Helena all morning. Have you ever tried to get two wound-up little girls down for a nap?”

Linda hung up and dialed the public information officer at Baltimore County police. They were friendlyish, usually playing on the same team more or less, even now that she was working for the governor. Oh God, the governor-that was going to be fun, explaining to him why her family was in the news.

“Linda Sutton!” the PIO said. “Damnedest thing to hear from you because I was wondering what you would do in my situation.”

“Don’t be cruel, Bill. Just tell me what’s going on.”

“Detectives have given me two sets of facts to work with and asked me to write two press releases. In one, I’m to say your sister killed Julie Saxony. In the other, it’s your mother. Any idea which one is true? You could save me some work here.”

“Fuck you, Bill.” Maybe they weren’t as friendly as she had thought. She called her boss, pleaded a family emergency, a gutsy thing to do when the legislature was in its final weeks, then called Michelle and told her to find someone, anyone, to take the kids. But she and Michelle needed to go to their mother and sister.

March 27, 2012

6:30 P.M.

Bert and Rachel sat. What else could they do?

“What’s going on, Bert?”

“They expect you to confess. They’re bullying you. They think if they tell you that they’re going to charge your mom, you’ll break down.”

“Oh, I’m about to break down. But I can’t confess. I didn’t do it, Bert.”

“I know. Neither did your mother. This is the craziest thing I’ve ever seen. It’s a weak case. An earring. The confession of someone who couldn’t have possibly done it, an honest and plausible recitation of events that refutes the confession. I do wish you hadn’t been there that day, much less admitted to hitting her-”

Rachel smiled. “I thought the truth was supposed to set me free.”

“Not in this legal system, honey. The truth just gets in the way sometimes.”

“I’m free to go. That’s what they said.”

“Yes. And when you leave, they will charge your mother. They’re waiting to see if you’re up for that.”

“What can I do?”

“I don’t know, Rachel.”

A knock, the round face of the female detective. “Your sisters are here. We don’t have to let them in to see you, but we’re nice that way.”

“They’re here? Both of them? Who’s taking care of Tatiana?”

“I got the nanny to come back early from her day off,” Michelle said, pushing her way into the room. “And you’re welcome.”

“Bert, what’s going on?” Linda asked, right behind her. “Why is Mother doing this?”

“I don’t know, girls. I just don’t know.”

Rachel looked at her sisters, at Bert. She wondered if they had ever longed, as she had, to have him for a father. Or, more accurately, to have Felix be like Bert-steady, loyal, there. There. She thought about the famous children’s book, the one she was reading to Tatiana now, the special pang that only a nonbiological mother can understand. Are you my mother? Why can’t a bulldozer or an airplane or a frog be a bird’s mother? Pretty-but-ordinary Rachel was the mother to beautiful Tatiana, with her silky hair and perfect eyes and her soon-to-be-perfect face, although it was incomparably lovely to Rachel even before the surgeries. She didn’t, couldn’t, judge the woman who had abandoned her. She owed that woman everything. And her father had abandoned her, so there was that.

Another knock. The male detective this time. “She wants you.”

“Me?” the sisters chorused.

“No, him, the lawyer. We’re going to allow it, although we don’t have to. She says she has to speak to him before she signs the confession.”

6:45 P.M.

Bambi was exhausted, but it was that weird kind of exhaustion that leaves one wired. Yet she was sad, too. Life was so horribly sad. Didn’t anyone get what they wanted? She thought, hoped, her girls had. They had used her as an example, choosing men unlike Felix. Although Marc, Rachel’s first husband, had been very much like Felix, too much like him. Worse, actually. Felix never would have done what Marc did. She wished Bert hadn’t told her that. But Bert always told her everything he knew about her girls, even when he shouldn’t.

“Bert,” she said when he came through the door. “Remember the first time we met?”

Clearly not the opening he was expecting. “Of course I do.”

“We had grown up in the same neighborhood, only a few blocks apart. Only a year apart at school, although it might as well be ten years when the girl is older. Then, at least. Rachel’s Joshua is almost two years younger than she is. You were handsome, too. Yet I looked right through you. I only had eyes for Felix, as the song said.”

“That wasn’t the song, though. It was ‘Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Bill Me.’ The lawyers’ anthem.” Making a small joke, out of bravado.

“So you remember?”

“Well, you and Felix told the story so many times, it’s hard to forget.”

“You were always there. Always there.”

“Yes, I’ve tried to be there for you and the girls.”

“No, I mean before. We went everywhere together. Felix and Bambi, Bert and Lorraine. She’s a good person, Felix. She really is. A good mother, a good wife.”

“She is.”

“And you were there when Felix met Julie, weren’t you? You were with Tubby when he ‘discovered’ Julie, suggested he take her to the club. You knew Felix’s type by then. He liked them long and leggy. You know, as a contrast. I was many things, but long and leggy isn’t one of them.”

“Bambi, I didn’t condone what Felix did at all. Not at all. I’m not that kind of a guy.”

“Really? You never cheated on Lorraine, not even once?”

“No.”

“Not even in your head?”

He sighed. “Bambi, what is this about?”

“It’s about alibis, Bert. Yours and mine. That was the word you used. You have a perfect alibi. I mean, I know it’s a legal term, but it just struck me a little while ago. Yes, I did. And so did you. Rachel would have, too, if she could have borne to come to the beach that weekend, but she was moping. We all had such perfect alibis. You saw to that. The elaborate party for Lorraine-a surprise for her forty-first birthday, thrown after the actual date, pulled together in just a matter of days. Because, you said, that’s the only way to keep a surprise. I’ve never seen you do anything like it.”

“Oh, I think it had more of a lead time than that.”

“Not much. Certainly, the party was planned after Rachel had her grandstanding moment with Julie Saxony. She told me that she went to see her on June twenty-eighth. Of course, she also told me that Julie agreed to pay my debt and the police now tell me that was a lie, that my daughter got the funds from a source she refuses to disclose. Still, I believe the first part. She went to Julie, confronted her about the money. And Julie denied that she had taken it, refused to give it to her. Do you know where Rachel got it?”

Bert nodded but said nothing.

“Are you going to keep my children’s confidences now? That would be a first. After all, you’re the one who told me about Michelle’s problems, how we had an IRS agent all over us because he had noticed those things provided by her lover. You never figured out who he was, did you, Bert? Michelle didn’t trust you that much. But I know. It was Marc. She had an affair with her sister’s ex-husband. She told me, Bert. Me, because I’m her mother. You’re a good friend, like family, but you’re not Michelle’s father.”

A pause.

“No matter how much you wanted to be.”

He put his hand on hers. How many times, over the years, had Bert touched her this way. A hand on her hand. A hand on her shoulder. Putting on her coat. Patting her back. Hugging her the day Julie’s body was found. And how many times had she failed to see him. She had never seen him. That was the problem.

She moved her hand away. “She was supposed to go with him. That’s why you got her the passport. Because you hoped she would go with him. The first time. When she didn’t-well, I guess you kept the money to see if that would force me to rely on you. You knew I would come to you for help, and I did. But did you really think it would ever be more than that between us, that I would betray Lorraine that way?”

“It was moot,” Bert said. “Lorraine became pregnant and-I couldn’t. You wouldn’t, I knew that. But I also couldn’t figure out how to tell you what I had done.”

“So you kept Felix’s money. And used it, at least some of it, I’m guessing. I mean, you make a good living, but you always seemed to live awfully high to me. The endless renovations on the house in Garrison Forest, an oceanside house in Bethany-I guess my husband bought you that, didn’t he? Okay, so you took my money, hoping I would fall in love with you, and you tried to get my husband to take his girlfriend with him, but that failed. Why kill her, Bert?”

“She began to figure it out. After Rachel went to see her. She knew there was money and she had given it to me. I managed to stall her. I told her that Felix made bad investments, that the money was never there. But she didn’t believe me. And she cared, cared terribly because she did believe that Felix had been in touch with you and you had slandered her. It was only a matter of time before she confronted you, told you that she had taken the suitcase to me as instructed, that I knew where he had stashed everything, all the off-shore accounts and safe-deposit boxes. So I called her July first, told her Felix wanted her, and told her where to go.”

“And where did she go?”

“Saks Fifth Avenue. That part was always true. She met a man there, a man I knew from my work. She thought he was going to forge a passport for her. He took care of things. And that was that.”

“Is that man still alive?”

“No. He died a few years ago. But he never spoke of it. I knew he wouldn’t, even if he was arrested, even if he needed the leverage. He was honorable that way. And he knew I would help him out, if he got in trouble. But he never got in trouble.”

“Honor among thieves,” Bambi said. “As the old saying goes. So how far are you prepared to go, Bert? Are you ready to represent Rachel in a murder trial, knowing she’s innocent? Or are you going to sit back and let me enter my confession? I know enough now. I can get it right, I think. I’ll tell the cops that I hired the man who met Julie at Saks. After all, my husband was a criminal. I’ll take your story and make it mine. All the pieces will fit now. Is that what you want?”

“No-never. What I wanted-” He could not finish.

“You wanted me. Probably because Felix had me. I wanted Felix. Julie wanted Felix. Tubby wanted Julie. Lorraine wanted you. I wonder-” She looked to the ceiling, saw the years, her husband’s face, an image that never quite faded. “I wonder what Felix wanted. It would be nice if at least one of us got what we wanted in this world. At least our kids seem to have. There’s some comfort in that.”

Bert got up to leave. “I’ll tell them,” he said. “I won’t let you do this. I can’t. I’ll tell them.”

“Go home first,” Bambi said. “Tell Lorraine. Tell her it was about the money, nothing else. Tell Lorraine, then call your children and tell them the same thing.”

“Is that what you would have had Felix do?”

“Yes.” She made a shooing motion with her hands. “Tell the detectives something, anything, to stall them. Tell the girls that everything is going to be okay, because it is. Go home, say good-bye to your wife. The woman who loves you and admires you so. Tell her how much you love her. And you would have loved her, Bert, if you hadn’t been so very stupid. You would have seen this woman, right in front of you, who loved you, and you would have honored that.”

Bert left. For the first time, Bambi noticed the chill in the room, the rankness of clothing worn on the second day. She was thirsty and hungry. Could she ask someone to bring her something? She probably could, yet it was too much of an effort. Of all the things she had learned today, one stood out: Felix had meant to provide for her. He never knew what Bert had done. Julie had not stolen from her-well, not her money, at any rate. Felix had never sent for Julie, but Rachel thought he had, and she had kept that from her mother for almost thirty years.

She saw herself at nineteen, the college dropout with the impossibly tiny waist, heard the Orioles sing, felt Felix’s arms, firm but not too tight as he steered her around the ballroom. She tried to remember Bert’s face, and she had a vague impression of noticing him that night, the younger, more conventionally handsome man. But, for her, it had been Felix, only Felix. Would things have been different if-

But things could always be different, if. It was more important to know what things were. She was a realist.

If only Bert had been one, too.