LITMIR.BIZ

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he said, and she knew he was through with the conversation.

      She watched him pad out of the room in his terry-cloth slippers and thought of following him, but exhaustion stopped her. Better to wait awhile, anyway. Maybe later they would both be more rational.

      She undressed quietly and got into her side of the bed. It was cold between the sheets, the sort of cold that no amount of covers could relieve, and she felt alone. Her father was gone. She had no family left, except for Emma and Ray. And at that moment, the Ray she had known and loved seemed lost to her as well.

       3

      EMMA WAS SITTING ON THE FLOOR OF HER ROOM, ABSORBED IN her new tropical fish puzzle, a gift from her teenage baby-sitter, Shelley. Laura hunched down next to her. It had been two weeks since Christmas, yet this was the first time she’d seen Emma play with the puzzle. It was taking her some time to get over Poppa’s death.

      “I’m going out for a little while,” Laura said, tucking a strand of Emma’s hair behind the little girl’s ear. “Daddy’s downstairs in his office.” It was good that Emma was so wrapped up in the puzzle. She would be little bother to Ray.

      Emma held up a piece of the puzzle. “I know what this is,” she crowed. “Do you, Mom?”

      “Fish scales?” Laura asked as if she weren’t quite sure.

      “Right! And it goes right here!” Emma dropped the scales into the picture. “Are you going to work?” she asked, reaching for another piece of the puzzle.

      “No. First I’m going to drop off my broken necklace at the jeweler’s. Then I’m going to visit someone.” She stood up. “I won’t be long.”

      “This one’s an eye,” Emma said. “I can’t wait till when I have it all done. Can we put paste on it and hang it up like we did with the other one?”

      “Sure, if you like. But then you won’t be able to play with it again.”

      “That’s okay.” She looked up at Laura. Her eyes were the same color as her pale blue sweater. “Mom?” she asked.

      “Honey, I really have to get going.”

      “I know, but do you want to look at one of my books with me?”

      “Tonight. Before bed.” She bent over to kiss the top of Emma’s head. “I’ll see you in a little while,” she said.

      “’Kay,” Emma said, returning her attention easily to her puzzle. She was an independent child, far more independent than other five-year-olds Laura had encountered. People had been surprised to see her at Poppa’s funeral, but Laura had prepared Emma well for what she would see and hear, and she was certain she’d made the right decision in taking her. Emma finally seemed to understand the permanence of Poppa’s death after attending the service. Her daughter hadn’t cried during the funeral, but she’d put her little arm around her mother in comfort each time Laura began to tear up.

      Downstairs, Laura found Ray in his office, his manuscript on the desk in front of him, but his attention focused on something out the window. She put her hands on his shoulders, the gray plaid flannel of his shirt warm beneath her palms.

      “I won’t be long,” she said. She looked out the window herself, trying to determine what had caught his eye, but saw nothing other than the row of town houses across the street. Each of them was identical to the house in which they lived, each of their slanted roofs was covered with a thin layer of snow.

      “Please don’t go,” Ray said, his gaze still riveted outside, and she knew he was slipping into one of his dark moods. She’d known Ray for ten years and had been married to him for nearly six. During that time, he’d seen several psychiatrists and taken a myriad of antidepressants, but nothing could hold off the darkness for long.

      In the two weeks since her father’s death, Ray had apologized repeatedly for his outburst, assuring her he was not upset about her career. Still, the words he’d said that morning echoed in her ears, and she didn’t believe his retraction of them. In his moment of anger, he’d finally spoken the truth. Wanting to honor his feelings, Laura had tried to set her father’s request aside, and she was able to do so with reasonable success until the call from her father’s attorney.

      “Who’s this Tolley woman?” the attorney had asked her. He told her that her father had paid the entrance fee for Sarah Tolley to move into Meadow Wood Village five years earlier. Not only had he continued to pay her monthly rent, he’d also left a large sum of money in trust for her so that she would still be taken care of after his death.

      “I don’t have a clue,” Laura had told him, but her father’s arrangements left her even more certain that Sarah Tolley had somehow played a significant role in his life. She had to see her. When she told Ray her plans, he grew sullen.

      “I’m leaving,” Laura said now, bending over, pressing her cheek to Ray’s temple. “I’ll be back in an hour. I promise I won’t stay longer than that. Emma’s completely absorbed in her fish puzzle, so you should be able to work undisturbed.”

      He said nothing, and she removed her hands from his shoulders. He was giving her no support on this. Even in Ray’s blackest moods, it was out of character for him to treat her so coolly. It was almost as though her desire to carry out her father’s last wish had come to symbolize her inattention to him. She wondered if it was all right to leave Emma with him today.

      “I’ll be back before you know I’ve gone,” she said, and she turned to leave the room before he had another chance to change her mind.

      She dropped her broken necklace off at the jeweler’s, then drove across town to the retirement home.

      Meadow Wood Village was a charming place, a large, three-storey building that managed to look well-aged and homey despite its relative newness and size. Its siding was a pale blue, the shutters white. An inviting porch ran across the entire front of the building. A place like this could take the fear out of growing old, Laura thought as she walked to the front door.

      The building was as warm and inviting inside as it was out, and it smelled like cinnamon and vanilla. The carpets and upholstery were all a soft mauve-and-aqua print. Laura stopped at the front desk, where the receptionist looked up from a stack of paperwork.

      “I’m looking for one of your residents,” Laura said. “Sarah Tolley.”

      “I’ll call her attendant for you.” The woman motioned toward the lobby. “Have a seat.”

      Laura sat on the edge of one of the wing chairs, and in a few minutes, a young, heavyset woman wearing a long floral jacket came into the lobby.

      “You’re here to see Sarah?” the woman asked. She looked frankly incredulous.

      “Yes,” Laura said. “My name’s Laura Brandon. I don’t actually know her…know Sarah,” she said. “She was a friend of my father’s, and he died recently. He’d asked me to look in on her.”

      The woman lowered herself into the chair closest to Laura’s. Everything about her was round: her body, her face, her wire rimmed glasses, her button nose.

      “I’m Carolyn, Sarah’s attendant,” she said, “and I have to say, I’m a little surprised by this. No one ever comes to visit Sarah.”

      “My father must have,” Laura said. “Carl Brandon. He was about six feet tall, very slender, eightiesh, and—”

      Carolyn interrupted her with a shake of her head. “No one has ever come to see her. I would know.”

      “That just doesn’t make sense.” Laura saw her own puzzled reflection in the attendant’s glasses. “Well, can you tell me about her?” she asked. “How old is she?”

      “She’s seventy-five. And she’s in the early stages of Alzheimer’s. Did you know that?”

      Laura sank

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