Same paper.
Same ink.
Same crooked “e.”
My heart was beating so hard it hurt.
I walked down the hall to Chester’s study, where no one but him had ever been allowed to touch anything.
The black typewriter sat by the window under a linen cover.
I pulled the cover away.
My hands were not steady as I rolled a blank sheet into the machine and pressed the keys.
K.
E.
E.
P.
The second “e” came out crooked.
I sat down on the floor of that dark room, with the lake moving gray outside the glass, and understood one terrible and impossible thing.
For twenty-three years, someone had known my name.
And I had spent five of them dusting around his secret.
Chapter 3: Friday at Ten
Loring & Associates occupied the third floor of an old brick building on Superior Street.
The elevator groaned.
The hallway smelled of wet umbrellas, burnt coffee, and radiator dust.
I wore the same borrowed black dress.
I had left Stella at school with a kiss on the forehead and a promise that I would be home by three.
The conference room held a long walnut table and more people than I had ever seen in one place with Chester’s name on their lips.
Thirty-four, I counted.
The board of Wolcott-Vickers Marine in gray suits.
Two bankers.
A woman from the church.
Quentin at the head of the table, with his big hands folded over his stomach.
And Cynthia, in a cream silk blouse and a black Hermès Birkin balanced on the chair beside her, as if the bag had been invited too.
Small cards stood at each place, written in Hugh Loring’s neat hand.
I found mine at the middle of the table, between two board members.
Mrs. Natalie Wolcott.
But a woman was already sitting in that chair.
Cynthia.
My place card lay on the carpet by the wall, face down, with a heel print across it.
I picked it up.
I stood there, holding it.
The room’s murmur thinned, then stopped.
Cynthia looked up at me with mild, pleasant eyes.
“Oh. Was this yours?”
“It has my name on it.”
“The help sits in the back, dear.”
Somebody’s chair creaked.
A banker coughed into his fist.
Nobody said a word.
Nobody ever did, in rooms like that.
I felt every eye on the back of my neck.
My face burned.
I folded the card in half, walked to a folding chair beside the door, and sat down.
My knees were shaking beneath the dress.
“Good,” Quentin said, not unkindly. “It won’t take long.”
At exactly ten o’clock, Hugh Loring entered.
He looked ten years older than he had on Tuesday.
Behind him came a young aide in lavender scrubs, pushing a wheelchair.
In it sat a tiny woman of about eighty-four, with cloud-white hair, a plaid blanket across her knees, and a cane laid across her lap like a sword.
She wore a navy dress with a cameo at the throat.
“Miss Odell, you’re early,” Loring said gently.
“I’m eighty-four,” the old woman answered. “Everything I do is early.”
The aide parked her wheelchair beside mine.
The old woman turned her head and looked at me.
She went completely still.
Her eyes filled all at once, the way a glass overflows.
“Oh,” she whispered. “Oh, look at you.”
I didn’t know her.
I was sure I didn’t.
And yet something in the shape of her voice pulled at me, like a song I had once heard through a wall.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Have we met?”
She pressed a trembling hand to the cameo.
“Not for nineteen years,” she said. “Hush, child. Let him read.”
Loring sat.
He opened a thick cream folder.
