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7

Halfway down the stairs, the pockets of her cargo pants bulging with pill bottles, Holly has an idea. She hurries back to her room and yanks the tartan coverlet off the bed. She balls it up and carries it downstairs.

In the living room is an ornamental hearth containing a log that never burns because it’s really not a log at all. It’s supposed to be gas-fired but hasn’t worked in years. Holly spreads the coverlet on the hearth, then goes into the kitchen for a trashcan-sized plastic bag from under the sink. She shakes it out as she walks to the front hall. She sweeps all the ceramic figurines into the bag and takes them into the living room.

The money is still all there. Holly has to give her mother that much. Even her trust fund—the part Holly threw into the so-called investment opportunity—is still there. She feels sure her mother bought the jewelry out of her own share of the inheritance, but that doesn’t change the fact that her mother’s only reason for making up the whole thing was so Finders Keepers would fail. Would die a crib death. Then Charlotte could say Oh, Holly. Come and live with me. Stay for awhile. Stay forever.

And had she left a letter? An explanation? Justifications for what she’d done? No. If she’d left such a letter with Emerson, he would have given it to her. It all hurts, but maybe that hurts the most: her mother didn’t feel any need to explain or justify. Because she had no doubt that what she had done was right. As she felt that refusing to be vaccinated against Covid was right.

Holly begins throwing the figurines into the fireplace, really heaving them. Some don’t shatter, but most do. All the ones that hit the not-log do.

Holly doesn’t take as much pleasure from this as she expected. It was more satisfying to smoke in a kitchen where smoking had always been verboten. In the end she dumps the rest of the figurines from the trash bag onto the coverlet, picks up a few shards that have escaped the fireplace, and bundles the coverlet up. She hears the pieces clinking inside and that does give her a certain grim pleasure. She takes the coverlet around to the garbage hutch on the side of the house and stuffs it into one of the cans.

“There,” she says, dusting her hands. “There.”

She goes back into the house, but with no intention of circling through all the rooms. She’s seen what she needs to see and done what needs to be done. She and her mother aren’t quits, will never be quits, but getting rid of the figurines and the coverlet was at least a step toward prying that come-along hold from around her shoulders. All she wants from 42 Lily Court are the papers on the kitchen table. She picks them up, then sniffs the air. Cigarette smoke, thin but there.

Good.

Enough of memory lane; there’s a case to chase, a missing girl to be found. “A new millionaire jumps in her car and drives to Upsala Village,” Holly says.

And laughs.

February 8, 2021

1

Emily checks out Barbara’s red coat, hat, and scarf and says, “Aren’t you pretty! All done up like a Christmas package!”

Barbara thinks, How funny. It’s still okay for a woman to say things like that, but not a man. Professor Harris’s husband, for instance. He did give her a good looking over, but you can’t MeToo a man for that. You’d have to MeToo almost all of them. Besides, he’s old. Harmless.

“Thank you for seeing me, Professor. I’ll only take a minute of your time. I was hoping for a favor.”

“Well, let’s see if I can do you one. If it’s not about the writing program, that is. Come in the kitchen, Ms. Robinson. I was just making tea. Would you like a cup? It’s my special blend.”

Barbara is a coffee drinker, gallons of the stuff when she’s working on what her brother Jerome calls her Top Secret Project, but she wants to stay on this elderly (but sharp-eyed, very) woman’s good side, so she says yes.

They pass through a well-appointed living room into an equally well-appointed kitchen. The stove is a Wolf—Barbara wishes they had one at home, where she’ll be just a little longer, before going off to college. She has been accepted at Princeton. A teapot is huffing away on the front burner.

While Barbara unwinds her scarf and unbuttons her coat (really too warm for them today, but it does give her a good look—young woman perfectly put together), Emily spoons some tea from a ceramic cannister into a couple of tea balls. Barbara, who has never drunk anything but bag tea, watches with fascination.

Emily pours and says, “We’ll just let that steep a bit. Only for a minute or so. It’s strong.” She leans her narrow bottom against the counter and crosses her arms below a nearly bosomless bosom. “Now how may I help you?”

“Well… it’s about Olivia Kingsbury. I know she sometimes mentors young poets… at least she used to…”

“She still might,” Emily says, “but I rather doubt it. She’s very old now. You might think I’m old—don’t look uncomfortable, at my age I have no need to varnish the truth—but compared to Livvie, I’m a youngster. She’s in her late nineties now, I believe. So thin it wouldn’t take a strong wind to blow her away, just a puff of breeze.”

Em removes the tea balls and sets a mug in front of Barbara. “Try that. But take off your coat first, for heaven’s sake. And sit down.”

Barbara puts her folder on the table, slips off her coat, and drapes it over the back of the chair. She sips her tea. It’s foul-tasting, with a reddish tinge that makes her think of blood.

“How do you find it?” Em asks, bright-eyed. She takes the chair across from Barbara.

“It’s very good.”

“Yes. It is.” Emily doesn’t sip but gulps, although their mugs are still steaming. Barbara thinks the woman’s throat must be leather-lined. Maybe that’s what happens to you when you get old, she thinks. Your throat gets numb. And you must lose your sense of taste, too.

“You are, I take it, an acolyte of Calliope and Erato.”