LEXI BLUM

Lexi followed McPhee’s suspicious gaze as it traveled from woman to woman around the huddled circle. Ever since Iris mentioned ghosts, the detective seemed even more dubious. How could they explain why Iris left Azalea Court? How do you condense six-plus decades of a man’s deception and lies into a concise incident report of a marriage gone wrong? How do you find the courage to unravel together the final layer, his last lie of omission to his wife?

The women were all quiet for a few minutes. Then McPhee repeated her question. “Mrs. Blum. I need to know your status. Did anyone harm or threaten you? Were you afraid to stay in your home?”

Leaning against Lexi’s shoulder, Iris told the whole miserable story again, from Harriet’s political activities in Brooklyn, and the awful things Asher did, to her precipitous decision to leave home the day before. McPhee started taking notes but gave up, looking overwhelmed by the barely interlocking pieces of the story. They all felt dazed, for that matter.

Iris looked at Gloria. “You look stunned, dear. Is something wrong?”

Gloria shook her head.

“I have two questions, Mom,” Lexi said. “First, what made you search Dad’s papers back in October, when you discovered that Harriet had been at the hospital?”

“You know what a mess his office is and how he hates me to clean in there? But once every month or two I go in anyway, just to dust and vacuum. That day, he had left his desk file drawer open and I spotted a folder with Harriet’s name. It just jumped up at me. So, of course, I picked up the file and read it.”

For a moment, Lexi felt sorry for her father, for his bad luck. But just for a moment. “And then, once you knew about it, once you confronted him with your knowledge, why did you wait a month before leaving, without planning where you would go or what you would do? What happened to make you leave yesterday?”

“I thought about it the whole month, night and day. And my brain wasn’t working right on Asher’s drugs, so it was hard to think clearly. I didn’t know what to do, how to make things right. There’s no way to make it right.” Iris started to cry. Canary licked her hand.

“But why yesterday?” McPhee asked. “Did something else happen?”

“Yesterday was Harriet’s birthday.” Iris buried her face in her hands.

Lexi remembered the locket. She pulled it from her pocket and held it out to her mother. “This is from Harriet, isn’t it?”

Iris pressed the locket to her lips. “She gave it to me at my wedding. To always remember her.” She leaned close to Gloria and whispered, “You’ve been so quiet. Are you sure nothing is bothering you?”

Gloria took Iris’s hand and spoke quietly so that only Iris and Lexi could hear. “Not bothering me, exactly. Just that I was born in September 1958. And I was adopted. I don’t know who my birth mother was. My adopted parents always called her ‘that poor unfortunate soul,’ but they wouldn’t tell me anything else.” Gloria looked at Iris, emotion written in hard sorrow on her face. “I know it sounds crazy, and it probably doesn’t make any logical sense, but could I possibly be your friend’s daughter?”

Lexi stared at Gloria. Was this possible? Might she have to share her mother with this stranger? This homeless woman?

The cat growled deep in her throat. Louder than usual, interrupted by a door banging open and an angry shout.

“Hands up! All of you.” An older man in a guard uniform stood framed in the doorway, pistol pointed at them, his hand visibly shaking. “What’s going on?”

“Damn,” Gloria said. “The lights. We forgot to turn off the lights.”

The guard pointed his gun at each of the women in turn. “Who are you people? You shouldn’t be in here. You are trespassing. Breaking the law!”