“What is it?” Ms Sanchez asked, standing close behind me.
I couldn’t see who was out there, but I had my suspicions. Through the open window I called down, “Hello there.”
Whoever it was stopped shaking the gate. There was a pause. Then I heard running feet.
“Who is it?” Craning to look over my shoulder, Evelynne M. Sanchez pressed against me. A bit too familiar, I thought. And that’s when enlightenment came: Evie Miller. She sat behind me in fifth grade and was on the same swim team in middle school. What I remembered most about her was that she was forever leaning forward in her chair to see what I was doing or to talk to me, demanding attention.
“I don’t know, Evie,” I said, turning back around and edging away from her. “Maybe just some kids. With luck it’s someone who wants to steal zucchini. If it is, I hope they come back.”
“So you do remember me.” She sounded sarcastic, though she smiled. “Took you a while.”
“It’s been a long time,” I said. “Middle-school graduation, maybe?”
“We doubled to the prom,” she said, scolding. “Junior year.”
“So we did.” Did we? All I could remember about the other couple in the backseat of Kevin’s dad’s car the night of his prom-I went to a different high school than he and Evie-was a lot of fluffy pink satin, frothy blond hair and the sounds of some serious groping going on back there. Was that Evie and her date? Guess so.
I showed her around the yard and she filled me in on her life so far: married a boy she met in college, had one daughter, now in college like my own. Her husband got caught fooling around with someone else I was supposed to know but could not place, so here she was, single again and on the prowl.
“Know any available guys?” she asked. “I married cute. Now I want rich. You must know plenty of rich guys in Hollywood. Age doesn’t matter.”
“I’ll keep my eyes open,” I said as I walked her back through the house.
“You always had the cute boyfriends,” she said.
“Only one boyfriend, ever,” I said. “Kevin.”
“Have you seen Kevin recently?” she asked, snooping, I thought.
“I have,” I said because there was no point equivocating about it, not after Karen Loper had made her rounds. The old home town was a tough place to keep secrets.
“You know about him and Lacy.”
“We didn’t talk about Lacy.”
“She’s really jealous of you.”
“She has no reason to be.”
“Oh, Maggie,” she scoffed. “Think about it. Even Larry Nordquist had a crush on you.”
“Bullshit.” And it was. As a kid, I was a scrawny nerd.
“Remember the day you made Larry cry?” she said, grinning. “God, I thought I would plotz when he took off running.”
Was she there? I studied her face, trying to picture her among the dozen girls walking to school that day. It took a moment, but I could place her in the film, a profusion of brightly colored ribbons in her curly hair.
“That was a long time ago,” I said.
“For you maybe.” Looking up at the house, she repeated, “For you.”
“Good to see you, Evie.”
She stood inside her open car door, chin on fists resting on the car’s rooftop.
“Maggie?”
“Yes.”
“Our childhood wasn’t always like a dance in an opera, was it?”
“No, it wasn’t.”
“I mean, Beto’s mom, bullies-well, Larry-boys who always wanted…” She looked down the street toward the house where her family had lived. “But we made it, didn’t we?”
“So far,” I said, repeating one of Mike’s expressions. “So far.”
Chapter 5
The rest of the afternoon, I sorted and boxed books. By the time the shelves in Dad’s study were empty, the sun was low in the sky, my nose itched from dust and my arms ached from lifting and stacking heavy boxes. I left a hefty sampling of books on the shelves for the tenants because it seemed to me that a house isn’t furnished unless there are good books. The rest were sorted into three waist-high zones, one each for the public library sale, the University Library Special Collections, and books I wanted to keep.
The day was still warm, and there was an hour or so of daylight left, so I poured myself a glass of wine, piled some of Beto’s cold ziti into a bowl, and went out to the backyard to eat in the fresh air. I took a seat at the long plank table under the grape arbor where my family always ate summer meals, and called my mom. I was feeling a bit adrift in the swamp of my childhood and wanted to hear her reassuring voice.
“What progress?” she asked.
“Some.” I told her about the visit with Evie Miller Sanchez.
“Should I remember her?” Mom asked.
“The Millers lived two doors down from the Jakobsens.”
“Oh, sure. They moved away years ago.”
“Anyway, after Susan has chosen what she wants and I’ve carted off the things I’m taking home, Evie will come back for another look.”
“Thank you for taking care of it all, dear; I was having nightmares.”
“It’s manageable,” I said. “The interesting part has been seeing the old crowd again. After college, I’d come home to see you and Dad, but I never made a point of looking up anyone except Beto.”
“You never stayed around long enough,” she said. “Maybe if you’d gone to high school with the others, you’d be more interested.”
“Somehow I doubt it,” I said. “Kevin Halloran dropped by.”
I heard Mom chuckle. “I knew where this conversation was headed before you called, Margot. I spoke with Gracie just after you left her place. She told me that Beto wants Kevin to look into his mother’s murder, and that you have some questions for me about Trinh.”
“Trinh?”
“Tina Bartolini,” she said. “She anglicized her name. I got used to calling her by her own name when we were working with the refugees.”
“Gracie seems to think you were her closest friend, Mom. But I don’t remember that.”
“I don’t know that I was her closest friend, but we did spend quite a lot of time together.”
“Working with refugees?”
“That, and before,” she said. “Your dad and I met the Bartolinis at church when they first moved in; you kids were just toddlers. Bart told your dad that Trinh felt out of place, very lonely, didn’t speak the language. I helped her enroll in English classes at the community college and invited her to bring Beto to the parish playgroup with us. She met the other mothers, Beto met the other kids. We went to Father John’s scripture study together.”
“I thought Mrs. B was Buddhist.”
“Culturally, privately she was,” Mom said. “But nominally she was Catholic. For very practical reasons, when Vietnam was under French rule Trinh’s grandfather, who was a highly placed bureaucrat, had the family baptized. He sent his daughters to be educated by French nuns just as his grandfather had sent his sons to study with Mandarin scholars. The survivors adapt, don’t they?”
“I remember Father John giving a blessing at the Bartolinis’ Hungry Ghosts celebration every summer. And I also remember him standing back when the hungry ghosts were offered bribes to stay away.”
Mom laughed. “A man has his limits.”
“You’re missing the hungry ghosts this weekend,” I said.
“Probably for the best,” she said. “Bart seems to think I’ve already passed over into the next realm. God only knows what the man might do if I showed up in the flesh. Honey, you’ll have to burn offerings on my behalf this time.”
“For any ghost in particular?” I asked.
I heard what sounded like a stifled sob and wished I could unsay that careless remark. Of course, I thought, there was someone in particular she wanted remembered: my dad.
“Sorry, Mom. A dumb thing to say.”
“No. It wasn’t.”