The sudden voice led me to drop the trash can lid. If it had been the old metal kind, there would have been a loud clatter. Instead, the plastic made a dull thud at my feet. I looked at her and searched for the right words. None came so I just held up the stained envelope. “Are you Emily Sanino?”
The woman stepped nearer, swooping down for the garbage can lid, placing it back on the can. Her face, I saw, looked softer up close. In the streetlight, I could see a web of faint lines around her eyes and mouth. She snatched the envelope from my hand. “Who are you? And what are you doing out here in the dark digging through our garbage?”
“I’m Sylvie,” I told her. “Sylvie Mason.”
The woman was pressing down on the lid to be sure it was secured, but the moment I spoke my name, she stopped. A hand went to her mouth. “Rose’s sister?”
I nodded.
“How did you—” Her voice faltered. “What are you doing here?”
“Trying to find out who you are.”
Emily Sanino stared at me, considering what I’d said, before asking how exactly I had found her. When I explained, she let out a long breath. “Does your sister, or anyone else, know you’re here?”
I shook my head.
“Okay, then. Why don’t you come inside? But you can’t stay long. My husband will be back soon.”
I followed her around the side of the house to the back door. The wood-paneled kitchen smelled of garlic and stewed tomatoes, whatever it was she had cooked for dinner. The smell caused my stomach to grumble, since the last thing I’d eaten was that sandwich Heekin bought me from the deli in Philly.
I ignored my hunger and looked at the speckled white countertops scrubbed clean, a bright blue mixing bowl on top, a bag of flour, an eggbeater, and her simple black purse with a lone gold buckle. “I was going to bake something,” she explained. “It calms my nerves. But I realized I didn’t have any eggs. I went out to the car to go to the store. That’s when I saw you.”
“Were you baking for us?”
“Us?”
“You know, more of the things you leave at our house?”
She shook her head. “Not tonight. I left a cake at your house earlier.”
I wondered if Rose had found the cake on our stoop on her way to Dial U.S.A. and tossed it in the trash just like all the rest.
Emily Sanino returned the mixing bowl to a cabinet, the flour and milk to the fridge. I peeked down the hall to the living room. I saw a rocker, like my mother’s. Just beyond, I noticed a row of framed pictures on a side table, a cluster of trophies with little gold figures on top.
“You know,” I told her as she moved about the kitchen, “I’m sorry to say but nobody eats the things you leave for us.”
She had swung open the door to the refrigerator but turned back to look at me, visibly perplexed. “And why not?”
“My sister and I have no idea who’s leaving it.”
Emily Sanino considered that a moment. I had the sense that she was debating something in her mind, before closing the fridge and saying simply, “I see.”
“Why do you leave it? I mean, if you don’t know us.”
“You’re right. I don’t know you.” She stood by the table now, staring straight at me and speaking in a stiff voice, as though choosing her words carefully. “I only met your sister a handful of times. Still, I have enormous sympathy for you girls, considering what you’ve both been through.”
“Did you know my mother and father? Were you someone who came to them in need of their help?”
She ran her hands over her plain dress. “You know what? Let’s go into the living room. That way I can listen for my husband’s patrol car. We have to make sure he doesn’t find you here when he gets back.”
I considered telling her that I’d spoken to him outside, but I kept it to myself; the last thing I wanted was to distract her when we had so little time together. In the living room, I went to that side table and looked at the trophies, five in all. On top of each, the miniature gold figure—running, jumping, swinging—was a girl. The framed photos showed a dark-haired toddler wearing a soft pink dress, the same girl a few years older at the beach in a bright bathing suit, hair long and wet, sand stuck to her elbows. In the next frame she was a lanky adolescent, mouth full of braces, wearing a T-shirt that said GOD’S LOVE SUMMER CAMP. Finally, I saw the girl had grown into her teens. She had wide shoulders and womanly breasts, her hair looked darker and shorter.
“That’s my daughter,” Emily volunteered when she saw me looking.
I glanced at the staircase on the far side of the room, remembering the lights I’d seen on the second floor when I stood out front earlier. She took a seat on a recliner. I went to the rocker and sat too. “Is she here?”
“No. I’m afraid not.”