I planned to bring William’s portfolio to Anne’s. According to Del, the Milton girls discussed the photographs when Anne wasn’t around, which led me to assume Anne knew nothing about them. I hesitated to be the one to show them to her. But I decided to pretend William had left them behind. I got dressed and slipped Mary Rae’s necklace into my pocket.
Anne arrived at five o’clock to pick me up. It was dark and a surprising spring snow was falling in the lamplight. Her car was an old Mercedes-Benz—a beautiful blue two-seater. As I got into the car Anne said that if the snow got too bad I could spend the night at her house, and just then I wanted nothing more than to be fed and tended to. She drove expertly along the whitening roads, downshifting on hills we might not make it over. I told her I liked her car, and she gave me a little, secret smile. I worried she thought I had designs on it—another item I wanted her to leave me after she died.
“It was my mother’s,” she said. “My father bought it for her in 1960 from the New York showroom. I shouldn’t be driving it in this weather, but it was spring, wasn’t it?”
She had the radio tuned to the local NPR station, and she talked brightly over a BBC news report—holding back her mention of William’s strange disappearance, I guessed, until we got to her house. I settled back into the leather seat. I had William’s portfolio with me in my bag. When we turned up Anne’s drive, the gravel and the snow pinged beneath the little car, and one lamp burned in the house. Usually every floor was illuminated, the light spilling out of every window, and I felt a woozy anxiousness—as if something inside the house, in one of those dark rooms, lay in wait for me.
Anne pulled into the garage alongside a Jeep with thick tires—the car she should have driven out in the snow. The headlight beams hit rakes and galvanized buckets hung on hooks on the wall. She explained that her husband used to tap the maples for syrup and that William had taken over when her husband had left.
“He should have started already,” Anne said, sounding miffed.
The car’s engine cut off, as did the lights, and we were thrown into darkness. We made our tentative way up the path to the front door and Anne stopped in the middle of her snowy lawn.
“Isn’t this a fabulous night,” she exclaimed, taking deep breaths of it.
At the door, she fumbled with her keys until I nearly offered to do it for her. The snow fell and landed on our shoulders, powdery and soft. Finally, the door swung open and we stepped inside. There was a fire in the hearth, but only one lamp illuminated the room.
“Welcome to my world,” Anne said. “Dreary without my usual company, isn’t it?”
We draped our coats over a chair, and Anne led me back into the kitchen, into the smell of something roasting in the oven. She had on a wool cap, and she went into a small mud room and emerged with her usual scarf—a paisley silk that made her eyes seem violet. The dimness was explained by the candle she had lit on the counter. I watched Anne step over to the bar.
“I’m going to have a vodka martini,” she said. “My parents and their friends were avid martini drinkers in their forties. When I turned forty last year I just fell into the tradition.”
I admitted I’d never had one, and she insisted I sample hers. She held her glass toward me by its stem, and I took a cautious sip. I said it was like drinking partially melted snow, and she laughed and poured me one, too.
“It’s a glioblastoma,” she said, eyeing me over the rim of her glass. “The tumor.”
I didn’t know what to reply. I composed what I hoped was an expression of sympathy.
“I plan to come back as a cardinal after I die.”
My first instinct was to reassure her that she would be fine, but I knew that was pointless. “They’re beautiful birds,” I said. “My great-grandfather was an ornithologist.”
Anne brightened. “Really?” she said. “I’m an enthusiast.”
I sipped my drink. “You don’t have any taxidermy birds on display,” I said.
Anne gathered her glass and the shaker. “I don’t kill the birds. I watch them,” she said. “Why don’t we take our snow by the fire?”