*
At last he reached a gate. Anderson conferred with a guard who checked a list and then waved them through. They proceeded slowly down a street flanked by even larger, newer homes. A golf course gleamed in the hills beyond them. Anderson pulled up to a huge brick home that reminded Janie of a plain woman burdened with too many accessories. The only sign of human life was a plastic dump truck by the stone path to the front door, its wheels in the air like an upended beetle.
They sat silently in the car. Janie watched her son in the rearview mirror. His expression was unreadable to her.
“Well,” Anderson said at last. “Here we are.”
“They’re rich,” Janie said suddenly. “Tommy was rich.” She felt it like a blow.
“It seems so.” Anderson managed a tense smile.
Well, no wonder Noah wanted to come back here, she thought. Who wouldn’t? So what if the house was poorly designed—who could be happy with a small two bedroom on the garden level when you’d had this?
Anderson turned toward Noah in the backseat and his face and voice softened. “Does anything seem familiar to you, Noah?”
Noah looked back at him. He seemed a bit glazed over. “I don’t know.”
Anderson nodded. “Why don’t we go in and find out?”
Noah seemed to rouse himself. He unlatched his car seat himself and scrambled from the car and up the stone path.
A man in a polo shirt and crisp khaki slacks opened the door. He had a ruddy, exasperated face and limp red hair, and looked at them all with the dismay of a diabetic facing a troop of cookie-bearing Girl Scouts. Janie tried not to stare at him or at Noah, who was inspecting the man’s boat shoes. She restrained herself from saying, “Sweetie, is this your daddy from another life?” and then almost started giggling from sheer nerves.
The man glowered at them. “I guess you all ought to come in,” he said at last, stepping back and holding the door partially open so that they had to angle their bodies to enter. The foyer was the size of her living room in Brooklyn. “Just so you know, I’m not on board with any of this,” he continued. “So if you’re expecting any compensation, let me tell—”
“We don’t want negotiations,” Anderson said firmly. Janie realized that he must be nervous, too. He was gripping his briefcase tightly in his hand.
The man squinted. “Excuse me?”
“I meant—compensation.”
“Right.” He waved them into an expansive great room. Janie tried to relax and simply breathe; there was the scent of something sweet baking in the air, and also something citrusy and antiseptic underneath that caught in her chest. From somewhere deep in the home a vacuum cleaner hummed.
The room was decorated in a tasteful, neutral way with luxurious beige furniture and framed prints of flowers on the walls. Through the sliding glass doors in the back of the room she could glimpse a large pool covered with a heavy gray tarp. It looked like a scab in the middle of the backyard.
“You’re here!” A tiny blond woman smiled at them warmly from a balcony overlooking the room. She was balancing a hugely plump baby of about a year on her hip as if he were made of air. She was pretty, with a round face and fine, delicate features.
The woman joined the three of them standing awkwardly in front of the fireplace. She smiled graciously at Janie and Anderson, as if they had come for tea, and gave each of them in turn her soft hand. Her hair was held neatly at the nape of her neck with a cloisonné hair clip that, Janie noted, perfectly matched her silken, canary-yellow blouse.
“Thanks for coming all this way,” she said. “I’m Melissa.”
Melissa turned to Noah and extended her hand to him as well. He shook it solemnly. The whole room watched them without breathing, the skeptical husband from the doorway, the two anxious adults. Noah scuffed his feet shyly against the carpeting, and Janie noticed unhappily that his left sneaker was sprouting a little hole near the toe. Yet another thing she hadn’t been able to stay on top of.
Melissa smiled sweetly at Noah. “Do you like oatmeal raisin cookies?” Her voice was light and high, like a preschool teacher. Noah nodded, looking up at her with wide eyes.
“I thought you would.” She adjusted her grasp on the baby, jiggling him in her arms. “They’ll be ready soon. I made mint lemonade, too, if you’d like some.”