Progress....

Dear Readers,

I thought you might like to know I have shown the beginning of my story to a literary agent and she was complimentary. In fact, she asked me to send her a half-dozen chapters so she could consider selling it. She didn't promise, I might add. And she said she had a lot on her plate and might not have time to work on it. But she liked what she had read and said she wanted to know what happened to Robin and Ellen.

Boy did that feel marvelous to hear!!

I'm working on my cover letter now and will be sending the chapters off this weekend.

Then we'll see what happens.

From Start to Finish, Here's the View from Federal Hill

I am posting here the whole novel, from the Prologue through the Epilogue, for those of you who found themselves reading chapters out of order. I hope you enjoy it.

It has been so exciting to hear from people who've said they like "The View from Federal Hill."

Mary

The View

from Federal Hill

By Mary K. Tilghman

Prologue

I arrived for the first day of sixth grade and knew immediately something was wrong. I looked like a complete dork. Already, tight groups of friends had formed, probably talking about their summer adventures. They all wore the same uniform I had on but somehow theirs didn’t look like mine. I looked down at the sharply pressed pleats of my kilt, the dark blue cardigan with the school’s monogram. My saddle shoes were clean and my knee socks were, well, the only ones I saw in the school yard. I didn’t look like the other girls and I didn’t want to get out of my dad’s car. But the bell rang and — oh, god — I was already late for school. On my first day.

The groups dispersed into neat lines. I ran over to a line that had formed behind someone waving a sign with a “6” on it. As I fell in behind everyone, I heard someone rush up behind me. “Lose the beanie,” she whispered.

“What?”

“Nobody wears them,” she said. “The uniform company makes us all buy them and then we throw them in our backpacks or lose them. And roll up your skirt.”

“What!”

“You look like a dweeb with that long skirt,” she said. I looked around. She was right. I rolled up the waistband.

Although that was the last time I took fashion advice from Robin Browne, we became fast friends that day. Those were the days in middle school when friendships really finally mattered. We were both in Mrs. Dougherty’s class and we sat in back, two of the tallest girls in the class. We passed notes all day that year and either Mrs. Dougherty was blind or she knew we were smart enough to give her our “undivided attention” and still pass notes.

When we discovered we lived around the corner from one another — I had moved in only the week before school began — our friendship became permanent. We lived at each other’s houses. Slept at each other’s houses. Wore each other’s clothes. Our mothers didn’t even ask whose clothes she was washing.

Robin was at my house when my father packed his bags and left. She was there when he came back, thank God.

I was at Robin’s house when her sister went to Europe. I’d brought a bunch of flowers for her graduation and she took a picture of Robin and me with the flowers. That picture is still on my dresser. That was the year we finally stopped looking so awkward.

I went with Robin to make Christmas cookies at her grandmother’s house. I sat beside her at family weddings and funerals. It was a family joke that we were twins. You know, we could’ve been.

Except for the few years we went to separate colleges, Robin and I were inseparable. When it came time to buy a house, I told the real estate agent it had to be near Robin’s. It’s close but not too close, just on the other side of the Inner Harbor. So now I’m all grown up and still living near my best friend.

Consequently, we knew each other’s darkest secrets, fears and worries. And we kept them locked in our hearts. But this is such a good story I have to spill it.

Chapter 1

The water taxi blasted its horn as it pulled away from the dock. A group of schoolchildren yelled to one another as they sauntered along the promenade by the Maryland Science Center. A man in layers of dirty rags sat on the seawall tossing bits of his sandwich to a flock of seagulls and pigeons. Robin stepped around a seagull just swooping in for its fair share but didn’t really see it. In her mind, she played and replayed the conversation from the last hour. She hadn’t heard her sister’s name in years, she thought, as she turned off Light Street. Just hearing it renewed the feeling of loss she could barely endure when she was 15. The mean February wind tugged at her coat so she pulled it closer around her and rewrapped her flailing scarf.

As she neared her house on William Street, in the shadow of Federal Hill, she couldn’t stop the sigh.

No, she thought as she stepped up to the door. What they said can’t be true. Eleanor is dead. My dear sister, we don’t know what happened to you but you’re gone.

Robin dug in her pocket for the door key to the narrow pink and gray Formstone house. The day had not been what she expected. Tuesday was an unusual day for a reception at the National Aquarium; a Tuesday in the middle of winter stranger still. But she always enjoyed her duties during one of these events. She’d supervised the staff as they set up the tables and counted chairs. She had helped the committee find a good caterer and checked the food when it arrived, helped set up the bar and met with the committee when they arrived. The reception was designed to offset a tedious journalism conference underway at the nearby Holiday Inn, the committee’s chairman had told her, so they arranged for a dolphin presentation—not a “show,” Robin had corrected them — and a lavish buffet near the giant cube that housed the Australian Outback exhibit. They’ll love that, Robin had promised.

Everybody arrived at once and Robin had hurried to the coat room to help with the rush. Things didn’t settle down until the buffet had been gobbled up and the lovable dolphins were winning new fans. A few people lingered in the Australian exhibit but Robin’s supervisor had told her she could go home. With her coat over her arm and her enormous leather handbag over her shoulder she was nearly out the door when she heard someone call. Though it wasn’t her own name, she was startled nonetheless.

“Eleanor!” a tall woman gathered Robin into her arms as if she was a long-lost friend. Before the confused Robin could respond, the woman pulled away and peered into her eyes. Robin had no idea who she was.

“Oh, it’s so good to see you,” the stranger said.

“It’s been a long time, girl,” added another woman who had come up from behind and folded Robin’s hand into her own.

“I knew it was you when I saw you at the coat check,” the first woman said. Robin loosened her hand from the woman’s strong grip. She searched her memory, trying to remember who these two women were. The first woman was a tall brunette, about 40, Robin figured. Her friend wasn’t as tall but Robin couldn’t get over the clear green eyes that shone from her warm brown face.

“I think you have made a mistake,” Robin said, pulling away. “You’ve confused me with someone else. My name’s not Eleanor. I’m Robin Browne.”

“Oh no!” the woman replied. “But you must be related to Eleanor Browne.”

“Same nose. Same chin. Same bright blue eyes. Same last name,” her friend nodded.

Robin felt her knees go weak. She leaned against a wall. The two women seemed to be confusing her with her sister – who’d disappeared so long ago. She was too stunned to say anything. She pressed her fingers to her lips as she felt her eyes well with tears. How she still missed her big sister – her sense of humor, her rebellious side, her way of understanding a little sister’s crises.

“I’m a little confused. Who are you?” Robin asked.

“We didn’t mean to upset you. My name is Anita Fisher,” said the green-eyed woman. “My friend here is Katherine Bennett.”

“We’re sorry. We were just so excited to see an old friend,” Katherine added. “We lost touch with her after we all dropped out of grad school. Here, sit down,” she pulled over a chair by the buffet table.

“Yes,” Robin answered. She nervously ran a hand through her shoulder-length brown hair and tried to smile. “I thought for a minute you had me confused with my sister but....”

“Oh! See?” Katherine said. “How is she?”

“Well, that’s the strange thing. She’s been missing and presumed dead for 15 years. So you couldn’t have known her. She disappeared before you were in grad school.”

The smiles on the two women evaporated. “That’s impossible,” Katherine said, puzzlement washing over her face.

“The resemblance is amazing,” Anita said. “If you were a little heavier, a little more blonde.”

“And when we heard you humming ‘As Time Goes By’ at the coat check, we were sure you had to be Eleanor,” Katherine said.

Robin felt her heart jump again. Her sister had hummed that song at the oddest moments. And she quoted lines from Casablanca all the time.

“Where did you say you met Eleanor?” Robin asked.

“Fordham,” Anita said. “Believe it or not, we were all there studying photography. Even the lawyer here.”

“Merely a detour in my career – I was stupid enough to be following my heart instead of my head. But if I hadn’t been there I wouldn’t have met Anita or Eleanor,” Katherine said. She sat down next to Robin and kicked her pumps under the table. “You know there’s only one dorm on the Manhattan campus and there’s no room there for grad students. We met at the housing office looking for a place to live. They sent us to this run-down walk-up apartment.”

“But it was right down the street from Herald Square so we weren’t complaining,” Anita laughed. “Eleanor made the apartment home. She filled the walls with these amazing photographs of the Alps – it looked like The Sound of Music.”

“She worked hard to make the place seem more like home than the second-floor hovel it was,” Katherine said. “We had so much fun that semester.”

Robin looked at these two polished, professional women and tried to imagine them with her sister. But her memory of Eleanor was old; it hadn’t aged. It hadn’t grown up as these women had. She was still a casual college student with a blond ponytail and frayed jeans. These women wore expensive suits and high heels. Eleanor could be just like them, she stopped to think, well, she could if she had lived.

“But reality set in, didn’t it?” Anita said, interrupting Robin’s reverie. “The only one with any talent was Eleanor and she decided to quit school and go to work in Delaware. We left the next semester, too. I decided to get serious and went to Wharton Business School and Katherine headed to law school. The fun was over,” Anita said and Robin thought she heard a little sigh.

“So what happened to Eleanor?” Robin asked, more confused than ever.

“Don’t know,” Katherine said. “She told us she was going to take pictures for a newspaper. We never heard from her again.”

“It was so strange, too,” Anita said. “Katherine and I decided to stop by the newspaper office on our way to the beach – we had kept in touch – but nobody there had ever heard of her.”

The last speaker of the conference rose to call the group together to go back to the hotel and Robin jumped up to leave.

“It’s been great talking to you – fascinating story – but I’ve got to go,” she said, rising and putting on her coat. She raced out the door, overwhelmed by the unbelievable conversation. Before heading out into the wintry afternoon, she remembered her handbag, still beside the chair. “Damn,” she muttered to herself. “My bag.”

Anita met her at the door with the oversized leather tote.

“I’m really sorry for the confusion in there,” Anita said.

“Yes, well, I don’t really want to talk any more about it,” Robin said,

“Do you really have to go? Couldn’t you stop for a drink first?” Anita said.

“Maybe another time,” Robin said.

“I understand. Here’s my card. Call me if you want. I work in Washington but my home is here,” Anita replied.

“Thanks,” she said, smiling politely as she put the card in her pocket without even looking at it. “Nice meeting you.”

Robin couldn’t get the conversation out of her mind as the usual February winds lashed at her face. She shivered and wondered who those two women were talking about all that time.

Losing her big sister had been so awful Robin once wondered if she’d every get over the pain. It was as if Eleanor had fallen off the edge of the world never to be heard from again. How young Robin had idolized her beautiful, bold sister. Ellen — nobody called her Eleanor except Grandmother — had never shied away from a challenge. She had gone off to Europe without fear, leaving her family behind, ignoring her mother’s worries and her grandmother’s concerns. She had planned to hike up the Alps and on her last day (is it possible it wasn’t her last day, after all?) she had gone skiing on a glacier. There had been a terrible gondola accident there that day. But when she couldn’t be found, police decided she must have been lost on the slopes. No one knew; no one could explain. Robin remembered how everyone said to get on with their lives as if Ellen had died. She may never be found.

The woman those two talked about couldn’t be Ellen, she thought as she walked up her front steps. She and her parents had come to grips with the fact that she had died a long time ago. Fordham? Ellen never went to graduate school. Robin put the key in the lock and stopped.

Pictures of the Alps? Sound of Music? Ellen had disappeared in Salzburg – but not before she sent home photographs she had taken at Chiem See and all over Austria.

Robin couldn’t get the door open fast enough. She raced into the brick-walled foyer to look at the photos hanging there. All in black and white. Large photos of a Salzburg street, a window with lace curtains, an Alpine landscape, the huge fortress that overlooked Salzburg, the glistening waters of an Alpine lake Ellen had called “Chiem See.” Ellen had sent these to Robin for her birthday, her 15^th birthday. Ellen had promised to send her photos from exotic places. But by the next day those photographs, all so beautiful, had been forgotten, cast aside.

Now Robin loved those pictures. She’d had them carefully mounted and hung on her foyer wall when she moved into this house. Thank goodness her mother had saved them for her. At 15, Robin – self-centered Robin – had left them on a table with no intention of looking at them again. She refused to look at them once she and her parents learned Ellen was missing. Her birthday cake was still on the dining room table when the call came.

Memories of that awful day flooded in as Robin sank to the foyer bench. She felt the loss all over again. And the anger. For the past 15 years, Robin had shut out the anger and the hurt she’d felt then. Instead, she remembered good times they had spent together.

Sisters didn’t always get along, she knew. They kept secrets – What kind of secrets had Ellen been keeping from her? They fought – Robin remembered stupid fights about borrowed lipsticks and requests to drive Robin and her friends to the mall. Robin tried hard to forget all that after Ellen went to Europe. And after her older sister disappeared, Robin chose to focus on the good things they’d shared. She didn’t want to keep the anger inside her. She’d succeeded until this very moment. With one idle conversation, she found herself wondering what really happened. What secret did Ellen keep way back then? And if she was still alive, what secret was she keeping now?

Chapter 2

“Here,” Jane handed Robin a big glass of something pink and icy. “Sorry I ran out of those little umbrellas...”

“Well, who needs little umbrellas in their drinks in the dead of winter,” Robin said, feeling better already.

“That’s quite a story,” Jane said. Robin always counted on her friend and had confided in her about everything since their middle school days in Annapolis. “Their ugly days,” they used to say in high school. But now these two adult women remembered those days fondly. If their middle school days were “ugly,” then these were their “beautiful” days.

They looked like sisters more than best friends. Both had shiny, smooth brown hair that hung just below their shoulders. Neither could see a thing without their contacts but they never were without the biggest sunglasses they could find at Target. Not too tall, not too short, they were strong and confident when they walked, loud and almost always boisterous when they talked. Jane loved clothes, expensive, name brand clothes, in bright colors. Robin, on the other hand, dressed in the preppy style she’d picked up growing up in Annapolis: lots of khaki, white and navy blue and all of it a few years past its prime.

Their close friendship was only slightly strained when Jane had gone away to Hood College and later as she began teaching. Overwhelmed by homework and parent-teacher meetings, she lost touch with her friend except for an occasional Sunday night phone call.

Robin had been busy getting her own life started so she had understood, much as she missed her friend. But Jane had been there when Ellen had disappeared. She had been at the funeral home and church when they buried her father a year later. She’d stood by when her mother had moved to Havre de Grace.

Then one day Jane had called with news that she was moving to Baltimore. She was going to teach at Hampton Hill, a small private girls school. Rather than live in the county near the school, she was opting for a rowhouse in the city. It would bring her closer to her old friend, and it would also bring her closer to the new boyfriend in her life, another teacher she’d gone to college with. His name was Parker.

Robin sipped her strawberry margarita (strange drink for a winter afternoon, she thought to herself) and sat back on the maroon leather sofa. Jane’s Canton rowhouse was narrow. The single first floor room began with a seating area, followed by a dining table with an open kitchen in back. Upstairs were two bedrooms and two baths, one on each floor and the previous owner had topped the flat roof with a deck that boasted views of the harbor if you looked down a ways and over to the left.

Jane’s house was as modern and un-fussy as Jane herself. Not interested in the house’s old “character,” she had stripped away all the Victorian trimmings to streamline every surface and keep clutter to a minimum.

Robin remembered the high school days when she couldn’t even step foot in Jane’s bedroom. Her friend had clearly changed. The only place with a bit of clutter was the armoire that served as Jane’s office. The piles of papers and books stayed hidden until Jane opened the doors.

“So what do you think of my story?” Robin asked Jane as she dropped into a nearby armchair.

“Spooky, don’t you think? I can’t imagine a stranger walking up and calling me by my dead sister’s name. I’d have run screaming from the room. Probably good you didn’t do that.”

“True. It might have ruined the party.”

“Well, are you going to call her?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Call her.”

“Mmmm. No.”

“Call her!”

“Why would I do that?”

“Why?! This here’s a mystery. Don’t you want to do the Nancy Drew thing? I’ll be the friend/sidekick, what was her name? Hey! I think it was Jane!”

“No, it wasn’t. It was something else. Anyway, it wouldn’t accomplish a thing. I’ve got too much to do at work. No.”

“You know you want to know.”

“What’s there to know? Someone had a roommate in college that bore an eerie resemblance to my sister who was dead at the time.”

“Eerie is right. I think there’s something going on here you need to find out about. Tell you what; let’s go out to dinner -- I’m not cooking after this announcement. I’ll just tell the girls they’ll get their essays back on Thursday. They’ll live. Tuesday is special ... oh special something, I forget what ... night at Helen’s. C’mon. You need to take a break.”

“It isn’t good to dredge up sad, old memories.”

“Maybe not but it’s always good to go out with an old friend. And maybe I can talk you into looking for what is lost but may be found.”

“Get your coat; let’s get out of here before you throw another wise saying at me.”

Chapter 3

“Really, Mom,” Eleanor said firmly. “This is all I will need.” She zipped the backpack and tossed it down beside her camera bag.

“You’re going to be gone a month. You barely have enough clothes for a week.” Diane Browne looked worried. She’d been in Europe many times and knew you had to dress well in Europe. Diane always looked well dressed. She was tall with long, lean legs and looked good in anything, something she took for granted. Even now as she helped her older daughter pack for her trip, she wore carefully-pressed linen slacks and a delicate sweater set. Not her daughters’ taste, she knew, but she had always tried to teach them to dress presentably. Robin lounged on her sister’s bed, leafing through the itinerary Ellen had thrown beside the backpack.

Ellen turned to her mother and laughed just a little. “I’m not going to the Ritz, Mom. I’m going with a group of friends and staying in youth hostels. I’m climbing mountains and following goat paths to take pictures of the Alps. Jeans will be much more comfortable. Really.” She kissed her mother on the cheek, picked up her bags and grabbed the itinerary away from Robin. “But if you want to give me some more money, I’ll take that,” she added.

“Oh get out of here. You’ve got plenty,” Diane said.

Diane watched her petite blonde daughter skip down the stairs, clad as always in slightly-worn jeans. Friends always commented on the family resemblance between mother and daughter but Diane rarely could see it. No, her daughter was more like her husband Scott. Ellen had his blonde hair, his broad shoulders, his sense of adventure. Diane felt Robin looked more like her: taller, slimmer, brunette. She was the sensible one. At least, Diane thought, she would be when she grew up.

Eleanor had planned to take this month-long trip since freshman year. It was all she talked about – once she finished griping about grades and professors and swooning over some boy. As graduation neared, the plan developed as she had dreamed. Eleanor rounded up a group of six college friends to go backpacking through Switzerland and Austria. They were all photographers, taking more film than underwear for the trip. Diane had objected to the trip at first. Diane had met the group — Jean had been Eleanor’s roommate since freshman year — and thought they were delightful young people. But Diane was old-fashioned enough to think young unmarried women shouldn’t be traveling with young unmarried men. One of them, Bill, had made it clear he wanted Eleanor to marry him when they got back home. Diane wasn’t pleased with those arrangements either or even the idea of her talented young daughter thinking about settling down so soon. Eleanor had spent her childhood declaring her intention to stay independent and travel the world. Diane encouraged her; she knew what it was like to start a family too young.

Eleanor insisted that she was going – this was her first chance to see the world. Scott had reminded his wife that their little girl was an adult. Ever the peacemaker, he recalled how Eleanor had planned for this trip for so long. Though Diane had finally relented, later she always wished she hadn’t.

“I’ll bring you home something pretty. And I’ll send you a postcard from every place I go,” Eleanor said to her little sister Robin, who was watching her go at the top of the stairs. “I’ll try to send you my photographs, too. Something exotic.”

Robin always remembered the thrill of seeing her sister head off on her adventure. If Ellen could go, Robin had thought, I will, too. Soon, I’ll be grown up and it will be my turn.

A horn tooted. “That’s Bill,” Eleanor said. “Got to go. See you next month.”

But Ellen didn’t come back. A week before she was due to return, Bill called.

Robin and her mother were lounging on the deck when the phone rang. It was Robin’s 15th birthday and she was admiring the bracelet her parents had given her that morning. Jane had had to babysit all day but she’d promised she’d make it over before dinner. Of course, she was already late.

The afternoon was hot but the great old maples kept the deck cool. When the phone rang, Robin jumped up to answer it. “I’ll get it. Jane’s probably got some lame excuse for not being here,”

But Diane stopped her. “No, it might be Eleanor,” she told Robin, “and I’d like to talk to her.”

“So would I. I want to thank her for her pictures,” Robin thought and pushed open the heavy door. She heard her mother gasp, and then sob. As Diane carefully hung up the receiver, Robin walked over to her mother’s chair in the kitchen.

“Mom?”

“That was Bill,” she said.

“Why was he calling?” asked Robin, puzzled by the look on her mother’s face.

“Eleanor’s missing. They think she might have been in an accident.”

“Where’d she go? What happened?” Robin demanded, not comprehending.

“Robin!” she heard her friend shouting for her through the glass door. She opened the door and called her in.

“Happy birth—What’s wrong?” Jane said as she presented Robin with a beribboned package.

“You girls go outside,” Diane told them. “I want to call your father.”

“Something happened to Ellen,” Robin said as she sat on the deck step and laid the gift aside.

“Happened? Like what?”

“Dunno, really. Bill said they can’t find her. He told my mother about an accident but I don’t know anything else, yet.”

The two girls sat in silence, waiting for news. But the house grew dark and quiet as the sun went down. The birthday party was forgotten. Black and white photos from Ellen’s trip to the Alps that had arrived earlier in the day had been laid out on the dining room table with the cake.

When they heard the front door slam, the two girls rushed inside. Scott held Diane as she tried to tell him what happened through her sobs. The girls stopped and listened to the news, too.

“Bill says Eleanor stayed behind in Salzburg when they went ahead to Zurich to see the city before catching the plane home. She had made plans to go skiing up on a glacier.”

“This doesn’t make sense. She went alone? How do they know she went?” he asked trying to comprehend.

“I don’t understand. Bill said there was an argument during their last few days. She met some new friends who wanted to go skiing. Bill and the others wanted to go to Zurich as they had planned. And they went without her. She apparently went skiing. Her things were still at the youth hostel yesterday but the manager said he hadn’t seen her in two days. She was supposed to go skiing Monday, three days ago. They were supposed to come home tomorrow.”

“So what happened? I know this is hard, Diane, but tell me,” he helped her to the sofa and handed her his handkerchief. He turned on a table lamp and sat beside her.

“Bill said a story has been all over the news. A gondola came loose Monday at the ski resort where Eleanor was going. It crashed into a pole and then fell. Everybody inside died, Scott, maybe even our Ellen.”

“But they don’t know?”

“Not yet. They haven’t identified everyone yet,”

“So Ellen may not have been on it,” Scott said, hoping for some good news.

“No, maybe not. But still, she is missing. She didn’t check out of the hostel. Her backpack is still there. Nobody’s seen her since Monday.”

“Okay,” Scott said, still trying to understand, “Bill saw her on Monday?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know when he and Jean and the rest of them went to Zurich. I don’t know. It might have been the hostel manager who saw her.”

“I can’t believe Bill left her alone there.”

“Scott, it doesn’t matter. He was crying when he told me. He said he came back to Salzburg when the manager called him to ask what to do with her backpack. The man thought she’d left it behind,” Diane said, trying to keep her mind clear about what Bill had said. “He’s staying in Europe for a few days to look for her. The police have asked him to stay for questioning.”

As her parents sat silently on the soft, Robin felt the first warm tears running down her face. She looked at Jane and saw her tears, too. “Let’s go outside,” she whispered.

“Maybe it’s not true,” Jane said as they sat in the two lounge chairs.

“I hope it’s not,” Robin said. “Maybe she’s just out taking pictures.”

Summer faded into fall as the family waited for word about Eleanor. The Austrian authorities had investigated the gondola accident until one by one the bodies were identified. No trace of Eleanor was found in that gondola – she had simply disappeared. Bill brought home Eleanor’s belongings. The knapsack was filled with all the things Diane had helped her daughter pack. Nothing seemed to be missing, except for Eleanor’s camera bag.

“I looked everywhere for the camera,” Bill had told Diane, looking apologetic. “It must have been stolen while the police were looking around. There were so many people coming and going that we couldn’t keep track of everything. I’m sorry.”

In the end no one really knew what had happened to Eleanor. Austrian authorities did their best to find the missing girl. Every time the phone rang, the household stopped. Every time the door opened, Robin looked up to see if maybe her sister was coming home at last. At last, the case was declared cold and the heartbroken family was urged to get on with their lives.

That was hard, Robin remembered. It took years to reconcile herself that her big sister wouldn’t be back. She checked the mail for letters every day, jumped up to answer every phone call and waited for the door to open and her sister to appear. She still caught herself every once in a while, looking up when the door opened. But finally the reality of her sister’s fate settled in her heart. Ellen was gone. But the question never really went away: what happened?

Chapter 4

Robin put her bag on the foyer bench and turned from the photos to her living room. She was glad she had spent her evening with Jane. She could count on her to keep up a steady supply of laughs.

She was always glad to come home to this house. Here she found solace. It had been the place where her father grew up. She couldn’t imagine this little house filled with children. It was a funny house, a little vestibule at the front led to steps up to the living room. Robin had kept it much as her grandmother had. Even the furniture was her grandmother’s: the scratchy green loveseat, the heavy side tables and slightly tired easy chairs. She loved the brown leather rocker with the armrests carved to resemble the graceful curves of a swan’s neck and head. She had a vague memory of her grandfather relaxing in that chair, smoking a Pall Mall and delighting in the antics of his energetic grandchildren. The dining room was the biggest room on the first floor, filled with heavy furniture and Audobon’s bird drawings framed in delicate silvery moldings and hung on the walls. Behind, the kitchen appeared to have been added later, jutting out from the back of the house. Upstairs was only one bath and three tiny bedrooms. In the basement, a niche had been carved out for children to do their homework and play. But the rest of it was dark and filled with boxes of -- Robin wasn’t sure what was in some of those boxes yet. The Formstone on the front had been the height of fashion when her grandmother had it installed. Robin knew there was brick underneath as there was on the back of the house – but she still loved the pastel-colored fake stone.

Robin was glad the house was hers. Her grandmother had hung onto it when everybody was telling her to move to the suburbs, when living in the city was no longer “desirable.” But Alice Browne didn’t want to live in Glen Burnie. She liked being able to walk to St. Mary’s Church or to the Cross Street Market. As she grew older, she didn’t walk to Federal Hill much any more but she liked knowing she could if she wanted to. True, many of her friends had gone onto those pretty little bungalows down Ritchie Highway. She visited them frequently. But here was where she raised her son with her beloved Joseph. Why would she leave? It took a heart attack to make Alice leave south Baltimore. She was waked in her own home and buried from St. Mary’s. And to make sure the home and all its memories were well cared for, she’d left it to Robin. What a surprise that had been — Robin was thrilled while her parents were relieved they didn’t have to worry about rehabbing and selling the old house in an old city neighborhood. Unloading it, they had agreed then, would have been only a headache. Now it was Robin’s and it was home.

Robin crossed into the dining room and flipped on her laptop on the table. She clicked on the internet connection and entered her sister’s name into the search engine. “No matches,” the search engine said. Robin looked again and realized she’s misspelled the name. She entered again, carefully. She’d Googled her own name so many times – and usually had a laugh about the other people named Robin Browne and what they were doing. She kept up with the saloon keeper outside of Memphis. That Robin owned The One Eyed Dog Saloon. She had a busy website with bands playing all the time, an occasional wet-t-shirt contest or sometimes she got one of those mechanical bulls in for really big occasions. Robin knew she was going to have to go to that saloon some day.

“Results 1-10 of 370 for Eleanor Browne.” Robin recognized all ten of them as the news stories about Eleanor’s disappearance. She scrolled through the pages, deciding tonight she would read carefully every entry looking for a clue. Jane wanted her to be Nancy Drew -- well, okay, then. This would be the first step.

Pages and pages later, Robin had turned up the usual Eleanor Brownes and Eleanor Browns and Eleanor Browne Granbys. Since the first time she’d “Googled” Ellen, she’d rejected these people and the likelihood that one of them could be her sister living a secret life.

They related a photo exhibit in a London art gallery; a wedding and a baby; an architecture book; and an arrest for drunk driving in the English countryside. These couldn’t be about her sister, Robin thought, as she began to read every link. And certainly, they couldn’t all refer to her sister – if she was still alive.

She hoped a photograph of the bride would accompany the wedding announcement. Maybe it did in The London Times, but there was no photo here, Robin discovered as her frustration mounted. No photo accompanied the gossip column about the woman’s adultery, divorce or drug possession, either. But they surely didn’t sound like her sister, either.

“This isn’t going to be easy,” she thought, scribbling notes as she read. She’d scribbled the same notes hundreds of times. And always she had had the same thought: Every one of these could be a dead end – since Eleanor was dead. But the coincidences never failed to bother Robin.

Robin looked at the clock on the screen. She’d been looking through these pages for over an hour. The phone rang.

“What are you doing calling me at 11:30?”

“Hello to you, too. I always call you at 11:30,” Jane said. “Did you see the article about the photo exhibit in England?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I looked Eleanor up on Google after you left. Have you seen it?”

“Doesn’t ring a bell.”

“I found it on page 17. Who knows if it’s there in your search.”

Robin clicked on 17 at the bottom of the page. Robin could hardly breathe as she read about the photo exhibit: Alpine landscapes, portraits of residents of Salzburg, scenes of London and Vienna. There wasn’t much about the photographer, Robin thought as she wrote down the name and address of the gallery and searched for a web address. Oh there has to be one, she thought. But there wasn’t; only a London address.

“Robin?”

“Jane, I found it.”

“Well?”

“Yes, it could be Ellen.”

“Nancy, shall we start sleuthing?”

“Jane, there’s something else here. Right under that article, there’s a link I’ve never seen before. A daughter of Eleanor Browne Carrington was an accident victim, in critical condition. And the crash had occurred only 50 miles away on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and only last year.

“That settles it,” Robin said, turning off her laptop. “I’ve got to find out if any of these people could possibly be my sister – or my niece. Jane? Hey, would you like to drive over to the Eastern Shore on your next day off? I think I’ll take your advice and look for Ellen.”

Chapter 5

“Why wouldn’t the police notify us if Eleanor was found alive?” Diane asked, sinking into an armchair in her office. Robin remembered the chair from their living room in Annapolis. Tweedy and overstuffed, it had been her dad’s chair. He always sat in it to read the Capital when he got home from work. Robin knew back in those days to look under the cushion whenever she needed change for the soda machine at school.

“Maybe nobody was still looking for her,” Robin said, surprised by her mother’s obvious discomfort. “Even we weren’t looking any more.”

Diane could hardly speak. Robin watched her mother and could tell she was struggling through so many emotions. As Diane tried to hold back tears, Robin found tears rolling down her own face. She dropped into her mother’s desk chair and her eye caught a photo of all of them on their sailboat. Ellen was at the tiller.

“Mom, I’ve wondered about all these people on the web for years. We’ve got to find out, especially since I may have found a daughter,” Robin said as she hunted in her bag for a tissue. “I’m going to take a leave of absence when I get to work on Monday and start contacting all these people. The government offices are closed until Monday. I’ll track down the daughter’s birth certificate then. I am going to start in Talbot County -- Jane said she’d go with me on Friday -- and then I’ll check out the accident. I found out who Lord Edward Granby is. He’s as old as the queen who is also his distant cousin. He has an estate out near Oxford. In England, not the Eastern Shore. Doesn’t seem like Eleanor’s type to me.”

“Lord who? Oh the man Eleanor Browne married. None of this sounds like our Eleanor,” Diane snapped. “How could it? We waited so long while the police looked for her. She vanished.”

“I know, Mom,” Robin rushed over to her mother’s chair and put her hand comfortingly on her shoulder. “But what if it is her?”

“What if it is? What happened to her? Why would she walk out of our lives and stay gone for 15 years? Why?”

“I want to know, Mom.”

Chapter 6

Robin took another sip of her coffee and looked out at the Chesapeake Bay. Traffic was awfully heavy for a Friday morning, she thought. But as she scanned the Eastern Shore’s shoreline, she realized a lot more people lived there now. She remembered visiting Kent Island as a little girl. She had an aunt who lived near Love Point then. As she looked north, she saw that the woods she had run through as a child had given way to mansions. The farmhouses and small cottages were gone. It was just another suburb of Baltimore and Washington.

The time was gone, she thought, when a newcomer to the Shore would stick out among all the “locals.” Her aunt had laughed about being a stranger on Kent Island – when she’d lived there since she was a little girl herself. By then she’d lived there for more than 20 years. She was gone, too. The island was now filled with “strangers.” She wondered if it was at all possible that the close-knit community her aunt had talked about could still exist. Perhaps it was easy to disappear – as easy as it could be in any ordinary suburban community where nobody paid attention to their neighbors. If Eleanor was still alive, maybe she could be here, Robin thought, confused at the hope building in her heart.

“I’d rather be sailing,” Jane laughed, recalling a bumper sticker common to this area.

“Not in February you wouldn’t,” Robin replied. “I don’t think there’s a colder month for sailing.”

“Well, there are crazy people down there on sailboats.”

The sun was shining but it couldn’t keep those sailors warm with the frigid wind blowing from the north. Whitecaps dotted the dark green waters.

“We’ll go sailing when it warms up,” Robin promised her friend.

“Deal. I haven’t been on a boat in years.”

The two young women rode into Easton without another word. Robin was relieved that her friend understood how uneasy she was about looking for the birth certificate.

Easton was only about 30 minutes from the Bay Bridge. One of the Shore’s oldest towns, its downtown was a quaint mix of Colonial and Victorian homes and businesses. Tourists loved the place so much they packed up their belongings and moved here to live. The old town was now ringed with bland, beige subdivisions and chain restaurants that could have been built anywhere.

Robin turned off the highway to find a parking spot on Washington Street. The Court House was an unimposing structure but a guard sent the two to another brick building, something a little less historical but typical for government offices.

It turned out to be an easy search. No one else came into the Vital Records office so a clerk had been willing to help Robin find the document.

“Thank goodness birth certificates are public information,” Robin said, clutching the envelope against the wind that had begun to swirl through town. Thank goodness, too, she thought, the clerk couldn’t find a death certificate for Samantha Robin Carrington, born July 31, 1995.

She sat on the bench where Jane waited and together they examined the document: Samantha Robin Carrington, born in Easton at 8:02 p.m. Maiden Name of Mother: Eleanor Diane Browne. Age 30. Mother’s Place of Birth: Maryland.

Robin felt her heart pounding. “This couldn’t be possible. This couldn’t be my sister. Could it?” she turned to her friend.

“If it is, she named her daughter after you,” Jane replied. Robin smiled. Her own name was Robin Samantha.

She looked down to the name of the father. Sean Matthew Carrington. Age 40. Father’s Place of Birth: Great Britain. “Who was this person?” Jane asked.

Robin wondered. Her brother-in-law perhaps? “Never heard of him.”

There was nothing more. Nothing important anyway. Seals and dates and signatures of bureaucrats who had had nothing to do with the actual birth.

Robin carefully slid the document back into its envelope and stowed it in her gigantic leather bag. She now had a new name and was beginning to believe her sister could still be alive – but keeping away from her family. “What’s next?” she wondered.

“The newspaper office we saw from the bypass but first lunch,” Jane answered. “Let’s go down to that little pub in town. “You know the one. It’s got that great cream of crab soup.”

“And oysters. Good idea,” Robin said.

Jane couldn’t pass up cream of crab soup and a crab cake even in February. Robin ordered her favorite fried oysters – fresh local oysters was one, possibly the only, good reason to love winter, she thought. While they waited, they looked around at the wood-paneled room dominated by an enormous bar trimmed in brass. It was crowded for a Friday, she thought, filled with a lot of government types.

“Umm, Robin, there’s a woman watching us. Don’t look! In the booth beyond the bar. Blonde bob, reading glasses. Damn, she’s so blind she can’t eat without reading glasses. I’d die,” Jane had a way of going on.

Robin couldn’t help herself. She turned to look and saw the woman looking at her over her readers. The woman blushed and looked down at her sandwich when her eyes met Robin’s.

Their lunch arrived so the two dismissed the nosy woman from their thoughts. The small town mentality still exists, Robin thought, as she took a bite of the hot, juicy oysters padded in a crunchy cracker coat.

“Perfect,” Jane said, dipping her spoon into the thick creamy soup.

As they finished, the woman stopped at her table. She looked to be nearly 40, pretty with pale hair and a sprinkling of pale freckles that made her face childlike.

“I’m sorry to bother you but you look so familiar,” she said.

“I’ve got one of those faces,” Robin said, with a kind smile. “Everybody thinks they know me from somewhere.”

“My name is Debbie Cain,” she said, reaching to shake hands and obviously hoping she may remember the name. “Do you work around here?”

“Mmm. No.”

“Are you a member of the Academy of the Arts?”

“Sorry.”

“Kids at Easton High? No, sorry. You’ve got to be too young for that,” the woman said and blushed again. “Maybe you went to Queen Anne County High School? No. Do you have a sister? Maybe I know her.”

“I did but Eleanor died 15 years ago,” Robin said quietly.

“Oh, I’m so sorry to have bothered you. I guess you do have one of those faces. Well, I better get back to the museum. Busloads of kids coming this afternoon,” Debbie said. “Nice meeting you.”

“That was weird,” Jane said, turning to watch the woman scurry out into the cold afternoon. “Oh maybe it’s a clue.”

“A clue! A clue! You’re just clueless. Let’s order some cheesecake.”

“And then let’s go down to that handbag shop. You need something a little, well, smaller.”

“We’ve got to go to the newspaper office,” Robin reminded her.

“Yes, of course. But the handbag shop first. This is an emergency.”

The trip to the handbag shop was more successful than the visit to the newspaper office. Robin came out of the shop with a neat new tote. But the newspaper office had no one who remembered the story — the reporter was long gone and so were the editors who might have remembered. The lone reporter and office clerk offered to let them into the “morgue” to look up articles but shrugged when asked if there was an index of some kind. The drive home was quiet. Jane drove while Robin stared out at the passing scenery, lost in thought.

Chapter 7

It didn’t matter that Robin had lived in her south Baltimore row house for nearly eight years now. It still had that comforting feel of Grandmother’s house. Robin always thought she smelled cinnamon when she walked in, as it usually did when she came here to visit her grandmother as a little girl. Grandmother always was baking cookies for her two granddaughters.

Robin needed that warm feeling now. The ride home had made her feel nostalgic for those sweet afternoons. The mystery she seemed to be uncovering hurt. The loss of her sister flooded over her while a shred of hope mixed with the painful possibility that Eleanor had deliberately cut her family out of her life. And then maybe there was a child to think about, too.

Running her hands through her hair, Robin took refuge in the chair by her tiny fireplace. She avoided even looking at the computer across the room. She had more names to “Google” but she wasn’t sure she was ready.

The message light on her phone blinked at her. Probably her mother had called. She knew she had to call her back but what was she going to tell her? All she really knew was that someone named Eleanor had had a baby named Samantha Robin. The coincidences were after all, only coincidences. It couldn’t be her sister. It just couldn’t.

A gust shook the windows and Robin pulled the crocheted afghan around her. Something else from her grandmother. She closed her eyes as the soft wool warmed her.

Then, she imagined for a second she heard her grandmother clattering pans in the kitchen. The aroma of cinnamon grew strong as she remembered an afternoon of baking just before Eleanor went to college.

Ellen had been full of hopes that day. She pulled snicker doodles from the oven as she talked about someday moving to Australia to shoot photos of the Outback.

The look of shock on Grandmother’s face was hard to forget. She laid down a spoon full of cookie dough and wiped flour from her hands. “You can’t be serious,” she said to her granddaughter. “That’s no place for a young girl. It’s on the other side of the world.”

“Grandmother, it’s what I’ve wanted to do all my life. I’ll be fine,” the pretty blonde collegian said, pushing hair off her overheated face. “Lots of people go there. Nothing happens. I want to see Ayres Rock and dingos. And I want to shoot pictures.”

“Then take pictures here. Work for The Sun or take portraits down at Udel Brothers,” her grandmother said.

Eleanor groaned and fell back on a hard kitchen chair.

“We’d miss you, Ellen,” Robin remembered saying. The idea of her wonderful big sister leaving her made the 11-year-old want to cry. And 11-year-olds don’t cry, Robin told herself, fighting the urge. “It’s bad enough you’re going to college next week – all the way over on the Eastern Shore. And we won’t see you again until Thanksgiving.”

“I promise to write to you,” Eleanor said. She squeezed her little sister, smiled and handed her a fragrant, warm cookie. Robin remembered she was too old to cry. And the cookie did smell good.

And a week later, Ellen was packed and moved into a dorm room in dreary old Salisbury. It wasn’t far away even though Robin thought it was. Although there were seven years between them, the two sisters had been close. Robin had counted on Eleanor to take her to Girl Scouts – she’d even gone camping with them. They went to the mall on Saturdays when Eleanor wasn’t working or going out with her own friends. Robin looked up to her sister. She admired her pretty looks, her outgoing ways, and her sense of humor. She was so different from Robin who considered herself shy and much too serious. Robin loved it when Eleanor talked to Robin about what they’d do when they were both grown up. She talked about traveling all over the world, taking pictures. She dreamed up adventures in Africa or Europe and promised Robin she’d save all her best pictures for her little sister.

The phone rang, drawing Robin back to the present.

“Yes, Anita, I remember you,” Robin said, double-clicking the internet connection.

“I’ve been thinking about you since we met on Friday,” Anita said. “Are you free for lunch tomorrow? I’d really like to talk to you.”

“Thanks. But I don’t think so, Anita,” Robin answered.

“Please,” she said. “I’d like to show you the photos. I dragged them out of storage after we met. There’s a reflection of Eleanor in one of them that I just noticed today. Isn’t that strange? Please say yes.”

“I really don’t think so,” Robin responded. “I have so much to do tomorrow.”

But Anita persisted. And, though she was sure it was a bad idea, Robin agreed. “Petit Louis? No, I know where it is. No, I don’t think I’ve ever eaten there. Sure. Fine. See you at 1.”

She hung up and turned to the internet again. She wanted to find out more about Sean Matthew Carrington and Debbie Cain. No, Robin stopped and thought. What she really wanted was to talk to Jane. She dialed her friend’s number and left a message when Jane didn’t pick up. Jane called back immediately.

“Sorry, I was grading essays. I needed to get them done,” she explained. “What’s up, Nancy?”

“Very funny. But I had to call you about the ‘date’ I just made.”

“Really!?” Jane exclaimed. “A guy -- you have time for a guy?”

“Wish I did but no, not that kind of a date. This was about Ellen. Anita -- you remember, the woman who said she knew Ellen at Fordham -- well, she called and asked me to meet her.”

She related their conversation but before she could finish Jane interrupted.

“I’m going with you,” she said. “I want to meet this so-called friend.”

“Don’t call her the ‘so-called friend’.”

“Why not? That’s what she is,” Jane said.

“I don’t know. It sounds, oh, rude,” Robin said.

“Okay if I call her a witness?”

“To what? It’s not like there was a crime.”

“Witness to a mystery then.”

“Sure, Jane. Meet me here and 12:30. Lunch is at 1.”

Chapter 8

Robin could barely focus as Anita talked about graduate school. It didn’t matter that the Roland Park eatery was packed and the waitress seemed to jostle her every time she passed. She’d even ignored her favorite fried oysters. Instead she pushed the plate aside to lay the pictures out in front of her. Jane leaned over to look at the photos, finishing off Robin’s plate of French fries as she studied the pictures.

Even Anita’s voice faded into the background buzz as Robin scanned the pictures, looking for clues about what her sister could have been thinking. Typical vacation snapshots, even though they had been enlarged to 8-by-10s. And although they were color photographs, they all looked so familiar. Especially the one she held in her hands. It was a Salzburg street scene: wide sidewalks, imposing stone architecture, frilly lace curtains framing a Bäckerei window. It was like one in her foyer. She even recognized the young man leaning in the doorway of a tobacco shop.

“Who’s the guy?” Jane said, lowering her nose to the photo.

Robin pushed her aside. “Jane...I’m trying to look.”

The reflection Anita had mentioned could’ve been anybody. It didn’t look like Eleanor to Robin. She examined the photo again. It was just a window framed with lace curtains. A woman with a long blonde ponytail holding a camera was just visible in the corner, as if she was about to take the photo. So who had taken it? Robin wondered.

More importantly, was it Eleanor? Robin wasn’t so sure. The image was blurry, just out of the focus of the camera. Plenty of Austrian girls were blond, too, she thought.

Before she even realized it, Robin had stood up. “If you don’t mind,” she said, interrupting Anita, “I’d like to take these photos to my house.”

“Mmm, sure,” said Anita, calling for the check.

“Do you see something?” she asked, hurrying after Robin.

“Maybe. I’d like to look at my own photos again.”

Jane collected Robin’s new, small handbag and followed the women out the door. “Wait for me! You have to wait for the sidekick!”

Robin clearly had other things on her mind as she hurried in the icy wind. She clutched the three photos afraid they might blow away. They were typical tourist photos, really, she thought as the wind whipped around her. A street scene from Salzburg’s old town. A shot of a lace-curtained window. A landscape with soaring mountains and a meadow covered in tiny flowers. Anybody could’ve taken them. Sure, they looked familiar but Robin didn’t think they were really the same pictures that hung in her house. She could hardly wait to get down the expressway to see the photos.

No, she thought, as she walked into the foyer. They aren’t the same, but the subjects were so similar. The street scene focused on different shops – though that same man was in the doorway, Robin was startled to notice. The window shot wasn’t at all the same – Robin wasn’t even sure it was the same window though she couldn’t miss those lacy curtains. The landscape looked like an Alpine postcard. Toss in Julie Andrews and you’d get an urge to sing “Edelweiss,” Robin thought.

Anita and Jane bustled in a few minutes later. “What are you looking for?” Jane asked

“You have the same pictures!” Anita gasped.

“Not the same, but they are pretty close.”

“Yours are in color,” Jane offered. When Robin just looked at her, Jane replied, “Well, they are.”

Anita laid her bag on the foyer bench and looked from her own photos to the ones hanging on the wall. “Same street scene, same landscape.”

“There’s that guy,” Jane said.

She’s right, Robin though. Why hadn’t she noticed him before? Right in the middle of the picture was a group of people picnicking on a blanket. There he was, staring at the camera with intense eyes. She looked at Anita’s picture. No group in hers. Instead, there were a couple of goats. The big, puffy clouds were very different, too, as if the photo had been taken another day. No man, she thought, and felt a pang of disappointment.

Robin felt a chill. She glanced at the other pictures on her wall. The castle picture was filled with people. She’d never really looked at them before but now she found herself studying every face. No, he wasn’t there. And the Chiem See picture? The waters still glistened as always but, no, no strange man lurked about. She nevertheless searched for some clue in the photo but saw nothing. Anita and Jane waited quietly as Robin examined the photos.

“Do you see something, Robin?” Anita asked. Robin jumped, startled. She had forgotten about Anita.

“No, I don’t think so,” Robin said, not yet ready to tell the truth. “I don’t think that’s Eleanor in the reflection,” she added. “You see it’s not in my photo.”

“But isn’t it strange that we have the same photos?” Anita asked.

“They really aren’t the same,” Robin began to protest again and then shrugged, looking past them. “Yes, very odd…”

“These aren’t the only ones that hung in our apartment,” Anita added. “Katherine has a couple. Of course, Eleanor took most of them. I remember one of that castle – except that along the walkway, under that lamp there, was a handsome man with piercing eyes. I could never forget how those eyes seemed to really see me.”

“A man?” Robin asked, not ready to let on that she’d noticed him.

“Yes, a tall man in a tweed jacket. I asked about him once but Eleanor just shrugged. She said he was another tourist she’d met walking up to the castle.”

“Is that all she said?” Robin asked.

“Who is that guy?” Jane interjected. She clearly liked this mystery.

“She said they became friends that day. She called him Mattie,” Anita said. “She wouldn’t talk about him any more than that. She said it had ended rather badly and she’d prefer to forget.”

“Why, there’s the same guy,” Anita said, pointing to the shop scene. “I’m sure it’s him. At least, I think so.”

Robin looked closely at the photo. Then she held up Anita’s shop scene. Definitely different windows -- but wasn’t that the same man?

“Recognize him?” Robin turned to Anita.

“Where?” she looked closely. “Oh my, it is him. I never noticed him in that shadow before.”

“What did Eleanor say about him, Anita?” Robin put the photos down, suddenly quite tired, no, “shaky” was what her grandmother would have said in a moment of shock.

Anita saw the anguish in the young woman’s face and took pity on her. “Come into the living room and sit down. I’ll tell you as much as I remember -- which isn’t much.”

Jane hurried into the kitchen to turn on the tea kettle and put cookies on a plate. Then she hurried back into the living room to hear what Anita was saying.

And it wasn’t very much. Eleanor had kept her secrets. She dismissed the man and said she’d rather not talk about him. All Anita could say was that he was a tourist from Australia. She’d met him in Salzburg. She’d fallen in love with the town of Mozart’s birth and while her friends headed for Zurich, she stayed behind for a few days before meeting her friends to go home. “I think she stayed behind to see what developed with that guy -- but that’s only a guess,” Anita said. “She never did tell us what happened to him. But it’s funny he’s in so many of these photos. I guess she hoped he’d come back.”

“But who is he?” Robin wondered aloud.

Robin recalled the Google listing she’d seen for Sean Carrington the previous day. All she’d found was an old list of Reuters photographers from the mid-1990s. And the birth certificate from Easton listed a man from Britain, not Australia.

“Anita, do you have anything to do with Reuters?”

“Mmm. No,” Anita replied.

“Why?”

“ Just a hunch,” Robin answered. “I’m looking for a Reuters photographer named Sean Carrington. I thought maybe you could help me find him.”

Anita thought for a moment. “Well, I do know someone who works in the D.C. office. I could give you his name. ”

“Do you think this is him?” Jane asked, pointing to the photo of the castle.

“No, it couldn’t be. Or maybe it could,” she said.

Chapter 9

Every turn took Robin down another dead end street. She hadn’t been able to find that photographer. He seemed to have disappeared. When Anita called her friend at Reuters, he had been agreeable enough but not at all helpful.

Robin kept looking for Samantha Robin Carrington but couldn’t find her anywhere. She went to Easton early to spend a day going through the “morgue” of the Easton newspaper. A very young clerk had shown her way to the room filled with enormous black leather-bound books. Inside, she slowly turned page after page of yellowing newspapers. At last, she found the article she’d seen online about an accident on the Bay Bridge on Christmas Eve in 2003 that had left the child critically injured. The driver’s name had been held pending family notification in that story. Robin continued to look, hauling down another book as that one came to an end, hoping someone would have written one more story, just one more. But Robin had found no follow-up stories about it. She found the hospital’s name but had no luck there. Medical records were confidential so the hospital staff wouldn’t tell her anything officially. The kind clerk had intimated ever so slightly that the little girl had survived after a tough time of it. But where was the girl? Robin couldn’t find her.

She tried the phone books for Delaware and then the whole Eastern Shore but found no Eleanor Browne or Eleanor Browne Carrington or E. Carrington or E. B. Carrington. She even looked for Sean Matthew Carrington. Nothing.

But the more Robin looked, the more she became convinced that her sister was still alive. The thought left her breathless. She wanted to be overjoyed at the possibility but instead she was confused, even hurt.

“Why would your sister just disappear like that?” Diane asked Robin.

The mother and daughter sat in the warm sun on the promenade overlooking the Susquehanna River. The spring-like day hinted at the beautiful weather only a few weeks away but these lifelong Marylanders knew a blizzard could be only a few days off.

“I’ve been thinking about that,” Robin said, loosening her scarf. “Do you remember how she and Grandmother used to go round and round about Ellen’s going to Australia? Maybe she decided to go.”

“No, she’d have told us. She wasn’t an impulsive girl,” Diane said. “Eleanor planned everything first. And she talked about it forever.”

“She did talk about Australia all the time. We’d go to the mall and she’d talk about the places she would go and the stuff she needed to get,” Robin said. “Maybe she did plan it.”

“And she did have a tendency to be ornery. She went to public school in spite of your objections,” Robin added. “And you didn’t want her to go to Europe with Bill. Remember?”

“No,” Diane said and stood up like she’d been stung. She turned back to the main streets of Havre de Grace. “Eleanor wouldn’t just leave us like that. She wouldn’t. She just couldn’t leave us without saying good-bye or tell us where she was going. I’m going to have to get to work now. I have a group of travel writers who want to see the Decoy Museum.”

Her mother hurried off – without saying good-bye. Robin knew she’d hurt her mother’s feelings. Maybe she blamed herself for Ellen’s disappearance, Robin thought. Or maybe she was angry that Ellen had ignored her advice once again.

The arguments between Ellen and her mother were few but memorable, Robin recalled. Both mother and daughter were always polite and well-reasoned until Ellen reached the point where she told her mother she was going to do what she wanted to do.

Robin hated hearing them fight and had done her best to be agreeable. She followed her mother’s advice about schools, clothes (most of the time), even boyfriends. After Ellen was gone, they became good friends for awhile. At least, until she moved up here. Then, Robin had found herself on her own. By then she was in college and things were different. She wasn’t a little girl anymore, of course.

Yet at times like this she longed for that mother. That one sat down and listened when Robin told a story or asked a question. She made time even if she didn’t have it. Diane didn’t work outside the home then, Robin acknowledged, but she was always busy with school committees and volunteer work. She spent so much time planning vacations back then, she was ready for her tourism job when it came along, Robin recalled. That job was only one of the things that kept Robin from her mother. Since her father had died right after she started college, Robin had seen less and less of Diane. She’d sold the family home in Annapolis almost immediately and moved to an old Victorian house in the center of Havre de Grace, more than two hours away. Robin hadn’t understood what drew her there — until she saw the town spread on a spit of land between river and bay. Much as she loved old, colonial Annapolis, she could see why her mother had come to this charming place to begin anew.

And begin anew she did. It wasn’t long before Diane had fallen in love with Andrew Martin, a local tour boat operator. Semi-retired, he kept Robin’s mother busy. They’d married quietly one day, much to Robin’s surprise. And since then, they traveled together a lot, often on his sailboat. In the summer, Robin rarely expected to find her mother at home. She was happy, Robin concluded, and this news about Eleanor wasn’t making her any happier.

Robin wondered if she was making a mistake by trying to track down a woman who didn’t want to be found. She began the long trip back to Baltimore, ready to give up the search.

Two things made Robin turn north on Route 40 instead of heading toward home. Who was the man in the photos? Why did Eleanor – if it really was Ellen – use her own name so close to home?

She decided to go to the Eastern Shore. She was going to find Bill – Eleanor’s boyfriend who now worked at the University of Delaware. Maybe he could fill her in on some of this story. In her web search, hadn’t she seen something about a book published by Eleanor Browne? Maybe Bill would know something about it. Maybe Bill would have heard of it and know where to find the publisher.

Maybe Eleanor had wanted to be found all along. Robin hoped so.

Chapter 10

Bill Thomas had spent ten years working at the Smithsonian, but when the chance came to work at a university he took it. He was director of public relations and had fallen in love with an intern the minute he walked into his new office. After Madeleine graduated, the two had married and she’d started looking for an agent for her first novel, set in her hometown of Washington, D.C. When that hadn’t worked out, she’d written a second one -- and this time an agent snapped it up and sold it.

“The publisher is waiting for the final revisions now,” Bill told Robin. “We’re hoping it’s ready before the baby makes his appearance. I can’t believe I’m 38 years old and about to have a child.”

“It sounds like you’ve got everything you want,” Robin said.

“Finally,” he said softly. Bill hadn’t lost the preppy look from his college days. Tall and still slender, he hadn’t changed much. His sandy hair had a touch of silver in it and the dark horn-rimmed glasses certainly gave him a look of authority. They couldn’t hide the eyes that showed every emotion. One thing Bill never had was a poker face.

“I’m glad,” Robin answered, reaching across his desk to touch his arm.

“You know that trip was a horrible mistake. Even before, well... Even before we lost Eleanor.” Robin followed Bill’s gaze out the window across the tree-filled campus. She could tell he wasn’t seeing the college, at least not this college.

“We had had such a good time the first few days but it wasn’t long before everybody was getting on each other’s nerves. There were six very different opinions on everything. We argued about our schedule. Ellen wanted to stay out late; I like to get up early. I worried about spending too much money and though Ellen was extravagant,” he hesitated and glanced at Eleanor’s little sister before going on. “I was in love with her, you know. I wanted her to, well, be with me. She wasn’t really interested. I thought a month in Europe would be romantic, that she’d come around. Instead there were four other people between us.”

“I’m sorry, Bill. My parents had already talked about a wedding...we thought for sure—”

“Well, so did I. By the time we got to Salzburg we were barely speaking. Ellen started going out on her own, said she’d met up with some really great people. She even planned a trip to a ski resort up on a glacier. I’d never heard of skiing in May, but it turns out you can ski in the Alps in May.”

“Then she decided to stay behind when we were supposed to go to Zurich. She was so secretive, I didn’t understand. And Jean, who was supposedly her best friend, was furious. She didn’t know what was going on. I gave Ellen the Zurich hostel phone number and asked her one more time to come with us. She tossed the number on the desk and just said no, she had other things to do. She did promise to meet up with us there before we had to go home.”

Robin remembered how Eleanor’s disappearance had been as hard on Bill as it had on her own family. He had felt guilty about going on to Zurich and leaving Eleanor in Salzburg. He had heard about the gondola crash and had raced back to Salzburg, looking for Eleanor. She’d been gone from the hostel for three days by then — and when Bill found all her belongings still in the hostel room, he was beside himself with grief. He thought for sure Ellen had gone skiing. The police hadn’t found any trace of her at the accident site.

“I answered questions from so many policemen but I sure didn’t know anything,” he remembered. “Our dream trip became the trip from hell.”

“I always wished I could have done more,” he said after a long silence. Robin thought she could see him replaying the scenes as he gazed out the window to the windswept campus beyond. “I went through all her stuff looking for a clue about what happened to her. When I couldn’t find her camera bag, I kept hoping she might still be alive. I still believe she might be alive.”

“Bill,” Robin said, not sure what to say next.

“What’s on your mind, Robin?” he said, turning to her.

“I think Eleanor might be alive,” she said. If she expected him to be startled, she was the one who was surprised. He only looked more mournful. But she didn’t expect him to say what he told her.

“Eleanor is alive, I feel certain of it. I tried to reach you and your parents after I found a book a few years back. I was rummaging around in a bookstore right after I moved here and came across a book with a picture on the cover I was sure I recognized. I knew I had been in the darkroom at college when Ellen printed it — or one like it,” Bill said.

“We had gone up to Kent County together during senior year, looking for historic homes for a final project she needed to do. I was sure the cover photo was one of hers.”

“Do you have this book?” Robin asked, feeling like she was finally getting somewhere.

“Yeah, it’s here somewhere,” he said, glancing around his well-ordered office. He walked over to a low bookcase and scanned the titles. “It’s a little hard to miss,” he said. “It’s a coffee-table sized book. Here it is.”

The byline wasn’t Ellen’s. An architect, Kelly Larkin, had written the book, with photos from a half-dozen photographers. One of them was Eleanor Carrington. “See the photo here of these captain’s houses? Ellen and I went out in a little rowboat on the Chester River to shoot those. The angles are a little odd – that’s how I know it’s one Ellen took.”

Robin turned the pages to find the copyright. A year after Eleanor disappeared. How could that be possible?

“So you think this is our Eleanor?” Robin asked as she leafed through the big, heavy book.

“I didn’t believe it at first. I figured she sold the photo while she was still in college,” Bill said. “I mean, how could Eleanor disappear in Europe and reappear right under our noses here? It seemed impossible. I guess I could have called the publisher about where the picture came from but, well....”

“And then you called us?”

“I thought you should know but the phone had been disconnected. I didn’t know how to reach you.

“Mom had moved by then; Dad had died,” Robin murmured as she turned pages. Robin knew — at least she thought — she held proof in her hands that her sister was alive. She didn’t know where but she was convinced Ellen was still alive.

She chatted with her sister’s old friend for a little while longer, remembering happy days when she went on “dates” with the two of them. She’d had her own crush on Bill once upon a time and hoped she’d find someone like him. Now he seemed to have found happiness. Ensconced in a bright office overlooking the sprawling campus, Bill looked happy. Robin couldn’t help but wonder how Eleanor ever left this wonderful man behind?

Chapter 11

“I don’t have a phone number or address for Eleanor Carrington,” the young woman said. “I’m sorry. Oh, hold on. Rob has come up with a contact at least. Harris North, an artists’ agent in Washington, D.C. Maybe that will help?”

Robin had been on hold so long while the editorial assistant looked for information about her sister, she’d given up hope. She’d stared out the window while she waited. The bright sun and slight tinge of color on the bare tree branches hinted that spring was finally coming. Robin watched a young mother push a stroller down the street; both were bundled against the cold. She knew she should know the mother’s name; she tried to remember while she waited for the contact’s number.

“Here’s Mr. North’s number, Ms. Browne,” the young assistant said.

As Robin dialed the agent’s number she got excited. It never failed. Every lead made her heart race. When Bill handed her the book with Eleanor’s picture, the excitement grew.

When she called the author – Kelly Larkin told her she wouldn’t be much help since she had had nothing to do with the photographers – Robin could barely breathe. “Maybe you could talk to my editor. His name is Rob Warnock,” the architect offered. Robin grew faint at the offer. She scribbled down the name and number in her notebook, thanked the woman and dialed the new number. Not much progress, she thought, but every shred of information gave her hope.

But Warnock hadn’t remembered Eleanor and didn’t have time even to talk about her. Deadlines, the editor explained, and handed her off to his assistant Aliyah Massoud. As she waited for Aliyah to return to the phone Robin began to wonder if anyone remembered Eleanor anymore. Aliyah was brand new to the company and hadn’t even seen the book. But in a fresh burst of enthusiasm, the young woman offered to go through the old files and look for a phone number or address. Or would Robin rather call back?

Robin knew better than to hang up. Stay on the line until she got what she needed, she told herself. She feared that if she did hang up, Aliyah would get distracted and never call back. What’s a long distance bill when this might lead to a long lost sister?

Pressing the speakerphone button while she waited, Robin went to Google’s home page. She typed in all these new names: Smithson Cannon Publishers, Rob Warnock, Aliyah Massoud.

The publisher was a fairly new one with offices in London and New York. It specialized in architecture and most of the titles were technical. The company also published a series of books about architectural history, like Eleanor’s book. She found books about Cairo, Williamsburg, Santa Fe, the Cotswolds and Chicago.

Rob Warnock, it turned out, had edited them all. Robin wondered if any of the other 10 pages of entries could be about the same guy: sports reporter in Columbia, Md., rock music writer in Baltimore, travel writer in New York City. It was a colorful list of entries, she thought.

Aliyah’s name turned up nothing. She found an entry for a would-be politician in Israel but nothing else. That seemed too far-fetched, she thought, as she closed her laptop.

Aliyah finally came back with Harris North’s phone number and once again as she dialed the number, Robin felt her heart race as her arms grew limp.

“Harris North,” a deep voice rumbled into the phone.

Robin drew a deep breath and began to tell her story.

“Eleanor has a sister,” Harris chuckled as she finished talking.

“Then you know her!” Robin couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

“I haven’t seen Eleanor in many years,” he told her.

“How did you know her?” Robin asked, not sure she wanted to hear his answer.

“We met when she was studying at Salisbury,” he said. “I had an art gallery in Chestertown then and she drove up to see me from time to time. She studied everything on my walls and then grilled me about photography. She wanted to know why I didn’t show more photos. I got the impression she drove the length of the Eastern Shore asking gallery owners the same questions.”

“Frankly, I was tired of the whole Eastern Shore art scene by then. Ducks and geese, farms and old houses. I didn’t want another photo of a pretty Eastern Shore scene. Photographers seem to think they have to take a picture of everything ‘before it disappears.’ Don’t get me wrong. I respect that. I just didn’t want to show it in my gallery any more,” he said.

“Did you ever show her photos?” Robin asked.

“Well, no. She wasn’t ready yet and I told her then I wasn’t interested. Not yet, anyway. I told her to come back in a few years.”

“She’s a talented photographer,” Harris added.

“Was, you mean,” Robin interjected.

“Was? Has she given it up?”

“She died in Europe 15 years ago,”

“That’s impossible. I represented her at an art show in D.C. not 10 years ago,” he said.

Robin didn’t know how to react. “You can’t be right,” she thought. Yet she knew this man had just confirmed that Ellen was still alive. But where was she? And why hadn’t she at least called home?

“Miss? Is everything all right?” Harris finally asked after the silence grew uncomfortably long.

“Oh, I’m sorry. I’ve got to go. Um, thanks,” Robin said.

She hung up the receiver and stared at the phone. She didn’t know whether to scream or laugh. Should she call her mother? No, wait, she really didn’t know anything. She hadn’t gotten any information from that man. Why did she hang up so soon? It might not even be her Eleanor. She knew it was. Her mind was racing. And the pain she felt made it impossible to talk. Robin sat so still, looking at the phone.

“No more,” she finally said, standing up and glancing out her window. She rubbed her temples, cooling off her hot face with her ice-cold fingers. She needed to get away from this. She grabbed her coat and headed out the door. Cross Street Market would distract her. Maybe she’d get some fresh coconut and marzipan and bake macaroons this afternoon.

The sun had gone behind thick clouds and snow was beginning to coat the sidewalks as she locked her front door. Just when it was beginning to look like spring was on its way, winter returned. That’s Baltimore for you, Robin thought. It would be a good afternoon for baking.

“Hey, good looking!” a man called from behind Robin as she locked the front door. She turned to see who it could possibly be. Jim Arnold, a newcomer to Federal Hill, was quick with a smile and loved to talk. They’d met at Christmas at a neighborhood party. She hadn’t planned to go but when she mentioned the party to Jane and Parker at brunch that morning, they’d convinced her to go. As usual, she found herself nursing a glass of wine and trying to remember names. Jim had introduced himself and then ended up talking until the party ended. He talked; she was entranced. And then after the party she hadn’t seen him even once until today.

“Hello, yourself,” Robin said, trying to remember how she looked. She’d found the 30-ish stockbroker quite interesting and kept her hopes up that he’d notice her someday. Really notice her.

“Where are you going on such an ugly afternoon?” he asked, tucking her arm under his.

“Just the market. It seems like cookie-baking weather to me,” she said, hoping her face didn’t register anything from her disturbing phone calls.

“Mmmm,” he said. “Chocolate chip? Sugar?”

“Macaroons, you know coconut? Almond? So what have you been up to?”

Jim launched into a story about his fabulously busy afternoon. He was hunting down a snow shovel, he said, emphasizing his South Carolina accent. The first one he’d ever needed. Robin laughed at him and enjoyed watching those deep brown eyes twinkle when he knew he was making her laugh.

“Well, come along. We’ll make this an outing,” he said. Jim talked as they walked down Light Street, filling Robin in on all the neighborhood gossip. He knew more of her neighbors than she did, Robin was shocked to learn, until she thought about how many of the high-priced rowhouses now had new, upwardly-mobile owners. She considered herself an old-timer — but only because her grandmother had lived in her house first.

Cross Street Market is one of Baltimore’s gems. Forget about the museums or Harborplace or Oriole Park. This was Baltimore on a true local level. Safeway was only a short drive away — and maybe the prices were cheaper, who knows? — but Robin liked to come here. She knew the vendors by name. She trusted them. Besides, it was fun to scan the rows of chickens and steaks or lust for one of those sugary desserts or breathe in the aromas of all the bunches of flowers.

“Think we can find a shovel here?” Jim asked.

“If we don’t, come borrow mine,” Robin replied.

“You’ve got yourself a deal,” he said and gave her shoulders a squeeze.

Neither was surprised when not one stall had a shovel left. Robin wasn’t disappointed, either. She liked the stockbroker. She thought he looked a little stiff — so tall and crisply dressed in a dark suit and wingtips — when they first met. It wasn’t long before he turned on his ready smile and she heard that soft accent for the first time. Now, she liked the way this was turning out.

They wandered the stalls as she picked up fresh coconut, butter, eggs and a bottle of wine. Jim stopped at one of the many flower vendors and picked out a bunch of pale pink tulips.

“For you, my dear,” he said, presenting the flowers.

Robin blushed. “Why thank you sir!” she replied.

“No thank you. This was a much better way to spend my afternoon.” Jim took her bags and her hand as they headed back into the cold.

“May I borrow your shovel, ma’am?” Jim asked as he returned Robin to her front door.

“Only if you promise to return it right away,” she said, digging it out of the hall closet. He bowed, kissed her cheek and watched her enter her house.

It had felt good to think about something else, she thought as she dumped her grocery bags on the kitchen table. Did she hear a shovel scraping her front sidewalk?

Robin peeked out the front window, and there he was, the man of her dreams scraping an inch of snow off her walk. It made her smile to see such a gallant act — she wouldn’t have started shoveling until she was sure it wouldn’t melt on its own. (This is Baltimore, after all. Tomorrow’s temperature could be in the 60s.)

She picked up the wine to put in the cabinet and turned back to the door. She opened the door to ask Jim in for a glass but he was gone.

Robin turned back toward the kitchen with a sigh. She wasn’t really interested in cookies, she thought. The trip to the market had only diverted her from the confusion in her head. Her mind raced with questions as she stood at her table. She needed to know more. What had happened? She wasn’t sure she could take another phone call, though. It was getting to be too much for her.

No, she decided. No more searching. She shook her head before she pulled out her mixing bowls and measuring spoons and found her grandmother’s macaroon recipe. The pre-heating oven and the sweet smell of coconut and vanilla were soon warming the kitchen. Making those cookies soothed her and the pleasant thought of plying her neighbor with warm cookies kept her going. Batch after batch of soft, golden brown cookies came out of the oven. In a nod to Jim’s love of chocolate, she melted a block of dark chocolate and dipped a dozen cookies in the rich liquid.

She had barely finished wrapping the plate in plastic wrap when the phone rang again.

“Hello, Miss Browne?” She recognized Harris’s booming voice immediately. She carefully laid the plate on the server and made herself sit down at the kitchen table.

“Yes, hello,” she said.

“Sorry to bother you but I could tell you were upset when you hung up.”

“I really can’t talk about it now,” Robin began.

“I don’t understand what’s going on but –“

“No, you don’t. You’ve just told me my sister is alive when we mourned her death the summer after she graduated from college. You’ve just told me my sister is living a secret life and wants nothing to do with her mother or her sister. I don’t know where she is, what she is doing or why she disappeared. I don’t know,” Robin said, breaking off to stop a sob. She hung up the phone.

The snow outside grew thick as the sun began to set. The path Jim had cleared was already covered over. Robin sat in the darkening room. She felt terrible that she had snapped at a stranger – but she’d never felt so alone. Or betrayed. She bit into one of her cookies. But it didn’t soothe her as she hoped it would

How could Eleanor have done this? Robin was hurt, but anger filled her more. It seemed that the sister she had loved – and looked up to – had abandoned her. She’d disappeared to start a new life. She’d never said good-bye. She’d decided to have nothing to do with her own family ever again. How could she be so mean? And why? What did they do to make her go away?

Robin found herself fighting the urge to lash out – at what? At whom? She was alone. All alone. Feelings she had put away years ago when Eleanor had disappeared welled up. She remembered those long, dark nights of loss and anger. She was just a little girl then. She’d grown up. She’d survived. She wasn’t going to go through her bedroom tearing up things the way she had when she had realized one long, lonely night that her big sister wouldn’t come back. That night, her mother had told her to face facts: her sister was probably dead. She remembered the anger she felt, anger at her sister and her mother. She’d raced off to her little room, cried until she felt hollow and then crashed around the room until she was too tired to go on.

She felt that same anger again -- anger and helplessness. If tearing things up and throwing herself around would help, she would have done it again. She looked around her shadowy kitchen and reasoned she’d only hurt herself. She didn’t remember such anger. It was overwhelming.

She picked up the phone and dialed Jane’s number. No, she wasn’t alone. She had her sidekick. “Jane, it seems I have another clue.”

“Are you okay?” Jane asked, sensing her friend’s anger.

“Yes, well, no, not really. I just told off a total stranger.”

“That’s not like you. It’s more like me,” Jane said and Robin had to agree with her. Jane wasn’t one to hold back. She was glad she’d called her old friend and she told her the whole story.

“On a happier note, I have to tell you about my shopping expedition with a very charming man,” Robin said, feeling so much better.

“Man! You’re wandering the streets of Baltimore with a handsome man and you’re telling me an old Nancy Drew story instead,” Jane exclaimed. “What’s gotten into you? Forget about that old man upsetting you. Pack up those cookies and head down the street, girl. I can’t believe you’re wasting time. I’m hanging up now. Call me tomorrow and tell me all about Mr. May-Be-The-One. I cannot believe you. School’s going to be canceled so call early, unless you, well, can’t...”

“Good-bye Jane,” Robin hung up while her friend was still carrying on. She was right, Robin realized. It probably was best to leave her sister alone. Tonight she was taking those cookies over to Jim. And the bottle of wine, too. Suddenly, it looked like she had a future. It had never occurred to Robin that she’d somehow put her life on hold in the last few weeks — or had it really been years? For too long, she’d kept people at arm’s length until she hadn’t had a close friend (except Jane) or a boyfriend in a long time. Her sister was gone, her mother was far away. Her father and grandmother were dead. She was tired of being alone, she realized. She’d felt a warmth today she barely remembered. Jim didn’t know anything about her but he cared. It was time for her to start living.

She’d been searching for more than a month, now. All she’d really found was a living sister who didn’t want her. All she’d uncovered was hurt and anger and confusion. She didn’t need it. And she certainly didn’t need a sister who didn’t want her. She swallowed hard and said to herself. “Eleanor is dead.”

Chapter 12

“Robin,” Diane raised her voice. “Are you listening to me?”

Robin looked over the restaurant table at her mother. Lost in thought about something other than Eleanor, she hadn’t been listening. The past week had been so sweet after all the anguish about the possibility of her sister still being alive. She had decided to stop thinking about it. And it had been a good week for that: knee-deep snow had kept cars off the road for two days (thank goodness the toilet paper and milk supplies were up to date). The sidewalk down William Street, however, had been shoveled and the path well-worn between Numbers 46 and 54. Robin was still in a state of amazement over it all.

“Sorry, Mom. What were you saying?”

“This is important, Robin. I’ve been giving this Eleanor nonsense some thought. I think we have to find the daughter. I know you don’t want to look for Eleanor anymore – I don’t blame you – but I want to know my granddaughter.”

Robin played with the shrimp salad on her plate and sipped at her iced tea. She didn’t know why her mother liked this restaurant so much. It was noisy and since it was close to the Inner Harbor it was always filled with tourists. And no matter how much the ads called it a local restaurant, this was a chain and they couldn’t do justice to a crab cake or an oyster. Bad food put Robin in a bad mood.

“It’s hopeless,” she replied. “I’ve looked for her but all I’ve found is a birth certificate. She’s not in the schools; I can’t get medical information. I can’t find an address. Mom, I’ve looked everywhere I can think of.”

“You’ve left one place out, though,” Diane said and reached for her tidy beige leather bag. She pulled out red, white and blue ticket folders. “British Airways” was boldly printed across them.

“Will you go to England with me?”

“Mom! England? I’d love to go but why?” Robin reached for the folders and glanced at the tickets inside. The departure date was only a week away. And she noticed breathlessly, the tickets were for business class.

“You’re the one who mentioned an English man. Somebody Carrington? Maybe Eleanor married him. Maybe he’s there now and we can find him,” Diane said and added, lowering her voice, “Maybe Eleanor’s there with her daughter.”

Diane looked at Robin and exclaimed, “Oh Robin, now that we know she’s alive, we must find her.”

Robin couldn’t remember seeing her mother this way. Not when she was a little girl and certainly not in the past few years. They’d barely talked since Robin’s father had died. The gravestone hadn’t even been delivered before Diane had sold the house, moved to Havre de Grace and taken up with that man. Yes, he was a very nice man but it surprised Robin how quickly her mother became “chummy” with him. She had even married him — without a word to Robin.

When her mother had moved away, Robin had felt the losses all the more. Her sister was gone, her father dead and now her mother was making a whole new life for herself far from the one she had had as Mrs. Browne.

She could hardly guess what was going through her mother’s mind. Could she really be missing her old life? – as Robin had to admit she missed hers. She looked again at those tickets.

She’d declared her sister dead once again only a few days before. She had closed that chapter and put aside her weak detective tendencies.

No, she wasn’t going to get all wrapped up in this mystery again, she told herself. But how would she tell her mother? She started to shake her head and put the tickets on the table.

“Just go with me,” Diane pleaded. “We’ll see the sights, go to a play and have tea every afternoon. If I happen to check the phone book or make a few calls, you won’t mind, will you? You do have a passport, don’t you?”

“No, I don’t, as a matter of fact. I haven’t gone anywhere I’d need one,” Robin said, thinking that might be a perfect excuse.

“Well, never mind. You can take the tickets to the passport office in D.C. and get a passport tomorrow. Good mother that I am, I happen to have your birth certificate with me. There’s a Kinko’s down the street from the passport office – there are lots of places, in fact – to get pictures taken.”

“Then I guess it’s all settled,” Robin said, weakly. “We’re going to London.”

****

The dreary winter of London was no better than the dreary winter of Baltimore, Robin thought as she watched the old city speed by from her quaint black cab. The cab driver had given her a wink as he opened the taxi door and offered a short tour on the way to their hotel in Notting Hill.

She was sure the driver wasn’t taking the direct route but he was lively and filled with information about the palace, the changing of the guards and Parliament. He even offered the weather report.

“Now there’s a great place for tea in Notting Hill,” the driver said. “The late Princess Diana was a big fan of the Garden Café. I’ll point you in the right direction when we get to your hotel.”

“Won’t that be lovely?” cooed Diane, a big fan of the princess. “We’ll have to go there today.”

Robin knew her mother was trying her hardest to make this trip seem like a big, happy adventure but Robin felt herself preparing for more disappointment. Not with London, of course. She figured if she could get past the cold and drizzle, it might not be a bad town for a couple of weeks. After all, she’d wanted to see London since sixth grade social studies. Hadn’t everybody?

She stretched and leaned back into the taxi’s seat. She always thought she’d be a world traveler after she finished college and yet, this was her first trip since then. She rarely left Baltimore, except for trips up to Havre de Grace or down to the beach. Now here she was in London. She watched as the famous sights gave way to pretty townhouses. “Yes, tea sounds good,” Robin said, trying to sound cheery. She really was going to make it a good trip. “But the jet lag is killing me. I need a nap first.”

“Well, here we are, ladies,” the driver said, pulling up to a stylish, white hotel flanked by potted evergreens. “You should have a good time here. Some say it’s a little quirky but then again, some say that’s what makes it good. Been here before?”

“Not in a very long time,” Diane said, unfolding her long legs from the back seat. Friends at the travel agency in Havre de Grace had recommended this hotel when she booked the flight. Yes, she thought as she approached the marble steps, it is charming. Expensive, but charming.

“Now, don’t you forget the Garden Café. Just down the road a few blocks. It might be a bit of a cold walk if the weather doesn’t cooperate, but you’ll be glad you stopped in,” the driver said. In an old-fashioned gesture, he tipped his cap as he left.

I’m in England, Robin thought. The thought woke her up to all the possibilities the next week could bring. She thought about her plans as a tourist, certainly not as a sister. She had her red travel guide in her bag, marked up during the overnight flight. She hadn’t been able to sleep so she’d read everything the guide had said about London. After a short nap, she would take some time to pick out exactly where she wanted to go first. Westminster Abbey and Big Ben, certainly. The Victoria and Albert Museum, of course. The Tower of London and London Bridge? Oh and shopping at Harrods and crossing Abbey Road. C’mon, Robin, she told herself. Have some fun. You’re in England.

Chapter 13

St. James’ Park was a surprise to Robin. She’d never heard of it until yesterday. But even today, on one of the dreariest of winter days, it attracted people who strolled or jogged along its tree-lined walkways. The ponds were filled with noisy ducks and ragged little birds who fought for the crumbs of bread thrown their way. There was even an elderly man, bundled in a gray coat and scarf who fed birds directly from his hands. The little wrens showed no fear as they descended onto his outstretched hands filled with seed. He murmured to them as they came and went. He caught Robin staring at him and his birds and nodded to her with a warm smile. She felt her face grow hot but the sight had warmed her, too. She hurried away but only far enough away to watch from a distance. Lounge chairs on the lawn seemed oddly out of place this time of year but Robin took a seat anyway. The rain had stopped during the night and a wan sun had burned through the remaining clouds. It wasn’t warm but it was dry enough to enjoy the park.

Robin wondered what had happened to her mother. Diane had disappeared from her room early that morning and left a note under Robin’s door that they’d meet at teatime. She had the whole day to herself she thought. She’d decided to spend the day wandering. She’d traveled on the tube — so different from the short little subway in Baltimore — and taken a guided tour of the city. In a matter of hours, she had checked off a number of must-sees: Trafalgar Square, Piccadilly Circus, the Tower Bridge, Big Ben. She’d had a few minutes to stop in a couple of small shops, too, before ending up here to while away what was left of the afternoon before heading back to Notting Hill.

She pulled her coat around her and relaxed back in the chair to watch the people go by. Schools had been dismissed; she could tell by the number of uniformed children tossing book bags in a pile to play a game. Young mothers had brought out their tots for a needed breath of fresh air. Strollers clogged the walkways near the entrance as parents gathered. A trio of elderly women giggling on a nearby bench made Robin feel like laughing herself. She wondered if they had been friends all their lives.

The sight of so many groups of friends suddenly made Robin feel so lonely. It was a feeling she felt often. She hated it and fought it every time it sneaked back into her heart. Once the young Robin had felt part of a lively family: loving parents, doting grandmother, sister she adored. One by one all the people in that circle had disappeared until only she remained. Even her mother had taken herself out of the circle when she moved to Havre de Grace. Could any place be more remote? Robin knew it was a silly thing to think. Her mother hadn’t moved to Montana, after all. But it was a long drive up a busy interstate with exorbitant tolls. Even a phone call was long distance. The town, though picturesque, was foreign to Robin. And her mother was living in her husband’s home, a place Robin had never felt welcome. It was all so far removed from Robin’s childhood home in Annapolis and from her grandmother’s city rowhouse she now called her own home. It was also a place, she reminded herself, where she lived there alone.

She had friends, Robin argued with herself. There was always Jane to talk to. And Robin thought about her friends at the aquarium with whom she had dinner a couple of times a month. She wished her neighbors were a friendlier lot, but they were busy as she was. She couldn’t even remember the names of the people she saw once in a while. Jennifer, she remembered the name of the young mother she’d seen recently, Was that just last week? Yes, it was the same day she’d met up with Jim. She liked Jim, she thought, remembering their walks in the snow that week. A child running past woke her from her reverie and she rose to catch a cab back to the hotel. “Mother’s waiting,” she thought.

Chapter 14

“Very pretty, Robin,” Diane smiled as her daughter arrived at the table.

“Oh, do you like it?” Robin asked, smoothing down the pale green tweed skirt she had bought that afternoon. “I feel like a native.”

“I can’t believe you went shopping without me.”

“I can’t believe you left me all day on our first full day in London. Besides, I didn’t go to Harrod’s without you. I found this in a little shop just around the corner from here. You’d like it. Where’d you go?”

“What a perfectly horrid day,” Diane said, pouring a steaming cup of tea for Robin.

The perfume of the Earl Grey filled the air as Robin picked up a tiny sandwich.

“Horrid? What happened?” she asked.

Diane had taken the job of detective very seriously but found to her dismay that the local police didn’t take her as seriously. She’d gone down to the police station to inquire about filling out a missing persons report. She figured she could see if the police could find Eleanor if she was living here.

But Diane found them only rude. “They told me I was wasting their time when they had serious matters to attend to. One policeman took pity on me and suggested I see a private detective. Do you know how many private detective agencies there are in the city of London? Hundreds. I went back to the hotel, got out the phone book and started calling offices. Most of them are really just answering machines and I wasn’t about to leave my life story on a recording. I almost lost hope after the first two people I talked to. One didn’t sound smart enough to follow my story. The other started talking about fees first. It was depressing.

“But then I talked to Donald Graham. He used to work at Scotland Yard. He retired about seven years ago and started Graham Investigations. He offered to meet us here this afternoon,” Diane said. “I have no idea what he looks like so I don’t know how we’ll –“

“Mrs. Martin, I presume,” a tall, slender man with thick, wavy gray hair bowed before Diane. “Donald Graham at your service, madam.”

“Oh Mr. Graham. I was just wondering how I’d find you,” Diane said. “This is my daughter Robin.”

“Very pleased to meet you, Miss,” he said, bowing again. His clear blue eyes shone from a time-worn face. Robin didn’t think his accent was English, Scottish maybe, she couldn’t tell, but it was softer, warmer than a crisp and proper English accent.

“Mrs. Martin, I’ve been considering your case and I’ll be frank. It could be very difficult to find your daughter if she’s still alive. It may be that she doesn’t want to be found. Maybe she changed her name or lives under an assumed name. I’ll check all the usual places. Did you bring your photograph of her?”

Diane pulled a small picture from her wallet. The photo of Eleanor had been taken her senior year in high school. Long golden hair framed Eleanor’s oval face. Even faded, the photo captured the young woman’s laughing blue eyes and bright smile. Diane remembered the first time she saw the photograph. She’d been surprised at her own daughter’s beauty. Eleanor usually didn’t have time for hairdos and make-up and often pulled that beautiful hair back in a ponytail before dashing off in a pair of jeans.

She reluctantly handed over the photo, afraid of losing this beloved image of her missing daughter. But if this might help bring Eleanor back, she was ready to part with it.

Diane had been a young mother. She’d married her college sweetheart Scott when they were only juniors. They didn’t want to wait until graduation. Diane’s mother was thrilled with Scott and told him she was looking forward to becoming a grandmother. Diane wasn’t sure she was ready for that. But a year later, instead of celebrating her graduation, she was welcoming a squirming, cranky baby they named Eleanor. Diane still wasn’t sure about motherhood.

But she put aside her dreams of travel, found a government job flexible enough for a new mother and found a way to finish those last few credits for her B.A. Then Scott announced he had landed a job at the Naval Academy in Annapolis and the new family put down roots in the old state capital.

Annapolis was a good place to raise a child. It had small town charm, the nearby Academy offered some excitement and there was plenty of water for swimming, crabbing or sailing. They spent many a Sunday afternoon at nearby Sandy Point with a picnic and their kites. Scott would stop as a sailboat slid by and say, “Someday we’ve got to get a sailboat.” Diane had never been on a sailboat; she’d barely been around water growing up in Roland Park. But one day, when they thought the girls were old enough, Scott started looking for a small day sailer. It didn’t take long.

Those Sunday sails on their 19-foot O’Day kept the small family close. Eleanor was a fearless sailor who thought nothing of whitecaps on the bay. She’d haul the sails in close and hang on as the boat heeled over. Diane found she loved those exciting afternoons – a trip on a calm day would be only a bore. She encouraged her daughter’s fearlessness and watched as that same fearlessness affected other parts of her life. She saw herself in her little girl – but she was beginning to see her mother in herself. She wasn’t even 30 but she discovered she loved family life. Like her mother, she was selfish about time spent as a family. Sundays were always family days whether on the boat in summer or around the dinner table on a winter’s day.

Diane had worried about having two girls when Robin was born. She had been an only child and Scott had practically been raised alone. Although he had had a much older sister, she had moved away to the Eastern Shore when he was still little. Since they lived so close, they crossed the Bay Bridge a few times each summer to visit. The girls liked wandering the country roads around her house. Diane was relieved to see a friendship blossom between them. But Diane soon realized two daughters meant twice as much work so Diane sadly gave up her office job. Finally, she had learned to love the adventures of motherhood.

Describing her beautiful, adventurous, talented daughter to a stranger wasn’t as difficult as she’d feared. Diane was proud of Eleanor. She still wished her daughter hadn’t gone to Europe – she missed her so much. But recalling how much the young woman wanted to go, and remembering her own young dreams, she was glad for Eleanor’s chance. Maybe, she was still making her dreams come true. Diane refused to speculate why her daughter had chosen to disappear from their lives. She refused to wonder why she would keep a granddaughter from her. It was enough to hope she might still be alive.

“I’ll see what I can do, Mrs. Martin,” Graham said. “We’ll be in touch.”

Chapter 15

All Diane could think of was a soap opera as the private detective laid out photos of a man and woman. The Eleanor Browne presented to her could not be her daughter. There had to be some mistake.

Graham had in fact found a woman named Eleanor Browne. He had photographs of her taken with a mysterious man in a pub in a questionable part of London. The man turned out to be an earl, married to another woman.

Graham brought photographs, copies of newspaper clippings and a sad story filled with scandal. Sitting in the hotel lobby, Diane and Robin ignored the bustle around them as they studied those photographs. They were dark and a little grainy but Diane was sure this couldn’t be Eleanor. Her hair was black and quite short, her daughter would never part with her long blonde hair. This woman wore little brown-framed glasses that made her look studious. The smile wasn’t quite right, either. It was hard to see her features clearly

But it was the story that had Diane worried. Graham lit a cigarette before telling her all the details.

He’d found a news story in an old London Times from 1992. A wedding announcement detailed the arrangements for the marriage of Eleanor Browne, who was described as “a commoner,” and Lord Edward Granby, a cousin of the queen, “an elderly cousin of the queen,” Graham noted with an eyebrow raised. It was a lavish affair, held at a country castle outside of Oxford. The newly-married couple were living — and partying — in London.

Then Graham had found a divorce decree. The scandal was splashed across the tabloids, which had speculated about adultery and possible criminal activity. The marriage had lasted only a year. The former Mrs. Granby was said to have moved to Paris.

Society columns had mentioned her several times but Graham said he hadn’t been able to find the woman herself until yesterday’s newspapers had mentioned her possible connection to Earl Richard Collins. A friend of a friend had seen the two together that same day.

The coincidence was astounding. Graham had hurried to the hotel where they were said to be staying and followed them to the pub. He was rather proud of those pictures, he said.

“But I don’t think this is Eleanor,” said Diane shaking her head.

“I’m certain it is,” Graham protested, crushing the cigarette in an ashtray.

“I’m sure it is a woman named Eleanor but there must be another Eleanor Browne living in London.”

“Very well, madam,” he said, rising and pulling on his overcoat.

“You’ll keep looking for her?”

“I’ll see if I can find anything else.”

Diane wasn’t enjoying her stay in London. Robin could tell she was deeply troubled by the day’s activities. Her mother nearly scowled as she picked up the photos the private investigator had left on the small round table and started to throw them in a wastebasket. “No, Mother,” said Robin, reaching for the pictures. “I want to look at them again.”

Chapter 16

Robin was late. Shadows were growing longer as the street lamps began to glow. She reproached herself for not catching a cab but she hadn’t realized how big Hyde Park was. It was more beautiful than St. James’s Park and she’d loved walking through that park. But around the edges of Hyde Park, she caught glimpses of big houses, castles, really. At least, she thought they looked splendid. The lake had attracted geese and ducks and groups of men and little boys throwing rocks and tending to small sailboats. She had sat on a bench to watch them for a while. She had gotten to the entrance when that woman got up on the soapbox at Speaker’s Corner to rail about injustice in Africa, Robin couldn’t help herself. She felt compelled to listen. It wasn’t until she began walking back to the hotel that she realized she was at the wrong entrance. She was on the wrong street and was much farther away than she had realized. Now she would be late and Diane wasn’t one to be kept waiting.

“So sorry, Mother,’ Robin apologized when she saw Diane waiting on a settee in the lobby. Diane hadn’t seen her but had been studying a small notebook.

“We’ll have to hurry. We have only a little while before we’re supposed to meet that private investigator.” Robin didn’t think her mother was angry. Instead, she noticed, her mother seemed to have a new sense of purpose.

“And then the tea room. I’ve been looking forward to going to a proper tea,” Diane added. “That taxi driver said it was worth the visit.”

“If Princess Di liked it,” Robin began, knowing her mother’s adoration of the late royal.

Robin was growing to like the area around their hotel. She was particularly fond of the little parks that seemed to be on every street. She peeked through the gate to one and noticed a window just up the street.

Lights were blazing inside so that Robin could see all the people gathering inside. Many were dressed in black and carried glasses of wine as they peered at the walls. Oh, of course, she thought, a gallery opening. A gallery opening! Robin stopped and looked. Why hadn’t she been looking for her sister in the galleries around London? She had found information about a gallery the very week she had learned her sister could still be alive. She had even found an address. Oh, what was its name? Where was it?

“Robin? What are you looking at?” Diane had realized she was walking alone and came back looking for her daughter.

“How could I have been so stupid?”

“Stupid? How, Robin?”

“We should be looking for Eleanor in the galleries,” she said and told her mother about finding a note about an exhibit of Eleanor’s photographs.

“There has been so much to look for,” Diane said, trying to soothe her daughter. “We can only look in one place at a time. Tomorrow we’ll look for your gallery. Now let’s go to tea. I’m starving.”

Chapter 17

The tiny travel clock ticked loudly in the middle of the night. The neighborhood was a quiet one and that made the ticking even more insistent. Robin thought she heard every second pass as she waited for morning.

She struggled to remember the name of the gallery. She turned over and over in her mind those news reports she’d found on the Internet. She remembered how excited she was to find this shred of evidence of her sister.

Diane cried out in her sleep in the next bed. Robin turned toward her and saw a faint glistening of tears down her cheek.

“Mom,” she whispered. She crawled out of bed and stooped beside her mother. “Mom, wake up,” she said, shaking her mother’s arm. Her mother moaned in her sleep and then woke up.

“What’s the matter, Robin?” she asked when she saw her daughter standing over her.

“You were having a nightmare,” she said. “Your cheek. You’ve been crying in your sleep.”

“Have I,” she said, wiping the tear away. “I must have been having one of those dreams again.”

“What dreams?”

“Oh dreams like the ones I had after we lost your sister. I kept having the same nightmare, really. I kept calling out to her but she’d never answer. It’s nothing,” Diane forced a smile in the dark.

“You’re having these dreams again?” Robin asked, alarmed.

“Sometimes. They’ve never gone away completely. But I’ve had a few in the last couple of weeks. Usually just once or twice a week. Go back to sleep, dear. I’m fine,” her mother said, dismissing Robin. She rolled over and pulled the blanket up to her chin.

Robin lay down and tried to sleep. She heard the clock again and found herself thinking about what her mother had said. She hadn’t realized Eleanor's disappearance had caused nightmares; her mother never mentioned them before.

She found herself finally drifting off to sleep when a thought about the gallery came to her. I think it had just two names, she thought. In Charing Cross. Where was that? How many galleries could there be in Charing Cross?

Finally, Robin realized she was fully awake again and wasn’t going to sleep right away. She slipped out of bed and felt through the desk drawers for a telephone directory. She picked up the heavy book and her laptop and took them into the bathroom so she could turn on a light without waking her mother. She’d found the name once; she could find it again.

The owner’s name was Robert, she recalled. No, maybe it was Herbert. No Herberts in the phone book. Robin found a handful of galleries in Charing Cross. She thought they were Charing Cross – she hadn’t figured out the addresses yet. W-this and N-that: they didn’t make any sense to her.

Original Photography, Allen and Gordon, McAllister Gallery. None of them sounded familiar. Robin was certain it wasn’t the first. She flipped through the files she stored on her laptop, looking for the old notes she had kept when she had first searched the web for Ellen. That’s when she’d seen the note about the gallery opening. Maybe she had dismissed it back then, but tomorrow, she planned to take her mother on a tour of London galleries. The question was, which gallery was it?

She felt herself getting drowsier and decided it was no use now. Robin couldn’t find the note; had she even kept it? She closed her laptop. She’d look again in the morning. She lay the book and computer down on the dresser and turned out the light.

Robin listened to the clock tick as she fell back to sleep. The name Herbert stuck in her mind. She was sure she’d need to go to Charing Cross. How long could it take to go through all of the galleries there? she wondered. And she drifted off to sleep.

“Wow,” Robin murmured when she saw the list of galleries that came up in her web search early the next morning. She counted seven on the first page that looked credible, six on the second page, eight on the third...and there were at seven pages to go through. She added “Eleanor Browne” to the search and came up with a few Brownes but none looked like Ellen. Variations didn’t help either.

“Maybe,” Diane suggested as she watched Robin search, “we need to write them all down and just start looking.”

“We’re only here a few more days, Mom,” Robin said. “I know it had a short name, two words maybe.”

“Okay, then. Look for two-name galleries. How about this one: ‘Photographer’s Eye’? Or ‘Pixelated Dreams’?”

“That I’d remember. No, it was a boring name, nothing cute or clever. It was more like these: ‘Original Photography, Allen and Gordon, McAllister Gallery.’”

“Are they on the same street? Let’s start with those. Maybe there’s a reason they caught your attention first,” Diane offered, sitting on the bed to put on her shoes. “Write them down.”

“Yes, ma’am. That’s a good start. I have already written down these,” Robin added, showing her the little notebook. “Fifteen of them. Can we see them all before tea?”

“We’d better get going,” Diane said. “Finish your croissant.”

Charing Cross looked just as Diane and Robin hoped it would. Shops small and dark tumbled together in a variety of styles along narrow streets. Window displays in each beckoned them to come inside. Traffic was heavy and pedestrians filled the sidewalks on this fine early spring day. Diane found herself stopping in front of a shop window filled with classic titles by English authors — all books she knew she should read someday. “Oh, look,” Robin wandered to the shop next door. “This is one of the galleries on our list: ‘Original Photography’.”

After a brief, very brief, visit to the first gallery, Robin and Diane knew it was going to be a long day. One by one, Robin and Diane wandered through the galleries, stopping to ask the shop clerks and owners about a photo exhibit by Ellen. Some brushed them off; some seemed irked that these women would waste their time. A few were kind. None were helpful or even offered to look through their records or even their memories.

“That was so long ago,” they heard more than once. “I wonder,” said Diane after the third time a shop clerk said it, “ if that’s supposed to be helpful.”

At noontime, they stopped in a small cafe to rest their feet and see if a bit of food would raise their spirits. “What a long morning,” Robin sighed as she sat at a tiny cloth-covered table.

“How many more are on your list now?” Diane said as she looked over the menu card.

“I can’t bear to look,” she said. “Must be a half dozen still to go.”

“Don’t think about it now. Have some lunch and we’ll think about something else for a while,” her mother said.

Robin looked around the shop and felt happier just by the chintz-covered surroundings. Ladies wore hats and gloves in here. Not all, of course, but there was a table near theirs with a group of women in trim suits, pearls and pastel-colored hats. She looked down at her own rumbled pants and simple shirt. Her mother, naturally, fit in with these well-dressed ladies. She’d chosen gray flannel trousers, suede shoes with a buckle on the toe, a sunny yellow sweater set. Robin knew she’d pressed the clothes before she put them on.

Robin looked at her mother and took a sip of the soda that had just arrived. “I’m feeling lucky,” she said to her mother’s obvious surprise.

“After this dreadful morning?”

“Why not? We can’t have come all this way to find nothing.”

“And?”

Robin paused as delicate sandwiches were placed before them.

“And, I was wondering if we could make some time tomorrow to look for some new clothes.”

“Well, I guess if you’re feeling lucky, then we’ll probably have some time. I’ve been wanting to get to Harrods before we go.”

The two women felt refreshed after lunch. They had studied the map while they ate and found they still had six galleries in a ten block area. “Let’s split up,” Diane said. “We can each go to three of them and meet at the hotel. She tore the list in half and handed part to her daughter. “See you at 6.”

Robin hoped her mother was having better luck than she was having as she exited from the first shop of the afternoon. The owner, who must not have had lunch yet, practically tossed her out of his cramped, dusty gallery for wasting his time.

Her next stop was in the adjacent shop, a very different place from any of the others she had seen so far. It had the same quaint stone facade of the others. But inside was a wide-open space, quite modern with deep gray walls and black painted steel dividers, smoke-colored windows and smooth concrete floor. The main gallery was dedicated to sculpture. The current exhibit focused on the carvings of Inuits from Canada. Robin found herself drawn to a tiny greenish stone figure in a case by the front door. It was of a man standing on one foot. He seemed to be swinging a drum or tambourine. Cold and smooth, the stone man touched her.

“That’s a real beauty,” said a pale, thin man with a fringe of sandy hair and beard as he welcomed Robin into the gallery. “The artist was one of the best in Canada. His work is in great demand. Do you like sculpture? Or would you prefer painting? Painting and photography are in the upstairs galleries,” he said, leading her to the steel stairs at the back of the gallery.

“Yes, well, actually, I’m interested in photography. I’m looking for Herbert Gordon,” Robin said.

“That would be my partner. I’m Bernard Allen. Do you have an appointment with Herbert? He’s usually not here until after lunch.”

“No, I’m really looking for a photographer. Perhaps you know her,” Robin said and launched into her story.

“Eleanor Browne Carrington,” Allen said, tapping his lip with his index finger. He looked at Robin. “I can’t say I know the name. Let me check my files. Do you know if she had an agent?”

He led Robin down into a lower level of the gallery, a white washed basement cluttered with filing cabinets and pieces of sculpture and wide canvases still shrouded in bubble wrap.

“I’m such a pack rat. Nobody keeps paper files anymore. Electronic files, jpegs and pdfs are all most people keep now. Who needs all the dusty paper? Herbert keeps telling me to get rid of this stuff,” he said, lifting up piles of catalogs and press releases stacked on top of the filing cabinets.

“You never know when you’ll find out one of your artists needs a copy of his catalog — or you find out someone who showed their work here has become famous,” he continued and slipped reading glasses off the top of his bald head to perch them on his long, narrow nose.

“Has that happened?” Robin asked.

“Not yet, but it will. Mark my word,” he said, pulling out a long file drawer. “I keep copies of all the exhibitions’ postcards and catalogs – if the exhibit is worth a catalog – and I file them by either the artist or agent. I’ve got whole drawers devoted to some agents,” he said, pulling out a drawer. “What did you say the agent’s name was?”

“I didn’t. It is Harris North,” Robin said.

“Don’t remember him either. Is he from here?”

“Does that matter?”

“No, not really,” Allen said. “Why don’t you have a seat?” he asked motioning to two low black leather chairs. “This could take a while.”

Robin fidgeted while the man hunted through rows of filing cabinets. She couldn’t imagine how he had them filed after watching him open drawer after drawer when suddenly Allen pulled a slip of paper from the bottom drawer.

“Aha. What’s this? Here’s a postcard announcing the opening of a photo exhibit of scenes from the Alps.” Allen handed her a thick glossy card with tiny images of mountains and village scenes.

There it was: “Eleanor Carrington.” The exhibit opened April 7, 1996, with a reception at 7:30 p.m.

“Do you have any other information about her? An address? A phone number maybe?” Robin asked.

“Should be here somewhere.”

Robin thought she was going to scream as the man rifled through the drawer again. Her mother focused on the card.. “It’s been 10 years,” he said, as a sort of apology. Allen looked at Robin’s face filled with disappointment. “Let me call Herbert and see if he can come down.”

The man disappeared into a tiny office for only a few minutes before he came back shaking his head.

“No answer from Herbert,” he said with an apologetic shrug. When he saw the disappointment cross the face of the young woman, he offered, “I could have him call you later if you’ll leave your contact information.

Robin handed him her business card, scribbling the name of the hotel on the back. “Just in case he can talk to us while we’re in London.”

As she stepped back onto the city street, the sunny skies had turned gray and the first rain drops were beginning to fall. Robin rooted around in her bag for her pocket-sized umbrella.

As the umbrella went up, the rain came down. Hard and heavy. She dashed across the street to a women’s clothing store. Glancing at her watch, she saw she had only an hour to get back to the hotel. And she had one more gallery to see.

Not in this rain, she thought as rivers rushed from the downspouts. As she waited for the rain to stop, she browsed through the racks of scarves. Picking out a flowery pink one, her cell phone rang. It was Jane.

“So how are Will and Harry?”

“Wouldn’t you know? They weren’t free for tea yesterday,” answered Robin who was never surprised by Jane’s calls. “Shouldn’t you be in class?”

“I had a break and thought I’d see what you were finding out.”

“Nothing so far,” Robin sighed.

“Not even a good souvenir?”

“I’m picking out something for you right now. It’s pink and flowery and very British. That’s all I’m saying.”

“And what about yourself? Find something pretty? Or maybe someone handsome?”

“The man in the last gallery was charming,” Robin started and she notice a new call coming in. “Oh Jane, I’ve got a call from London. I better go.”

“You say that to me much too often. See you this weekend.”

“Yes,” Robin answered the new caller.

“Miss Browne, Herbert Gordon here,” said the man, speaking with a rich, bass accent. “Bernard tells me you’re looking for your sister. And I might have known her? Well, I do remember and I’m aghast that Bernard didn’t remember her. She worked here, not for long, you see, but it was one of those rare times when there was anyone other than Bernard and me in the gallery.”

“Yes, Bernard, except of course your mother,” he said, though clearly not to Robin.

“I’m just across the street. I could stop right over,” Robin said, throwing down the scarf and hurrying toward the door.

“No, I’m sorry that won’t be convenient right now. A shipment just arrived and I have to take care of it,” Gordon said. “I was thinking perhaps tomorrow?”

“Yes, sure, “ Robin answered, looking through the store window at the gallery. A truck was parked in front and the driver was carrying small brown parcels inside. She could see Mr. Allen holding the door open.

“At ten? Very good, see you then,” Gordon said. He hung up before Robin could answer. She noticed him coming to the door as well.

“May I help you?” a shop girl asked her, holding up the pink scarf.

Robin felt like a spring day when she dressed the following morning. She put on her new pale green skirt, liking it as much as the first time she wore it. She tied her new floral scarf around her white blouse and examined the look in the mirror.

“All dressed up!” Diane said as she came out of the bathroom. “Your new clothes are quite becoming. I wish we had had time today for more shopping.”

“This outing is much more important,” Robin said. “It’s why we’re here, after all.”

“I hope it goes better than yesterday,” Diane said, as she turned on the TV, looking for the weather forecast. “And I hope it doesn’t rain like it did yesterday.”

Diane had arrived back at the hotel just before Robin, soaking wet, without umbrella and with a discouraged look on her face. But she had forgotten the terrible afternoon once she heard about Robin’s appointment the next morning. The feelings of disappointment gave way to anticipation. Robin knew she wasn’t ready to feel hopeful, so seeing any glimmer of her own excitement in Diane was a good sign.

When the two women arrived at the gallery, both owners were there to greet them.

Bernard Allen came up first. “Good to see you again. I’m afraid I never got another chance to look for that card yesterday afternoon — I’ll try while you talk to Herbert. He reminded me who Eleanor was.” He disappeared down into the office.

“Yes I do remember the girl,” Gordon nodded. “I wasn’t really interested in her work at the time but she begged and pleaded, asked for a job, asked for a recommendation. She was so insistent. Finally, I decided to give her a temp job. We had a big exhibit about to open and an enormous amount of mailing to do. I hired her to lick envelopes and run errands. It couldn’t have been for more than a few weeks. I had no intention of showing her work but a small show canceled and rather than have bare walls, I asked her to bring in what she had. ”

“She turned out to be a real go-getter,” he added. The work she showed me from the Alps was good but later she showed me photos from the Australian Outback that had real promise. She said she had recently come back from Australia where had been camping and shooting pictures. I was hoping to get some of those for an exhibition before the Olympics, Sydney, you may remember. As I said, she didn’t stay very long. Said she wanted to go back to America. Needless to say, I never got a chance to show her Australian work,” said Gordon. He was a barrel-chested man with shirtsleeves rolled up to show his very hairy arms. He wore thick glasses and a hearing aid. “And you’re her sister?” he asked.

He didn’t wait for a response before returning to his recollections. “You lost her, eh? She certainly disappeared from here. She came in the day of the exhibit opening and said she had to get going. I never heard from her again. When did you lose touch with her? Oh, yes, you told me. She had mentioned a husband once. He was a photographer, too, worked for one of the news agencies, I believe. I don’t know what happened to him, though.” Gordon had clearly forgotten Robin and Diane were there as he remembered Ellen.

With every tidbit of information, Robin grew hungrier for more. A hundred questions crowded her mind.

“Do you have any idea how I can get in touch with her?”

“I really don’t. Spoke to her agent a couple of times after that but not to her. We couldn’t connect. I really wanted her Australia photos. It just didn’t work out. Have you called her agent?” Gordon asked.

“Found the catalog,” Allen called out, waving a thin paperback volume. “It’s not much but maybe it will help.”

“Oh very good!” exclaimed Gordon. Robin couldn’t help herself, rushing to pull the book out of the man’s hands. She had to see. It wasn’t much: a few pages filled with color photocopies and stapled together.

On the cover was a picture of the castle in Salzburg, the same photograph hanging in her foyer. The mystery man leaned against the lamppost. “This man here? Is this her husband?” Robin asked.

Diane leaned over to study the photo.

“What? Hmm. I don’t know,” Gordon said. He pulled his glasses off, dug a magnifying glass out of his shirt pocket and examined the cover. “I guess it could be.”

“Could we borrow this?”

“Taxi!” Robin called out, clutching the catalog firmly.

As she stepped into the taxi, a shred of paper fluttered to the ground. Diane caught it before a breeze picked it up again.

“What’s this?” she asked as she got in beside Robin. “All it says is, ‘Eleanor and 1203 Butterworth Court.’ Not even a city”

“Is it Ellen’s address here!?” Robin felt her heart thumping as she tried to catch her breath.

“Driver,” Diane asked. “Do you know where Butterworth Court is?”

“Not in London, I’m afraid. I know my streets here and that’s not a place I’ve heard of.”

Hugh had pulled out an atlas of London maps and pored over the index. “Not a Butterworth Court anywhere.”

“Let me get another map. We’ll find it,” he said and flashed her a kind smile.

“I’m keeping you from your job,” Robin protested, suddenly aware of the time as they sat in a cab without the meter running.

“Think nothing of it,” he said. “Glad to help young ladies in distress. Besides, I like a good mystery.”

Stashed under the front seat, the taxi driver had a pile of street maps. One by one, he studied the index. Robin grew a little more impatient and a little less hopeful each time he threw another book aside.

“Couldn’t you just type it into your GPS there?” Robin said, pointing to the little receiver by the meter.

“Never trust those things,” he said as he opened another book. Robin looked at him skeptically and he relented. “Well, all right. I’ll give it a go.”

“Buttercup, you said? No, Butterworth.” He typed and retyped, thick thumbs fumbling on the little keypad. “What do you know? There’s only one in all of England. In Bristol.”

“Bristol? Is that near here?”

“I’m afraid not, miss. It’s west of London, down the M4. About 200 kilometers away, it looks.” he said, showing her the spot on the GPS map. “You can catch the train to Bristol from Paddington Station. It takes about an hour to get there. Can I drop you there?”

“What do you think, Mom? Should we go now?”

“I’ve always wanted to see Bristol in the wintertime,” Diane replied.

“Paddington Station it is.”

Chapter 18

Where was it? Butterworth Court, on the map, was about a mile from the railway station, near the center of Bristol. In the damp cold, Robin had noticed as they walked along the streets the old town had absolutely none of the charm she had expected from an English village. Diane’s hopeful spirit had obviously dissipated with every step along the dull grey streets. But they weren’t here for sightseeing, Robin thought and looked again at the map to figure out if they were on the right route to Butterworth Court.

It didn’t take long before Robin and her mother grew uneasy. Diane hadn’t said a word for nearly a half hour. Robin didn’t know how to sound upbeat. The roads were quiet on this ugly afternoon and there didn’t seem to be a taxi in sight. After a long hour of walking, they arrived at the right street.

“Butterworth Court!” Diane exclaimed at seeing the street sign. She hurried across the street and looked into the short cul de sac.

Robin was convinced the address had to be wrong. All of these buildings were plain brown boxes, ugly things designed for function rather than form. These couldn’t be homes. The sign at number 2, beside garish purple doors, said these were City Council offices. Businesses ran down either side of the cul de sac – and there was no 1203 anywhere.

“The address isn’t here,” Robin said. “It can’t be right. I wouldn’t even know what door to knock on. Want to stop in the City Council offices? Maybe someone there could help?”

Robin shoved the map into her shoulder bag and wrapped her scarf tighter against the cold. Her sore feet knew she had been walking a long time. She turned at her mother when she didn’t answer. Instead, she seemed to be staring at some distant spot down the street. “Mom, are you all right?” Robin said, tucking her hand around her mother’s arm.

“We’ve come all this way for nothing, Robin,” she said, turning to look at her daughter. “I’ve brought you here for nothing. Whatever made me think we’d find her?”

Diane’s well-tailored façade seemed to crumble as the tears came. Robin was surprised to see her mother shudder and begin to fall as the full weight of her sadness came upon her. Robin wrapped her arm around her mother, patting her mother as she used to comfort a younger Robin.

“We tried, Mom. We tried everything we could think of.” Robin sighed, feeling the hurt again. “I wish she’d been here, too.”

The two women stood there staring at Butterworth Court, darkening in the twilight. Robin didn’t think she could take another step on this search. And she knew she couldn’t drag her mother along. Standing there was all they could do right now. Robin felt defeated.

She hadn’t even wanted to come, she thought with a touch of anger welling up in her. Eleanor didn’t want to be found – if Eleanor was even alive. Robin had seen the pictures. She’d talked to be people who knew her. Why did they know her sister? Why hadn’t she come home? Why hadn’t she contacted her own mother?

Anger brought strength and Robin straightened herself up, squared her shoulders and patted her mother.

“Enough is enough, Mother,” she said. “We have to stop this. You know we do.” She dropped her voice to a whisper as if that would lessen the pain of what she was saying. “For us, Eleanor is gone.”

A light drizzle began to fall on the two women standing frozen there on the street. “Come on, Mom. It’s raining. Let’s get you out of the rain. How about some tea?”

“How about a beer?” her mother said, forcing a smile.

Chapter 19

As the plane touched down at BWI Airport, Robin and her mother agreed to make more regular visits. Robin promised she’d visit Havre de Grace the next weekend. She hugged her mother at the curb. Andrew was there to take her mother back to Havre de Grace. She was catching the light rail into the city.

Spring had begun to make its appearance while she was away. The grass was greener, she noticed as the train sped toward town. And crocuses were everywhere, turning drab patches purple and gold. The sky here was still gray as London’s but to Robin it felt so much better than she expected. As she watched the familiar sights go by, Robin pondered the meaning of their strange two weeks in England. They hadn’t found Eleanor or her daughter or even her husband. But despite the pain they felt standing there on a dreary Bristol street, they couldn’t shake the feeling they were going to find Ellen. All they had to decide was whether they wanted to keep looking.

Oh well, Robin thought as she arrived in front of her rowhouse. She somehow didn’t feel so alone anymore. The sight of that pink Formstone house cheered her. After the elegant townhouses of Notting Hill, she even felt like laughing out loud. There was no pretension in her grandmother’s house. As it had always been, it was a sturdy little shelter.

Robin dragged her heavy suitcase full of new clothes into the foyer and looked up at her sister’s photographs. Maybe I didn’t find you, sister dear, but our mother made me find a killer wardrobe. And maybe we found each other, too.

She was still wearing her coat when the doorbell rang.

“Jim!” Robin was surprised to see her handsome neighbor at her door.

“Hon, I’ve missed you,” he said, using the local slang term of endearment.

“Hon, how nice to see you too,” Robin said. “Come in.” She closed the door behind her visitor, her tall, attractive visitor and took a good look as he admired the photographs. She smiled and made herself breathe. What a surprise. She’d dreamed of inviting him into her house many times. Now he was here. Now what!

“The truth is, Robin, I’ve missed your cookies.” Jim said, turning to her and nodding with great seriousness.

“Cookies?” Robin couldn’t think what he was talking about.

“You mean you don’t remember the cookies you made for me? Macaroons; chocolate covered macaroons. I’ve thought about them for days—no, weeks.” The little laugh lines around those wonderful brown eyes were showing. And Robin remembered that terrible night when she made cookies to help soothe her own raw feelings.

“Yes, the macaroons, I remember,” Robin said.

Jim looked around and saw the suitcase. “Going on a trip?” he asked.

“Just came back from a trip.”

“That’s why I haven’t seen you. I actually came looking for you last Sunday. A bunch of us were headed to Bandaloops for brunch. I’ve got to get your phone number so I can call and invite you properly. You’re not in the book.”

“No, as a matter of fact I’m not. But my grandfather is. The phone is still in Joseph Browne’s name. I don’t want my name in a phone book; it just doesn’t seem safe to me.”

“Very prudent of you. You never know when strange men will go through the phone book, looking for women to bother.”

“Very funny; that’s not what I meant.”

“Yes, I know. Are you up to dinner tonight?”

Robin knew she shouldn’t but she wasn’t missing an opportunity to go out with Jim. “I’m a bit tired,” she admitted. “But I’ve got to eat.”

“Give me your phone number and I’ll be by at 7.”

Chapter 20

By the time their dinners arrived, Robin had outlined her strange odyssey. A glass of wine had cheered her a bit. Or was it Jim? He had listened intently, nodding now and then. And when she finally paused, he sighed.

“That’s some story, Robin,” he said.

“I couldn’t have made up a wilder tale – and yet it has really happened. I really don’t know what to think but can’t get it out of my mind that Ellen must still be alive,” Robin said, her fork poised over the salmon.

“I don’t know where I’d look if I’d lost a sister,” Jim said and reached over to touch her hand. “But I’m here if you need any help.”

“You know it’s kind of funny,” Robin said. “When I met those two women last month I’d been feeling pretty lonely. Now my mother calls me every day – I hadn’t spoken regularly to her in years. The two women who say they knew Eleanor have left several messages on my answering machine, saying they want to offer their support. And now here I am out with a reasonably attractive man – even if he is a stockbroker.”

As Jim began to bluster about the stockbroker remark, Robin laughed and then grew more serious. “No really, I appreciate your concern. How’s your filet?” Robin realized she needed to lighten up.

Federal Hill is blessed with a handful of tiny, stylish restaurants. The menus may be quirky and the staff isn’t always as polished as you might expect. But the mood is always calm and quiet and the food and wine are good. Jim had led Robin to a restaurant she’d never heard of and she was impressed immediately. Six tables filled up all the space in the side dining room and the window looked out on a garden. It was too early for most plants but even in the early spring, the tree limbs, rocks and spare fountain created a charming view. And it gave the two of them something to talk about when the silence grew awkward.

“I grew up in a state park,” Jim announced as they discussed the garden.

“In the state park?” Robin asked

“Oh yes. My father was the park’s manager and in those days they gave your family a house. Commuting was easy – though it didn’t seem like Dad ever got away from his work. That’s why I live in the city.”

“Why?”

“I’d had enough trees, birds and dirt to last a lifetime.”

“Nobody ever gets tired of trees and birds,” Robin protested.

“Maybe not really trees and birds but our house was a little isolated. I couldn’t wait to go to school every September just to see my friends,” Jim explained.

“Well, yes I can understand that,” she said, thinking he’s the kind of guy who wants to be in the middle of everything, especially a crowd. She liked that kind of guy.

“I grew up in Annapolis,” Robin told him as she sipped the last of her wine. “It was a very small town in those days and everybody knew everybody, especially on the street where we lived. All I had to do was go outside and I’d find a friend or go inside and find my sister. “

“You really were close, weren’t you?” he asked as he poured her another glass.

“I took her for granted. She was older than me so I thought of her as ‘big.’ I asked her for advice and I listened to what she said. We were good friends. I keep hearing stories of sisters who can’t be bothered with each other. I was lucky.”

“Hmmm. You must have been. So where do you think Eleanor is now?”

“I have no idea. I have no idea if she’s alive. I think she is. I’m pretty sure she is. But she certainly doesn’t want to be found, does she?” As usual, Robin didn’t know whether to be angry or hurt. Either way, she couldn’t shake the confusion she always felt now.

“Where else could you look?”

“I’ve tried the Eastern Shore. I even went to England. And for what? A suitcase of nice English clothes,” she tried on her smile. And Jim flashed her one of his.

“What about a private eye? You know, a Sam Space kind of guy who could dig up the dirt?”

“Sam Space! Sam Spade, you mean,” Robin laughed.

“The sci-fi guy is Sam Space. Anyway, what about hiring one of those guys?”

“Mom hired one in England and he turned up the dirt all right. But it wasn’t Eleanor, not our Eleanor. He followed another woman with the same name. It was terrible.”

It was a good idea, Robin concluded as they discussed all the things he might be able to find: records they didn’t even know how to look for, addresses that he could look up. Maybe it was time to find a professional to help them out.

“I think you’re on to something, with your Sam Space guy,” Robin said. “I’ll see who’s available around here. I’ve never heard of anybody using a private detective in Baltimore -- but people must need them.”

“Enough of that for tonight. What shall we have for dessert?”

Chapter 21

Opening and closing doors on memories was getting to be a wearisome hobby for Robin. Although she and her mother had decided to set aside any search for their missing person, Robin found her resolve wavering every time she found a quiet moment to think. The worst time was the short drive home from her downtown office. She knew she could walk the distance in less time but in cold weather especially, she drove. After all, the car was warm. Usually she enjoyed the ten-minute drive. She’d listen to the news on public radio or switch to the classical music station for a few minutes of Vivaldi to help her switch out of her work mode and relax. But today, she turned the radio off. She couldn’t stop the questions in her head. So she gave in – she knew she shouldn’t – and asked the same old questions again.

At dinner the night before, Jim asked her where else she could look. Where? Where! The list was endless. Where would Eleanor go if she wanted to be in a familiar place – even if she wanted to be invisible.

Baltimore? She’d probably be in the phone book. She wasn’t. But then again, Robin wasn’t either.

Annapolis? No, someone would see her who remembered her. Everybody remembered Eleanor. Not only was she the kind of person you loved and never forgot, everybody remembered the sad story of her disappearance. Her re-appearance would create quite a stir. The Capital would cover it for a month.

Maybe she would go back to New York. She’d be invisible there. But with a child? Sure people lived in New York with their children all the time – but not a girl who grew up in quiet Annapolis.

But maybe I should think about looking there…Robin mused, and then remembered the rest of her conversation last night. I guess maybe it’s time to hire that private investigator, she thought.

Then, as she turned her car into the spot on William Street, something occurred to her that she should have thought of before. Perhaps Ellen was on the Eastern Shore – or even Delaware. It’s close but not too close and nobody knows anybody over there anymore because of all the new people moving in.

When someone disappears from your life, someone you truly loved, the grief can be crushing. Why is it at moments when you feel the loss so painfully that you see someone who reminds you of the person you lost? You can’t take your eyes off that profile, the way the hair curls, the high cheekbones or long jawline. No, of course, it’s not her. But you wish it was.

Robin felt that way again. She remembered how she’d see Ellen’s ponytail or hear her laugh in some stranger. Back then, she was mourning the devastating loss of her only sister.

But now, time had passed, but she found herself looking at strangers again, wondering how she would have changed. How she had changed. Now, she thought, when I see someone who reminds me of Ellen, maybe it is Ellen. Maybe I see her all the time.

Robin waited to get out of her car as a blonde mother walking her tall pre-adolescent daughter past her door. They were new neighbors; Robin struggled to remember their names. The child is named Caitlin, I think. The mother is...Oh, I don’t know. Jim will remind me. He knows everybody.

She glanced at her watch on the short walk to her front door. Jim had agreed to stop by for a drink at 7:30. He hoped to make it, he told her, but couldn’t be sure because of a late meeting. Robin went straight for the phone, looking for messages. Oh, no, she thought, seeing the blinking light. He’s not coming.

“Hi Robin, this is Bill,” said the answering machine before Robin could reach the phone. “I just met an artist in Easton who remembers meeting Eleanor in Vienna. She may be crazy — we didn’t go to Vienna — but I know you’re turning over every clue you find.”

Robin felt as if she’d turned to stone. The loud beep and dial tone that finished the message made her start. She remembered Jim and hurried out of her coat and gloves and put them away. Before she had finished scooping up the newspapers spread over her coffee table, the doorbell rang.

“What’s wrong?” Jim asked. She put her hand to her hair as if to straighten it. “You’re so pale. What’s wrong?”

“Weird phone call. You know. Nothing,” she answered, hoping she sounded cheerful. “I just got home and haven’t even changed. Could you fix a drink?”

“Anything for you, hon,” he said and disappeared into the kitchen. The sounds from the kitchen comforted her. They reminded her how her own house, and this house when her grandmother lived here, sounded once upon a time.

She ran upstairs to slip into a pair of jeans and old docksiders. And then she unwrapped a heather grey sweater from her trip to England. After taking another look at her face — yes she was a little pale, she thought — and sweeping blush across her cheeks, she headed back to the kitchen.

She wanted to focus on the charming scene in front of her. A gorgeous man in her house was making martinis. Dressed in black jeans and a deep red turtleneck, he looked so comfortable here in her house. He’d lit candles n the living room and turned on her favorite Deanna Bogart ballads on the CD player. She’d dreamed about an evening like this and it looked better in real life. But the phone call with Bill had left her breathless.

“Want to talk about it now?” Jim stopped measuring the gin and turned to look at Robin.

“It was so odd, really. A coincidence,” she said, and looked into the pantry for something to snack on. “I should have stopped at Cross Street. There’s not much here,”

“Sweetie,” Jim said, wrapping his arms around her. “It’s okay. Tell me what was odd.”

“Remember Bill? There was just a strange message on my answering machine. Somebody remembered Eleanor and was talking to Bill about it. He thought I’d like to know.”

Robin kept on looking in her pantry so Jim handed her a box of crackers from the top shelf. “I brought cheese,” he whispered.

“So your sister’s old boyfriend gets a call from some stranger who knew Eleanor. Now how is that possible?” Jim asked, stirring a drop of vermouth into the shaker. “Out of the blue, someone talks to Bill about Eleanor? Really.”

“I know, I know. It was so odd,” Robin said, spreading crackers on a plate. “A coincidence really.”

Bill really hadn’t said much, she thought. He had a group of artists in his office planning a spring exhibit of Eastern Shore works at the university. One woman had arrived early and while they were making small talk, she noticed a photo from the Europe trip. Bill told her about the group and she pointed to the girl with the blond ponytail wearing a Salisbury University sweatshirt.

“She said she had met her, Robin,” Bill had said. “She remembered the sweatshirt and then remembered seeing her in Vienna. She said she had been surprised to see the name of a college from the Eastern Shore and had gone up to the girl and shown her her own t-shirt from Washington College. They had laughed about the small-world-ness of two Eastern Shore college students being in the same train station.

“What I don’t understand is how she remembers it being in Vienna,” he said.

“Bill, it’s been years. Maybe she remembers the wrong train station. Or maybe she remembers another girl,” Robin offered.

“Yeah, she didn’t remember the girl’s name and said they may never have even introduced themselves.”

“What is her name?”

“Debbie something...I’ve got to have it written down in my meeting notes. Mmmm. Yes, here it is. Debbie Bunting Caine. She works in Easton at the Academy of the Arts.”

“I’ll give her a call,” Robin said. “See if she might remember something else. Maybe we can figure out if Eleanor went to Vienna after she left Salzburg.”

Robin took a martini from Jim and kissed him. “Let’s talk about it another time. So how was your day, dear?”

“Great,” he said, and led her to the worn couch. A sip of a strong drink and the attentions of her charming neighbor took her mind off the strange conversation she’d had with Eleanor’s old boyfriend.

There would be time to ponder that later, she thought. With only the slightest hesitation, she slid her arm around Jim’s shoulders and leaned toward him. Jim turned to kiss her.

Chapter 22

“Would you like to go to that Medieval Times show sometime?” Jane pointed to the faux castle that anchored one end of the mall.

Robin glanced up before sliding into the prime parking spot right by the entrance. “I hear it’s fun,” she shrugged, “but it seems a little silly to me.”

“You’re probably right. I’d much rather spend a couple of hours trying on shoes.”

“Sister, you came to the right place. They’ve got plenty of shoes in here.”

The pair headed inside. Jane was looking for sandals for a spring trip to meet her boyfriend Parker’s family in New Orleans.

“If we don’t find something in here...” Jane said, scanning the long rows of shoes.

Robin had already veered off to look at a pair of shiny red stilettos. “Hey, wait for me,” Jane said.

Without another word, the two women gathered pairs of shoes from the shelves. When they had all they could carry, they found a bench and sat down. Robin admired the brown leather and bead sandals Jane had found. Jane turned her nose up at Robin’s red stilettos. “Not your style,” she said, shaking her head.

“Well, they could become my style,” Robin protested.

She returned the shoes to the box and slid on a pair of navy sling-backs.

“Much better,” Jane nodded in approval. “So what’s on your mind?”

“Me? Oh nothing. Just shoes,” Robin replied.

“Shoes? Hardly. You wear the same black pumps every day. Or those flats, yes, the ones you have on now. Spill it. I can tell you’re nearly bursting with another clue.”

“I don’t want to bore you with yet another useless tidbit of information.”

“The sidekick needs to know everything, remember? What’s happened now?”

“Remember that woman who stopped to talk to us in Easton a few weeks back?”

Jane nodded. “When you got the birth certificate for the child in the accident, yes.”

“Bill called me to say he had met her, too,” Robin said.

“Lady really gets around doesn’t she?” Jane answered.

“She said she had met Ellen.” Robin told her friend about the meeting she had related to Bill. “When he told me about it, I didn’t remember her or our strange meeting in Easton. I even told Jim about it and the name didn’t ring a bell.”

“What was her name? I don’t remember it either,” Jane said, looking at the black espadrilles on her feet.

“Those look good,” Robin said. “Debbie Caine. Why would you remember it? She was that crazy lady who watched us through lunch. Then she asked if we had kids at her kids’ high school. Us.”

“Oh yes, her. How could I forget?”

“I remembered it in the middle of the night. Woke up and remembered her. I must have had a dream about the day. I don’t know.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“About that woman?”

“No, the shoes. I like these. They’ll work for my trip to New Orleans.”

“Oh, yeah. Good choice. I’m getting the pumps,” she sighed.

“Go ahead, get the red ones if you can walk in them.”

“I can learn. Jim might like them.”

“Right you can just lean on him as you wobble down Charles Street. And that woman? Are you going to call her?”

“I don’t know. I guess I should. I just thought she was creepy.”

“Stalker. She had stalker written all over her.”

“Poor woman. Probably thought she was helping and we’ve dragged her reputation through the mud.”

“Serves her right.”

“You know, Rob, maybe it is time to call a private investigator. Have you done that yet?”

“Not yet. How do you find one of those guys.”

“Beats me but maybe you could get someone else to deal with this Debbie person.”

“Sounds like a plan. An expensive plan but a plan.”

“Call your mother. She hired one in London easily enough.”

“Good idea. Let’s eat.”

“Robin, I’m serious. You’ll do it?”

“Promise. Cross my heart. Don’t know where or how to find someone trustworthy but I’ll give it my best shot. Now can we go have lunch?”

Chapter 23

Robin wasn’t so sure it was a good idea to hire a private investigator once she met George Foster and saw his office. And she certainly wondered why she hadn’t taken up Jane’s offer to accompany her.

Foster’s office was on the second floor of a boat repair shop down a decrepit section of Furnace Branch Road. She’d almost missed the dingy two story once-white cinder block building. A parking lot filled with old — maybe abandoned — fishing boats had caught her eye so she stopped. Yes, there it was: a flight of worn wooden stairs up to a second floor office. She parked and locked her car, held tight to her handbag and ventured nervously up those stairs. A cracked black plastic sign announced she had made it, “George M. Foster, Private Investigator, LLC.”

Unsure whether to knock or go in, she turned the door knob. What the heck, she thought and took a deep breath.

“Mr. Foster?” she called, as she stepped inside the office. It was only one room, cramped with the unmistakable smell of oil. The walls were unfinished, the floor a gray speckled tile. An ancient grey metal desk seemed to stand sentry at the doorway. It was covered in old calendars from the boat shop below. A long row of file cabinets, all different shades of tan, stretched to the window at the end of the room. A single light bulb with a string hanging from it lit the dusty, disordered mess.

“Back here,” a voice called out and a door she hadn’t seen before opened. “Sorry about the mess,” he said as he advanced, guessing her thoughts. “The landlord stores stuff up here. My office is in back.”

Foster led Robin to a brightly-lit dark-paneled office in back. A massive carved desk dominated the room and two pink-upholstered chairs stood ready to welcome guests. Foster motioned to Robin to have a seat in one of them while he took the other. She glanced around the room. Sheer curtains hung from both windows and a grandfather clock stood between then. Not a paper was in sight. A deep burgundy patterned carpet lay below her feet.

“My wife decorated the place. I mean my ex-wife,” he said.

“It’s nice,” she said.

“Clients get real worried when they see the outside and then they walk in the door and I’m always afraid they’ll run right back out again. I can’t get Bob, that’s the landlord, to clean up in front. It hasn’t ruined my business yet, but it hasn’t done it any good.”

“How can I help you? You said on the phone you’re looking for someone?”

Robin told Foster the story of how her sister disappeared and all the clues she had gotten in recent weeks that Ellen is still alive. As she talked she looked the detective over, trying to judge whether she liked him. He was a short, wiry man with wavy brown hair combed off his forehead and back to the collar of his weathered dark blue polo shirt. Deeply tanned, his face was crinkled and spotted as if he had always spent long hours in the sun. His eyes were deep-set and light blue almost grey and he watched her intently as she talked. He had glasses hanging around his neck, which she never saw him use.

He folded his hands and leaned forward. “Seems like I should be able to find her then. I’ll need a few things. Mostly numbers: social security number, driver’s license number, passport. What’s her date of birth? How about a picture?”

“Here’s her graduation picture. I haven’t got any of those numbers. Well. I know her date of birth. She was born July 20, 1970.”

“That could make it more difficult...Where was she born?”

“Baltimore City, at Mercy Hospital.”

“Anybody else that may have this information?”

“I asked my mother — she’s the only other person who would have it — and she said she hasn’t been able to find her social security number. She didn’t keep the other numbers. All she has is her birth certificate and some old report cards. And a letter congratulating her on a scholarship.”

“No, don’t need those. Well, I can look around. See what I can turn up.”

“I’ll give you a call in, say, a week. If I think it’s do-able, we’ll talk about my fees then. Let me walk you out.”

Robin called her mother to report on the meeting as soon as she got home. “I guess he’s okay,” she said, explaining the horrible building where Foster’s office was located.

“He seemed like he could help us?”

“I guess. He wanted Ellen’s social security number and driver’s license. But he didn’t seem to care when we didn’t have them. I guess he knows how to track that stuff down,” Robin said though she wasn’t convinced.

“I’ll keep going through the old boxes in the attic. Maybe they’ll turn up. But I suspect I threw them away. They didn’t seem important then,” Diane said.

“He said he’d call next week,” Robin added.

But he didn’t call. So Robin called him.

“Sorry, haven’t been able to get to your case. There’s this divorce case, you see... I’ll have more time next week. I’ll get back to you. Promise,” he said.

Chapter 24

So many new clues should have had Robin running around the state of Maryland for a month. But, as they say, life intervened. Robin had taken off all the time her supervisor would allow; the full-time search had to be put aside while she went back to work. It felt good to be back in her usual routine, she thought. And finally, the weather was warm and Baltimore was pretty again. A cold March had at last become a warm and sunny May.

Robin passed by her car every morning and then turned onto Light Street for the quick walk around the harbor to her office. Spring days were busy days at the aquarium and Robin knew her time would be filled with all the school groups coming to visit. Buses pulled up in front of the harborside attraction every day in April and May. On weekends, there were band trips and scout trips and a wedding every Saturday and Sunday. And then there was the Aquarium’s own annual gala in June. As the days grew longer so did Robin’s work schedule. As part of the events department, she had to meet school buses every morning, organize the tours and make sure there were enough seats at the dolphin presentation for all those schoolchildren. She directed teachers to good places for lunch and safe spots along the water for children to have a picnic.

She squeezed in meetings with brides and their mothers and occasionally their wedding planners. (If it weren’t for the wedding planners, Robin would have always enjoyed these meetings, she had thought more than once.) She did her best to make sure the brides got the weddings of their dreams and the Aquarium survived those dreams -- the things brides asked for, she thought. She had turned down several SCUBA weddings for fear of alarming some of the more fragile denizens of the deep. Then she came in early on weekends to attend to the multitude of arrangements for the wedding receptions.

Robin considered herself lucky that the gala wasn’t her responsibility, but the committee members called constantly with questions about everything from tents to tables to valet parking. Her files were already open as she helped brides plan weddings so she took the extra questions in stride.

Here it was another pretty spring Friday, another full aquarium. It happened this way every year. Hordes of middle school children would arrive looking a little insulted that they had to wear matching T-shirts or name tags or some other identifying mark. They’d file into the dark corridors of the harborside building and slowly, little groups would disappear around corners, up the escalators, down the ramp to the shark tanks. The looks of insult faded away. In their place were smiles, conspiratorial glances, actual curiosity at the strange sea creatures in the tanks in front of them. Robin liked to watch the transformation. It was one of the things she liked best about the place. She remembered her own first visit. Not enthralled by a day spent looking at slimy, scaly fish, she had begged her mother to let her stay home. She even had to wear her blue and white uniform -- couldn’t she just die?!

But her mother wasn’t giving in. Well, perhaps she gave in a little. She slipped a $10 bill into Robin’s hand and suggested she go to the Cheesecake Factory or one of the other Harborplace restaurants for a treat during their free time afterwards.

Diane knew her daughter had a weakness for sweets. And of course the ploy worked.

Only, Robin remembered as she watched three long-legged 12 year olds giggle over the seahorses, she had never made it to Harborplace. She had discovered the rain forest on the top floor of the aquarium. This place was filled with birds and exotic creatures and trees. It seemed to be at the top of the world with a bird’s eye view of the Inner Harbor. She’d fallen in love with the sloth curled up in the crotch of a tree and become smitten with the iguana that looked like it would fall off the branch it clung to. Scarlet ibises and tanagers and a rainbow-hued flock of birds had entranced her. Robin wasn’t ready to go home when the bus arrived. She decided that day she would someday work here.

Robin shook off the moment of reverie to look at her watch. Meeting in five, she thought. I’ll take the back stairs. As she opened the door, she heard a thump and a squeal below her. She rushed down the metal steps to find a tiny blonde child holding onto a bloody knee.

“What happened?” she asked her.

“I fell,” the girl answered simply.

“Yes, I see that. Let me look at your knee,” Robin replied gently, peeling the little girl’s hands off a very scraped up knee.

“Ooooh,” she said, hoping she sounded sympathetic. She could see the child was trying very hard not to cry. “I hope it doesn’t hurt too much.”

“No, it’s okay.” The girl tried to stand up and get away from Robin. With fine golden strands falling in her eyes and a look of reserve, the child clearly was afraid. “I better go and find my friends,” she said as she backed away. “I lost them and thought this might be the way. But I tripped off the last step.”

“Come with me. We’ll clean up your knee and then find your friends,” Robin said and helped her collect her sweatshirt and flowery quilted backpack. She stooped once more to pick up a wayward cell phone. “I’ve got a first aid kit in my office.”

Robin’s cramped office was just around the corner from the stairs. The black metal furniture was cold and sterile looking. Robin had done her best to warm it up with a fish-themed cloth on the round table where she met clients. She’d cluttered her already-cluttered desk with photos of her friends and family. At least she had a nice view of Federal Hill, she always thought when the look of her office got her down. And she often found herself looking out the floor-to-ceiling windows between tasks. Of course, when it got warm, she would reluctantly close the blinds to the glittering harbor and curious tourists passing by.

“Sit down,” she told the little girl. “What’s your name?”

“Robbie,” the child answered and pushed a stray hair out of her eye. She glanced at her phone as if she was waiting for a text message.

“Go ahead. It’s okay if you want to text your friends. Tell them you’re here and you’ll meet them in five minutes in the rain forest.”

“Really?” Robbie said and she flipped open the phone. Robin couldn’t help feeling sorry for the little lost girl. She watched her fingers fly over the tiny keyboard as the nervousness that had tensed her face and arms faded away.

“Okay?” Robin said as the child looked up.

“Yeah. That’s where they’re going next. They said they’ll wait for me.”

Robin pulled the first aid kit out of her top file drawer and quickly cleaned up the child’s knee. It looked worse than it was. Two band-aids covered the scrape.

“I know where this picture was taken,” Robbie said, reaching for a photo on Robin’ desk.

“You do? Where?”

“It’s the lighthouse at St. Michael’s. My mom likes to go there. She takes me in the summer.”

“Yes, that’s right. My mom liked to take my sister and me there, too. That’s all of us and my grandmother in that picture.”

“Which one is you?”

“I’m the little one. My dad took that picture the summer my sister went to college. What school do you go to, Robbie?”

“Stevensville Middle School, over on the Eastern Shore.” she answered as she glanced at her buzzing phone. “I gotta go now. My friends...”

“I understand,” Robin said and escorted her up the elevator to the rain forest exhibit.

“Thanks,” the child shouted back as she ran off to her friends.

Robin felt her phone buzz. “Yes, sorry,” she said and turned around. “A minor emergency with one of the schoolchildren. Yes, another one. Why do I always seem to find them? I’ll be right there.”

Her hectic day finally came to an end. She rushed home, found her iPod and her recipe for an almond biscotti. After a quick trip to the market for some ingredients and dinner, she planned to spend the weekend in the kitchen. She hadn’t had much time for baking recently and she had decided tonight she needed the comfort of a warm oven filled with something sweet and fragrant. Tomorrow would be too busy.

Just as she headed out the door, the phone rang. Robin sighed and wondered if she shouldn’t let it just go to voice mail. Yes, she decided and then waited to hear if it was Jane or Jim or, please no, she thought, someone at work.

“Miss Browne, this is George Foster. I promised to call and hoped I’d have good news by now. The thing is I haven’t had time to do much research. But I did want to let you know, I hope to have more time next week. I’ve got a big client and the work is almost finished. I’ll call again next week so we can get together. I guess that’s it,” he told the answering machine. “Well, uhm, good-bye.”

Robin shook her head. Oh well, that’s not a good sign, she thought as she picked up her keys to lock her door.

She turned on her iPod, tuned out the noises of the streets and the stress of the week. She let the rhythm of the songs determine how fast she walked as she turned down the street. Robin tried to forget about the private investigator’s call, the search for her sister and her own mixed feelings about it. She’d been on her own for a long time now and enjoyed quiet times like this, especially when she found her schedule pulling her in multiple directions.

Tonight’s walk wasn’t entirely about getting to the store. As a singer sang softly into Robin’s ears of lost love and lost opportunity. Robin, however, heard the beat not the words and her pace slowed as she took her time admiring the lush blooms in neighbors’ window boxes and looking at trinkets in shop windows. By the time she got to the market, the tensions of the day had dissipated. The worries about her sister had been pushed away. Robin wasn’t really thinking about anything more than the recipe in her hand. She forced herself to think about only that. Tomorrow, she would be busy again: work around the house, dinner with Jim, brunch with Jane and Parker on Sunday, a call to her mother, a backyard desperately in need of her attention.

The days ran together in May. She worked so hard during the weekends she wanted nothing more than a relaxed weekend at home. She made time to hang out with Jim or Jane if she wasn’t with Parker.

And then she’d feel guilty about the house and get to work on projects that needed doing. Houses in general need regular attention; 100-year-old Federal Hill rowhouses need constant maintenance. Robin had discovered a leaky pipe dripping water into her living room one Thursday night. She found a plumber and then a dry wall guy who worked on weekends. Then another weekend was spent painting the repaired ceiling. Grandmother’s sofa would need to be replaced, she thought glumly, as she cleaned up the paint supplies.

Robin found it easier than she expected to fall back into her old schedule of work and domestic responsibilities. No, she thought, she was relieved to be back to her old ways. She wasn’t exhausted anymore, something she didn’t even realize until she woke up fully rested one rare quiet Saturday late in May.

The rain beating against the bedroom window woke her up early. Robin had planned to sleep in for a change. A wedding had been scheduled at the aquarium for this afternoon but was cancelled when the couple eloped the previous weekend. She had the whole day to do, well, nothing. Jim was out of town, at a family birthday party. She had had to turn down the invitation to join him because of the wedding.

The sound of the rain was soothing but Robin decided against staying in bed. Too many things to do, she thought.

Coffee first...then a morning spent reading the whole newspaper. Even finishing the always-difficult Saturday crossword puzzle. After lunch, maybe the rain would stop and she could walk down to the Cross Street Market. Perhaps she’d go even if the rain didn’t let up. She’d call her mother and ask her and Ray to come to dinner tomorrow. Diane had had a busy spring in Havre de Grace and hadn’t been able to talk much.

Change of plans, she thought when the phone rang.

“Miss Browne?” the caller asked. Robin recognized the voice of the private investigator. “George Foster here. I promised I’d call.”

“Yes, Mr. Foster,” she answered. “Any news?”

“It’s not going well,” he said. “I’ve been swamped, you see. This divorce investigation has been quite complicated.”

“You still haven’t looked, have you?”

“Well, it’s not that I haven’t thought about it,” he began. “I’ve got a partner that’s going to help me out and he’s coming on next week. I expect to have something for you very soon.”

Robin felt her patience fading away. “Okay,” she said, not seeing any point in getting angry. And she hung up.

As soon as she had returned to her crossword puzzle, the phone rang again.

“Is this Robin Browne?” the caller asked, obviously nervous.

“Mmm-hmm,” Robin said, filling in 4-Down on her crossword puzzle.

“I’m sorry to bother you but a friend of yours gave me your number. I hesitated to call; I’ve had your number for several weeks, in fact. Your friend thought maybe you’d be interested in what I have to say and suggested you would call me. When you didn’t, I decided to call you.”

Robin found herself growing suspicious. She thought at first she had a tele-marketer on the line, but this woman wasn’t selling anything. She put down her pen when she realized she should pay attention. Still irritated by Foster’s call, she grew impatient with this new caller.

“Who are you? What do you want?”

“My name is Debbie Caine. I live in Easton and a couple of weeks ago I met your friend Bill at the University of Delaware,” she said. “He suggested I call you. I didn’t want to impose at first but...”

“You’re the woman who thinks she saw my sister in Europe, aren’t you?” Robin threw her newspaper aside and stood up. She walked to the living room and found herself gazing once again at her sister’s photos. “What can I do for you?”

“Your friend told me your story, about how you had learned your sister was alive after believing she was dead. I don’t know for sure if I met her but I think I did and thought you might want to know. If I’m bothering you, I’m sorry. It was just one of those moments...you know, when you see someone from where you live and you say something, laugh and, well, feel awkward. I guess I shouldn’t have called. Well, I’m sorry to have bothered you. Good-bye,” the caller said, the words tumbling quickly from the phone.

“No!” Robin found herself shouting. “Don’t hang up!”

She lowered her voice and forced a smile. “I mean, yes, thanks for calling. I’d really like to hear your story.”

There was no denying it. Whenever Robin found herself encountering a clue to Eleanor’s whereabouts, she couldn’t help feeling curious, even wistful, and longing for the day she’d see her sister again.

Before she could say another word, however, she heard her cell phone buzzing from the kitchen. She ran in and picked it up, glanced at the number and turned back to the phone.

“I’m sorry but I can’t talk now. I will be in Easton Tuesday. Maybe we could meet then.”

“Um, oh, no. I have a meeting all day. I just can’t get away,” she said.

“Evening then? I’ll meet you for dinner?”

“I don’t think so, my son has baseball pract—” Debbie stopped herself. “Yes, dinner’s good. Do you know Scozza’s? It’s across from the courthouse.”

“No, but I can find it. I know where the courthouse is. How about 6 o’clock?” Robin said, wondering how she’d ever get to Easton by then.

“Let’s make it seven so I can get dinner made before I go out,” Debbie said. “Can’t let everybody starve while I eat out,” she said with a weak laugh.

“Okay, that’s doable,” Robin said, “I’ll see you then.”

Robin hung up the phone, only to dial another number.

“Jane! Sorry I didn’t pick up. I was on the phone, the other phone. What’s up?”

“I have to run an errand and I want some company,” Jane complained. “Are you free?”

“Well... My wedding was canceled and Jim’s out of town and I’m curled up with the crossword puzzle.”

“Oooh. Don’t you have all the fun? Want to go to the beach? Maybe until Monday?”

“On Memorial Day weekend? We’ll never get a place this late.”

“Already got one,” her friend replied. “Parker’s aunt has a condo in Lewes. She hasn’t been able to get down there since Christmas and she needs someone to turn the heat off. Parker’s away with his frat buddies. Anyway, I offered to go down. I thought you might like to go with me.”

“I don’t know about a whole weekend. I have so much to do around here,” Robin countered.

“No, you don’t.”

“No, I don’t,” Robin agreed, relenting. “When do you want to go?”

“I’m at your front door.” The door bell rang.

Robin didn’t even hang up the phone before opening the door to her friend. Jane looked like summer in spite of the rainy weather. Sunglasses on her head, white shorts, blue and white striped shirt and boat shoes, she swept into the house and dropped a huge canvas tote.

“Aren’t you cold?” Robin asked, looking down at her own fuzzy slippers, flannel pajamas and thick pink terry robe.

“I’m ready for summer. Weather channel says it is going to be 75 once the rain goes away.”

“You’re even tanned. Been visiting one of those cancer salons?”

“No,” Jane said with a wide smile. “This is chemically-induced.”

Jane looked around and saw her friend’s coffee cup. “Go get dressed and I’ll have a cup of coffee. Oh, and finish your puzzle. Go. I’d like to get there before noon.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Robin bounded up the steps, excited by the prospect of a weekend in Lewes. It was her favorite beach resort -- even if the town wasn’t really on the beach. She loved the quaint town and the wonderful restaurants. It was quiet, not like the other beach towns. A great place to relax.

Trusting her friend’s weather forecast, Robin filled her overnight bag with shorts and t-shirts. She unearthed her sunglasses from her dresser and grabbed a sweatshirt. Might as well be safe instead of cold.

Pulling on her jeans, she slipped the bag over her shoulder and headed back downstairs.

“Wait until you hear the latest,” Robin called to her friend as she reached the landing.

Jane had turned on the television and stood in front of it. She didn’t even move when Robin spoke to her.

“What’s going on?” Robin looked at the news report and uncomprehending she turned to her friend and saw the shock etched on her face.

“Jane, what’s happened?”

“There’s been a terrible accident on the bay bridge. Look, there’s a truck in the water.”

“What?! How did it get there?”

“It went over the side of the bridge. Oh poor man. Oh, that’s so horrible.”

The two friends stood in front of the television and watched the news until commercials interrupted the report.

“No chance of getting across the bridge today, Robin.”

“Want to call it off?”

“No, I promised I’d go. We’ll have to drive around the bay. Oh, we’ll be going right past your mother’s -- want to stop in?”

“Maybe tomorrow? On the way home?” Robin replied, a frown on her face.

“You don’t want to see your mother? You always want to see your mother.”

“I know but she’s not happy with me at the moment. She’s upset about Ellen.”

“Why?”

“Oh, you know. I’ll tell you in the car. Let’s get going.”

“Did you turn off the coffee pot?” Jane asked as she stepped back into the rain.

“No,” Robin turned around, raced into the kitchen to turn off the coffeemaker, switch off the lights and take a last look around her house before locking the door.

Chapter 25

The sun did come out as Robin and Jane arrived in Lewes. The Delaware town was packed with visitors, people like Jane who believed the Weather Channel’s optimistic forecast for this Memorial Day weekend. They came by car and they came by ferry from New Jersey. At long as there was sunshine, Lewes was a good place for a short escape: colorful Victorian houses and inns, chic shops and lots of them, and some of the best restaurants around. And then there was Lewes’ history. Museums around town told the history of Delaware’s oldest capital, its brush with war, its witness to shipwrecks.

Jane slid her car into a parking lot under a squat modern condominium building beyond the downtown historic district. Although the town had turned its back on the waterfront, it was just a short walk across the canal to the beach. The once-neglected waterfront was now lined with plenty of condos and houses built in recent years.

The two old friends left their bags in the car to explore their weekend digs. “Parker said the only thing going for this place is the view. So don’t get too excited,” Jane said as she unlocked the door.

“But what a view!” Robin said as she walked inside to the wall of sliding doors that overlooked the Delaware Bay. She walked past the decrepit furniture and over the dirt brown carpet to see waves lapping at the sandy shore. Plastic furniture chained to the porch railing had been blown over by the wind and was dotted with mildew. Salt obscured the view so Robin slid open the door to hear the cries of seagulls swooping past and the flap of flags flying on the next condo’s porch railing. The wind that blew past her smelled of salt. It was cold but not as cold as Robin expected.

“This is a dump,” Jane said, picking up lumpy pillows from the couch and pushing cushions back into place. She wandered into the galley kitchen and surveyed the assortment of out of date appliances and peeked into the refrigerator. “It’s not even cold,” she said, closing the door. “I wonder if it’s broken.”

“Robin, are you listening to me?”

No, instead, Robin had leaned against the splintered wooden rail and watched a mother and little girl fly a kite on the beach. Nearby, a younger boy in a wheelchair clapped his hands as the butterfly-shaped kite caught the wind and flew over the water’s edge.

They were the only people on the beach. The wind was chilly and certainly the water was too cold for swimming. But dressed in sweatshirts and hats, the three of them looked warm and happy. Robin found herself envying them. She remembered days like this when her family would go to Sandy Point to play on the beach that overlooked the Chesapeake Bay and the bay bridge. Her father was the one who liked to fly kites. He bought them all the time. Cheap ones from the dime store and brightly colored high tech wonders with special tails and complicated instructions that he studied before sending the kite up into the air. But it was inevitable. Every one of those kites would come crashing down. Kites didn’t last too long in their unskilled hands. Dad always got mad. Mom always laughed. Robin and her sister wondered if they’d ever learn to fly a kite. They didn’t. Instead, her father discovered sailing. If they couldn’t harness the wind’s power with a kite, they could harness it with a jib and a tiller. Every Sunday from May through October, the four of them piled into their little boat and took on the wind.

“Robin, what are you doing? Have you seen this place?”

“Yes, it’s beautiful,” Robin replied, still looking out.

“Then you haven’t been looking.”

Robin turned to see her friend with her nose turned up and a distinct frown on her face. “This place is a dump. I don’t know how we’re going to stay here. It’s horrible.”

“Jane, it can’t be that bad,” Robin said and slipped past her to look around the house. Lumpy couch cushions weren’t so bad, she thought. The colors are awfully dingy for a beach house.

When Robin turned into the master bedroom, she saw a mattress lying on the floor and no other furniture. The bathroom walls were streaked with soap scum, mildew and some other greenish substance Robin didn’t want to think about.

“Yeah, when you’re right, you’re right,” Robin couldn’t help but laugh at her distressed friend. She couldn’t imagine turning out the lights in this place. What would come crawling out?

“We can’t stay here. We just can’t.

“Sure we can,” Robin thought about the horrible places in Ocean City she used to stay during college breaks. Carpet peeling off the walls, yes the walls...broken wooden crate furniture...orange shag carpet that reminded her of Tang...floors that were so filthy...”Sure we can. It’ll be okay. As long as we don’t eat here.”

“No problem, I don’t think the appliances work anyway.”

“Remind me. Why did you have to come down?

“To ‘check’ on the place. I’m calling Parker to ask if his aunt is insane to live here.”

“Jane, it’s a nice afternoon. We’re at the beach! Let’s go find you a new sun-dress and — oh what the hell — let’s splurge and have dinner at the Buttery. Maybe they’ll even have the porch open.”

“But we still have to sleep here...”

“Well, we’ll just have to go to Gilligan’s for a few drinks before we come home. Then we’ll turn on a movie —”

“Let me see if the TV works. Do you see a remote?”

“Let’s go. I’m thinking something bright with stripes, maybe.”

“And perhaps a large bottle of bug spray. And bleach. And Lysol. We have to take a shower tomorrow.”

“We can rough it,” Robin said, dragging her friend out the door. She looked around, shivered and shook her head. It really was pretty bad. She put her sunglasses on and turned her thoughts to the lovely afternoon ahead of her.

Chapter 26

The condo, it turned out, was as horrid at night as the two women feared. But the reason wasn’t bugs or smells or bacteria.

It was a party next door. High school students had crowded into the condo to celebrate the end of exams. Lots of students and lots of beer and lots of loud music. And it lasted all night. Around 4 Robin and Jane decided they couldn’t stand the shouting and the vomiting off the balcony even a minute longer. They checked the heat, turned off the water, locked the door and started home. An hour later, they pulled off the road when they spotted an all-night diner. The only person that they could see inside was a tired-looking waitress, coffee pot already in hand.

“Coffee, girls?” she asked them.

“Yes, please,” Jane said, slipping into a red vinyl booth. “And can you turn down the lights so I can get a little sleep?”

“Ignore her. I’d like coffee, too. And a doughnut. What kind do you have?”

“Honey-dipped. Your friend want one, too?”

“Oh what the heck. Sure,” Jane said and slumped down in the seat, leaning her head against the plate glass window.

The friends sat quietly for a long time, sipping coffee and nibbling at fresh, warm doughnuts. The waitress returned twice to refill their cups and bring two more doughnuts before either said a word.

Robin watched as sunlight began to fill the sky. Jane hardly moved. Her breathing was deep and regular and Robin was convinced she was sleeping. She marveled how Jane could sleep anywhere anytime. No, that wasn’t quite true. She hadn’t been able to sleep at the condo.

“Jane, wake up,” she whispered.

“I am awake. I’m just thinking about sleeping.”

“I figure we’re only about an hour from my mother’s place. Why don’t we get back on the road and go sleep there for a couple of hours?”

“Really? That’s a good idea. I’m getting a crick in my neck sitting here.”

Jane waved to the waitress for the check and they headed back north on Route 1.

“You know I can’t get over the condo,” Jane said as they passed the Dover NASCAR track. “I wonder why it’s in such bad shape.”

“Nobody’s been there all winter, right?”

“Yeah, but it looks like nobody’s been there for a decade,” Jane countered.

“When it’s your place and you don’t have to worry about what others think, maybe you don’t notice it’s bad. Maybe Parker’s aunt liked it that way — except for the crud in the bathroom. Ewww. Think about it. If you had spent every summer in the same condo, the furniture might get worn but you wouldn’t care. Everything would have a memory attached to it. This is the chair where I read to the baby. Here’s where little Susie learned to walk. You know how sentimental old people get.”

“I know how sentimental some young people get, too. And you know who I mean,” Jane took her eyes off the road to look at her friend.

“Me!? I’m not sentimental.”

“Yes you. Look at your house. Whose furniture is in there? Have you bought one new piece of furniture since you moved there? No? I didn’t think so.”

“But it’s all good.”

“No, it’s not. It’s old and old-fashioned. Except for the kitchen table — the dings give it character — and that great old chair with the swan arms. Those are great pieces but if it were my house I’d throw it all out and start over.”

Robin couldn’t believe her ears. She thought Jane loved her old house as much as she did.

Jane saw the hurt look make its way onto her friend’s face. “Oh, don’t listen to me. I’m tired and don’t know what I’m saying.”

“I think you do mean it. I bet you’ve wanted to say that for a long time.”

“Well, not a long time. Just since I refinished my house. I never cared about that stuff but once I started working on my own place I got a little more, well, critical. I always liked your grandmother’s house. I just began wondering when you would get around to making it your house. It’s a good house, Robin. really,” Jane shot her a smile, hoping to smooth over the ruffled feathers.

“I just never thought about it. The way it is, sometimes I feel like my grandmother’s just in the other room. It’s comfortable.”

“I know, Robin. I know. It’s fine.”

They continued on to Havre de Grace in silence. There wasn’t much to see: one continuous line of gas stations, strip shopping centers and chain hotels. Even the road was perfectly flat and the vista was flat, too. The sun came up brightly and soon the road was filled with cars.

Robin found herself drifting off to sleep as Jane’s words about her house echoed through her mind.

She found herself remembering a Saturday afternoon just before Easter. It was traditional in their family to gather to make a special bread for the next day’s Easter breakfast. As usual, Jane came with her.

As she and Jane dyed the eggs while her mother and grandmother kneaded the dough, they argued about who started the tradition. In this small family, there really weren’t too many options.

“I think your aunt Grace got the recipe from her mother,” Diane said to her mother.

“I know we’ve been making it a long time,” Diane’s sister Margaret replied. “I know we started making this even before I moved to Kent Island.”

“No, back then we used to make Easter eggs from my mother’s recipe,” said Alice, their mother. “ — until everybody went on a diet and refused to eat them anymore.”

“Oh yes, that’s right. I’d forgotten the eggs. Weren’t they good?”

“Too good. Your Italian husband’s mother showed us how to make the bread,” Alice reminded Margaret. “She’s long gone and we’re still making her bread.”

Robin was considered too young to form the braided loaves, though she longed to try. Her grandmother tore off a small piece of her dough and handed it to her. “Knead this and then I’ll show you how to braid it,” Alice told Robin and winked. Robin loved it when her grandmother winked at her. She felt a special bond..

Robin kneaded the warm, sweet dough, watching it ooze between her fingers. It didn’t look like the smooth ball her grandmother had under her hands.

Ellen burst into the kitchen. “Yikes! the bread ladies are at it again,” she said, leaning over to kiss her mother.

“You’re late,” Diane said.

“Rehearsal ran over,” she said.

“You’d think you were the lead as much time as you spend at school,” Alice said.

“I know. I know. But we all have to be there for the dress rehearsals. Even the peons in the chorus.”

“Even the peons in the chorus who can’t sing,” Robin snickered.

“Oh you,” Ellen said and threw flour at her. Robin responded with her own floury salvo.

“Ladies! Not in my kitchen!” Alice scolded her granddaughters. She handed her dough to Ellen. “Here. Get braiding while I show your sister how to do it.”

“Robin, wake up! You have to show me the way to your mom’s house,” Jane called to her friend as she drove past the wharf at the edge of Havre de Grace.

“Huh? Oh, it’s right on that corner.”

Jane pulled her car up to the curb in front of a white clapboard house wrapped with a wide porch. It really didn’t fit Robin’s mother, she thought. The paint was peeling on the window trim. The walkway was cracked and one of the green shutters was askew.

Robin didn’t seem to notice as she bounded up the sidewalk and tried the front door. It was locked so she rang the bell.

Andrew answered the door. “Well, look who’s here? And so early, too.”

“Sorry we’re so early. It’s a long story. Is Mom up?”

“I’ve been trying to call you since yesterday. Your mom isn’t well.”

“Not well? What’s wrong?” Robin pushed past Andrew and looked up the stairs.

“Don’t go up just yet. She’s still asleep. Finally. Won’t you have a seat? Can I get you some coffee?”

Andrew directed the two women to the living room sofa and they sank down into a flowery overstuffed cushion.

“No, thanks, Andrew.”
“I’d like some, thanks,” Jane interjected.

While they waited for the coffee, Robin got up to go up to her mother’s room. “Robin, let her sleep. If she’s sick, she needs to sleep.”

“I don’t remember my mother ever being sick. Ever,” Robin said and returned to the sofa.

Andrew returned with two cups of coffee. “Just in case,” he said.

“Andrew—”

“Just a moment. I’ll get the cream and sugar. Anyone need a Danish?”

He returned, deposited the sugar bowl and plate of pastries.

“Andrew, tell me what’s wrong?”

“Don’t know really. She went to the doctor’s on Friday. Diane hasn’t been sleeping for weeks. She’s been complaining of nightmares. Last night was the first time she spent the whole night in bed in quite some time.”

“What did the doctor say?” Robin asked.

“What could he say? Lots of people her age have trouble sleeping. He said she was probably stressed, maybe feeling a little achy. He gave her a prescription for a sleeping pill. I had to insist she try it. She wouldn’t take it Friday night but last night she did.”

“And?”

“And she’s been asleep since about 10 p.m. Fell asleep long before the news came on. I tried to call you yesterday but I didn’t get an answer either at your house or on your cell.”

Robin reached into her purse for her cell phone. “I don’t know when I switched it off. It’s never off.”

“Anyway, she said something about wanting to talk to you so it’s good you stopped by.”

“I haven’t talked to Mom in a couple of weeks. We’ve been playing telephone tag.”

“I think I hear her now,” Andrew said and turned to go upstairs. “I’ll tell her you’re here. She may want to ‘put on her face’ before you come up. You know how she is.” Andrew, dressed in frayed cutoffs and a sun-bleached sailing t-shirt, smiled and rolled his eyes.

Yes, Robin knew how she liked to be “presentable.”

“You told me your mother was upset with you before we headed to Lewes. You never did tell me why,” Jane said in a whisper.

“She told me about the nightmares. She said my looking for Ellen caused her to dredge up all the old memories. She asked me to stop looking,” Robin said.

Jane saw the look of pain cross her friend’s face and took her hand. “I know this has been hard on you, kid. But maybe your mother is right.”

Robin turned with surprise to her friend. “Did you just hear yourself? One, you said my mother was right. Traitor. And two, you asked me to stop looking for Ellen.”

“I don’t think this is doing you any good — and it looks like it’s not doing your mother any good, either.”

“Girls, come on up.”

“You go up, Robin. You really need to talk to her.”

Robin tiptoed up the steps slowly, unsure about seeing her mother feeling unwell. She peered around the corner and into her mother‘s room.

Diane’s room didn’t look anything like the room Robin remembered from her childhood. Where that room was tailored with dark silk curtains and heavy colonial furniture, this room was, well, frilly. Dotted swiss and lace curtains swathed the huge windows. A white comforter with giant red cabbage roses was sliding off the bed. Bedside tables were draped in the same fabric. The walls were covered with another floral print. In the middle of it all, Diane leaned against a white painted iron headboard, cushioned by a dozen pink silk pillows.

“Hello, dear,” Diane called when she caught sight of her daughter.

Again, Robin hesitated and then strode in. “Hi, Mom. What’s wrong with you? I mean: How are you?”

“Nice to see you, too, dear.” She smiled, obviously pleased to see her daughter as Robin leaned over to kiss her cheek.

“So what’s going on, Mom?” Robin asked as she pulled up a tiny pink silk slipper chair.

“Oh, it’s nothing. Just a little insomnia,” Diane said, pulling at a thread on her comforter.

“You’ve always had a little insomnia. I even have a little insomnia now and then. You don’t go to the doctor for it,” Robin said.

Diane folded her hands and looked at them for a moment before looking up at her daughter. Robin waited, wondering what could possibly be the matter.

“I’ve been having nightmares,” Diane finally said.

“You told me. You told me you were waking up remembering the days when the police were looking for Ellen.”

“Yes, well. My doctor suggests that looking for her again is hurting my health. He suggested that I ask you to stop looking.”

“We’ve been over that. I can’t stop looking now.”

“But, Robin, it’s making me sick. My blood pressure has gotten too high. I’ve had to cut back at work because I can’t make it through the day. Andrew says I cry in my sleep,” Diane said. Robin could tell she meant it. And she remembered that night in London.

“But, Mom...” Robin started to say but didn’t know how to argue with her mother over this.

“I understand how you feel, Robin,” Diane said as she reached over to put her hand on Robin’s. “I know how excited you were when you found out she might still be alive. So was I? But what have you found? Nothing. Not really. Honey, I think it’s time to stop looking. One day, maybe she’ll turn up. If she’s alive, she’ll look for us again someday. I can’t go on with this over my head. I can’t keep looking for signs she might still be alive and then, nothing. I can’t keep up with the disappointment. And really that’s all we have had,” Diane’s voice softened. “She’s gone, Robin. I wish she were still alive, too, but if she were why hasn’t she contacted us? Why can’t we find her?”

Robin felt her arms go numb as her mother talked. She felt light-headed. Instead of looking at her mother, Robin looked beyond her to the window but found she couldn’t focus on the ancient oak outside. She didn’t know what to say.

“Robin?” Diane squeezed her hand.

“Yes. I understand, Mother,” Robin turned back to her mother and smiled weakly. “I don’t want you sick. It’s certainly not worth that. Are you sure this will make you feel better?”
“No,” her mother said frankly and shrugged her shoulders. “But it might and I need to try. I’ve been feeling terrible for nearly two months and it’s only getting worse.”

Robin was quiet for a moment. Then she nodded her head. “Okay.”

Diane squeezed Robin’s hand again. Then she straightened up a little and tried to look a little brighter. “Tell me, what brings you to Havre de Grace?”

Robin perched on that little chair and described the condo in Lewes and told her about the family she saw on the beach. As she spoke, her mother closed her eyes and slowly fell asleep, nodding and murmuring “Mmm-hmm” to Robin’s comments.

“Mom? Are you asleep?” she finally asked when her mother seemed to be snoring softly.

“C’mon, Robin. She may be asleep for a long time,” Andrew came up behind her to lead her from the room. He turned back to his wife, brushed a stray hair from her forehead and kissed her. “Be right back,” he whispered.

His tenderness surprised Robin. She had considered him a little too rough for her refined mother. Maybe he was okay

“Thanks, Andrew,” she said when she reached the door at the bottom of the stairs. “You’ll let me know how she’s doing, won’t you? Jane, shall we be going?”

“I think maybe she needs you here,” he said. “She’s going to the doctor’s tomorrow. Why don’t you go with her?”

Robin sighed. “But Jane has to get back.”

“Catch a train back to the city from Aberdeen in the morning,” Jane said. She picked up her bag and put her hand out to Andrew. “A pleasure, Andrew. Thanks for the coffee.”

“I’ll walk you to your car,” Robin said.

“So how is she?” Jane asked before she got back in the car.

“Fine. She’ll be fine. She’s just totally exhausted. She asked me not to keep looking for Ellen. It’s giving her nightmares, she said.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“And are you going to do as she asked?”

“Of course.”

“Really? You’re really not going to do another thing to find your sister?”

“Yes, of course.”

“I don’t believe you. Not for a second.”

Robin didn’t answer right away. “Well, I’ll call you later. Andrew asked me to take Mom to see her doctor tomorrow. I should be home soon after that — unless Mom’s not doing better.”

“Call me and I’ll pick you up at Penn Station.”

“I can get a cab.”

“You can call me. It’s a holiday, remember. With Parker off with his friends and you here the only thing I have is correcting essays. I want to know how she is.”

“Thanks.”

“See you.”

Robin walked back to the house and eased into a mildewed chaise longue. She really couldn’t imagine how her mother lived here after her house in Annapolis. The stately brick house was never in disrepair. The trim was always painted. The leaves were raked and the lawn cut. At least that’s the way Robin remembered it, she thought. Who knows what the house looked like the day her parents bought it? Her father spent many a Saturday in the hardware store looking for door knobs or caulk or who knows what else? Her mother was always painting or planting or weeding.

But here, it didn’t look like anyone ever thought about it.

I’m being cranky, Robin stopped herself. She must like him or she would never have moved here. Robin pulled her legs up to her chin and looked down the street. She liked the view: tree lined street with two long, straight rows of old houses. When she looked south, she could see sun glinting off a sliver of river.

“Nice view, isn’t it?”

Andrew handed her a fresh mug of coffee.

“Yes it is,” she agreed. “Thanks.”

“I see why you moved here.”

“I didn’t move here. I was born here,” Andrew said, sitting in a glider at the end of the porch. He looked down the street at the river.

Robin looked at him. “I didn’t know that.” She wondered what he looked like as a young man. Probably not much different from the man sitting here. His hair was mostly gray and she wondered how many days a week he shaved. He had a grizzled look, with deep lines in his dark tanned skin. Long and lean, he had muscular arms and big, knobby fingers.

Andrew certainly didn’t look like her father. Her dad had been dark, not too tall. He wore glasses and a had a well-trimmed mustache. He smiled all the time. Andrew seemed so stern, or maybe he was just reserved.

“Is Mom still sleeping?”

“Yeah, Doc gave her sleeping pills. She’s exhausted, Robin. I’ve been real worried about her,” Andrew answered. “I better tell you. It’s not just the nightmares. It’s the alcohol.”

“What!?” Robin shot back. “What?!”

“Calm down. I don’t think it’s bad but I’m worried it could become bad.”

“What are you talking about!?”

“Robin, I know the signs of trouble. I’m an alcoholic myself. Your mother isn’t an alcoholic, I don’t think. But her drinking has gotten worse in the last few months.”

Robin waited for a better explanation. What she heard certainly didn’t sound like her mother.

Andrew told her about her nightly cocktails. He didn’t have any, of course, but she mixed a drink or poured a glass of wine at dinnertime every night. He never worried about it. “Lots of people can have a drink every day and they’re fine. Since you both came back from London, it’s been two drinks. One when she got home from work. One at dinner. Maybe another at bedtime, to help her sleep, she’d say.

“But the problem is,” Andrew continued, still looking down the street to the water, “I can’t find any liquor in the house. There may be a bottle of wine in the fridge but I think she’s hiding the rest and drinking when I’m not around.”

“So?” Robin wasn’t convinced he knew what he was talking about.

“I know about addictions,” he said, answering her skepticism. “I am an alcoholic. Have been since I was 12.”

“Oh!” Robin said, completely flummoxed by this conversation.

“I’m fine, really. And Diane’s the main reason I’m fine now. I can’t lose her.”

“Oh I’m sure she’ll be fine,” Robin said.

Andrew turned to her and smiled. “Yes, she’ll be fine. She’s got you. When I was in trouble, I didn’t have anybody.”

Robin waited to hear what he was going to say next. She’d never heard him say much at all before. This was the first real conversation they’d had since he married her mother.

Instead, he turned and looked at the river, drinking his coffee. How, she wondered, was she going to find out what his story was? She was certainly intrigued. And she was frightened that he might be right about her mother.

“Andrew,” she said, softly. “I don’t understand how a few drinks can hurt my mother.”

“If it’s just a drink or two, she’ll be fine. If she’s drinking other times when I’m not looking, she may be in trouble. That’s what happened to my mother and then that’s what happened to me.”

Robin waited to see if he would continue. He turned and looked down the street again, drank some more coffee and then looked at her.

“I didn’t have a childhood like yours, Robin. You don’t know how lucky you were.

“My dad left us when I was too little to remember him. I don’t know what happened to him. Mom told me he was drowned when he fell off a fishing boat. She raised us, my sister Michelle and me, as best she could. She worked on Route 40 as a motel clerk. We lived here with my grandparents. I think it got to be too much for her. Grandpa had a habit of wandering away and getting lost. Gramma would pack us up with me in a stroller and walk the streets until she found him and brought him home. I don’t remember that, of course. Michelle used to tell me about it later on. Mom would come home and find an empty house with dinner burning in the oven. Beds wouldn’t be made, floors were dirty. She didn’t know where we were — but she had a good idea. I guess she felt like she was taking care of four of us but Gramma spent all her time with us. I remember how she’d sit on the floor with us to play a game or find a chair under a tree in the yard to play ‘Hide and Seek.’” Robin saw a hint of a smile cross Andrew’s face as he remembered her. “She was the only one who could count so she’d count to ten say ‘Ready or not,’ and we’d come running. Clearly we didn’t understand how the game was played but it was fun.

“Anyway, Grandpa got too sick to live with us anymore and went to a nursing home. I guess I was six; I know I was in school. He died at Easter. I was afraid Gramma would die, too. She cried all the time. But she didn’t. She waited for us to come home from school to tell her all about our day, give us cookies and make us do our homework. I couldn’t wait to come home,” he said.

“And how old was Michelle?” Robin asked.

“She was seven. She was my best friend until middle school. Then she got friends, you know how girls are. They are yucky, at least to ten-year-old boys. So I had to find someone else to play with. There were a couple of boys at my bus stop and we started hanging around together. I don’t remember their names anymore, Tommy...and Sam...and I don’t remember the other guy’s name. He moved away.

“You don’t want to hear the story of my life...”

“No, go on. I really don’t know anything about you except what my mother has told me. And she hasn’t told me this,” Robin said truthfully.

“No, I guess not. I’m not sure I’ve told her all this,” Andrew smiled. “Well, long story short. Gramma moved to the nursing home that year and I felt all but abandoned. Mom was working two jobs so I never saw her. Michelle was running around with her friends. And I got into trouble.”

“How much trouble can a ten-year-old get into?” Robin asked.

“I stole cars. Well, not at first. I started going into people’s houses after school. Lots of people went to work and left their back doors unlocked. This is Havre de Grace, not the big city. I figured out I could help myself to a snack — we never had anything good to eat in our house — and then I found cash laying around in some of the houses, or a sweater I wanted, or a toy or something like that. I never got caught. But it made me cocky. I showed my stuff off at school and got a reputation for being a tough guy.

“Then I met the tough guys, eighth graders who weren’t impressed with the little guy. I didn’t know nothing, they said. They dared me to steal something big. I went from stealing potato chips to stealing bikes and lawn furniture. One of them learned how to hot wire a car so we all learned how to hot wire a car. I wasn’t big enough to drive but I knew how to steal one.

“And when my feet could reach the pedals, I stole my first car. And crashed it. Then I got caught.

“The older boys who were with me went to the ‘school for boys’. I went home with my very angry mother. There really wasn’t much she could do. She had to go to work. I had to go to school. After school, she expected me to come home. With my friends gone, I did. And found her liquor. I was 12.”

“And then?”

“Well, Robin, I got hooked. My mom was an alcoholic but I didn’t know that.

“Wait, she had liquor in the house and she was an alcoholic?” Robin interrupted.

“Yeah, I think it was really my Gramma’s. I don’t know. I know she didn’t notice it was disappearing. She wasn’t drinking it. Anyway, as I said she was an alcoholic and one of her ‘jobs’ was an AA meeting. She went every night I found out much later. She was struggling to stay sober while I was stealing cars and getting drunk at the age of 12. Who knows why she didn’t see me getting wasted. I guess nobody expects a little kid to be drinking.

“I didn’t finish high school. I ended up in the ‘school for boys’. It’s a reform school but nobody really gets reformed. All it does is put little boys together and teaches them to be mean little boys. I came out mean and angry. The next time I was going to end up in jail but I didn’t. Doug, he was a friend of my Gramma’s, asked me to work on his boat. God knows why. I was surly. I was too fat to be of much use to him. I was weak and lazy. Lucky for me, I took the job. And I worked hard. I sanded and painted, worked on the engine, sanded and painted some more. And found out I liked it.”

“And then things turned around?”

“Not yet. I was still an alcoholic. I drank all the time. By then I was old enough to buy my own liquor. You could buy beer and wine at 18 in those days and I did.

“I thought I was hiding it but Doug knew. He saw me hungover every morning. He watched me make terrible mistakes and went behind me to fix them. The day I fell in the water was the day he told me to get cleaned up or lose my job. I stormed out and told him, well, I told him off.

“I crashed my mother’s car that night and Doug came to the hospital with a friend. That guy told me he knew where I could get help. He handed me a card for AA. I threw it away but my mom picked it up. She took me to a meeting. She kept taking me to her meetings, kicking and screaming (more like cussing). One day I decided to go on my own. Then it clicked. I’ve stayed clean since then.”

Andrew stood up. “So it’s with good reason I’m worried about your mother.”

“Worried about me?” Diane said as she came out on the porch.

“Yes, I am,” he said, going to her and kissing her forehead. “You haven’t been well.”

“I’m fine, really. I came out to see who you were talking to. I didn’t know Robin was still here.”

“I thought I would spend the night. Jane went back to town and I stayed. I was worried about you, too.”

“My goodness, what a lot of worrying going on about me! But I’m fine, just a little insomnia.”

“I need some fresh air and thought I’d take a walk. Anyone want to go??

Chapter 27

“You wouldn’t believe the visit I had,” Robin said as Jane pulled away from the train station. “Total drama. I had no idea.”

“And?” Jane asked as she waited to turn down St. Paul Street.

“Andrew told me his life story. Mom put on a little ‘Don’t worry about me’ show. I went with her to see the doctor. She told her to take sleeping pills and stop drinking (Andrew told me that part, certainly not my mother) and find a therapist. And she told me I had to stop all this ‘nonsense’ about Ellen.”

“Who, your mother? I thought she told you that the day before.”

“The doctor told me, too. She said it was too taxing for Mom and to leave her out of it.”

“Then she didn’t really tell you to stop looking.”

“No, actually, she didn’t. But Mom told me to stop looking, as you just said.”

“And you’re going to listen?”

“I don’t know...” Robin said, watching the Inner Harbor come into view. The two friends were quiet as the pulled onto William Street.

“Don’t look now but I think a homeless man has taken up residence on your front step,” Jane said, craning her neck to see over the car in front of hers.

Sitting on her front step was a sun-burned man with wild blonde curls. He smoked a cigarette and seemed to be looking for someone farther down the street. Dressed in a brown corduroy jacket and faded jeans, he didn’t really look homeless. But that Army surplus sack by his feet made Robin wonder.

“Oh, no. What next?” Robin murmured as she got out of the car. “Can I help you?” she asked the man.

“Would you be Robin Browne?”

“Do I know you?”

“No, I’m afraid not; but I believe I know who you are and I was hoping you could help me. Maybe I could help you, too.”

“And you are?”

“Right. My name is Sean Carrington.”

“Yes?” Robin knew she’d heard the name before but couldn’t remember why.

“I believe I’m your brother-in-law.”

Jane reached for Robin who seemed about to stumble but before she knew it both of them were sprawled on the narrow sidewalk.

“Sorry,” the stranger said as he leaned over to pick the women up.

“Please. I’m fine,” Robin said, pulling away from him. She straightened up and grabbed Jane’s hand to pull her up.

With Robin clearly at a loss for words, Jane picked up her friend’s handbag. “Let’s go inside, shall we?”

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea, Jane,” Robin whispered, eying the man. She couldn’t help staring at him. She knew who he was. She was sure of it. And she knew immediately why Eleanor had disappeared to go with him. A slight man, Sean had the most unruly blondish hair she’d ever seen. Yes, she thought, taking in the face. I think it is the man in those photographs.

“You’re safe with me,” he said, hand on his heart. He had a sparkle in his eye – which he obviously knew how to use to great effect. It won her heart immediately. So did the way he talked. It wasn’t a proper BBC accent. No, it was softer; it reminded her more of Scotland than England. “I have a copy of an email from a man you met in London. Maybe that will help.”

“Yes,” she said, unlocking the front door. What did she say first? This man said he was her brother-in-law. But he was a complete stranger. “Call Jim,” she whispered to Jane and handed her her cell phone.

“Be right back,” Jane said and shot the man a nervous smile.

As Jane went into the kitchen, Robin invited the man to sit down. “You have an email?” she asked.

“Ah, yes,” he said, pulling a wrinkled sheet of paper from his jacket pocket. “I had thought you were going to get a copy, too.”

“No, can’t say I did.” Robin scanned it. In it, Donald Graham said he had written to her to tell her he had found Ellen’s husband when he returned from an assignment abroad. “I didn’t get this,”she said.

“No? Hmmm. You can see that this was addressed to both of us. What can I say?”

Robin examined the email address and it was correct. Lost in cyberspace, or in her “junk mail” file, she thought. The letter really didn’t say much. Graham had decided to give Ellen’s file one more try — he hadn’t looked at it again after their meetings in February — and was able to track down Sean Carrington. If he hadn’t returned to Great Britain when he did, who knows if Graham would have found him?

“Where have you been?” Robin asked.

“I was in Tasmania working with a writer on a magazine article on global warming. I’ve been there for three months. I used to live there, you know.”

“No, I didn’t know. Who are you?”

“As I said,” he said, stopping to smile at her, “I’m Eleanor’s husband. At least I was. I’m not sure at the moment. We lost touch some time ago. I was away too long, it seems.”

Jane came bustling in with coffee cups and a plate of Robin’s snickerdoodles. “I hope you don’t mind, Robin. The cookies were there and seemed a good idea. I thought you might like some coffee. I certainly do,” she said and scattered dishes around the coffee table. She turned back to the kitchen for the coffee pot and cream and sugar. She took a good look at the strange man as she walked back in and couldn’t help but see the guarded look on her friend’s face.

“So,” she said, as she poured coffee. “When was the last time you saw Eleanor?”

“It’s been about 10 years. The baby was just a little girl when they moved back here. She told my mum she was going to Annapolis — she said her mother lived there. Well, I had no idea where Annapolis was but I knew I couldn’t stop her either. I was planning to go on the road again and she’d go while I was away. She promised to keep in touch. I don’t think she ever wrote a letter. Or called. Email was a little better But the internet connections were pretty bad back then and every time she wrote she had a new email address. I couldn’t keep track of them. One day, I realized it had been a long time since I heard from her. And then I never heard from her again.”

He stopped to sip the hot black coffee. “This is good, thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” Jane responded. “No answer at Jim’s. I left a message,” she whispered to Robin.

“I’m sorry. This is my friend Jane,” Robin said. “We’ve been friends since long before Eleanor die— disappeared. You were saying?”

“Yes, anyway. Graham called my mother’s house. She blew him off as another tele-marketer. Apparently, she’s hung up on him before. When he grew insistent, she handed the phone to me and asked me to take care of him.”

“He asked for Eleanor and I had to listen to him. We met in London two days ago. I had to come to America anyway for another assignment so I booked it right away. My mum wasn’t too happy — until I said I thought I might find Samantha.”

“Samantha?” Jane asked

“Their daughter,” Robin answered.

“Right,” Sean answered. “I arrived last evening but you weren’t home. I decided to come back today and wait for you. I figured you had to come home sometime. I couldn’t wait anymore. I’ve been missing Eleanor, well Samantha, really, for ages.”

“Robin,” he continued. “Eleanor spoke of you so often, I knew what you looked like and I knew how much she missed you.”

“Why then did she leave us to think she was dead?”
“She didn’t mean to, Robin,” he said, leaning forward to put his hand on her arm. He thought better of it and pulled away.

“Then why did she leave?” Robin was surprised at her own anger. The hurt feelings welled up again. She leaned forward, folded her hands to keep them still and looked this stranger in the face. “Tell me, if you really are telling the truth. What happened to her? Where did she go? How can I even trust you?”

“It was my fault,” he said softly. He looked away, as if seeing something out the window. “I was mad about her. We’d met in Salzburg and spent hours together. I only had a few days before I was off to Australia on an assignment I’d wanted my whole life. Then I met this amazing girl. Full of life. With a crazy way of quoting Casablanca. She made me laugh – not something I did very often.”

Yeah, Robin thought. I can understand that.

“You see, she said she was crazy about me, too. She told me I was such an expert photographer – do you know how great it is to have someone think you’re wonderful? And she was so excited about the possibility of going to Australia. I didn’t want to go without her. So on my last day in Austria, I asked her to go with me.

“I made her furious. I told her I had a flight at 10 o’clock the next morning and wanted her to get on the plane with me. She blew up at me. Said she couldn’t just leave her friends – and not tell her family. She stood up and walked away. I went back to her hotel and waited for her but she didn’t come back. I thought I would never see her again. What a way to end what had been a terrific week.”

“But she went with you…” Robin said.

“Yes, she did,” Sean said. “I found her at the train station in Vienna that night. I admit, I followed her after she stormed off. She told me she got on the train to Vienna just so she wouldn’t see me again. I begged her to forgive me — she was still angry — and asked her again to come with me. I’m still amazed she said yes. I promised her she could get in touch with you and your parents when we reached Sydney. I know she wrote to you. I don’t know why the letters never arrived.”

“How long were you in Sydney?” Robin asked.

“Only a few weeks. We had to make all the arrangements to go to the Outback. We spent four years shooting pictures in Australia for an Australian outdoors magazine. Then an editor at Reuters called about trouble in Middle East and asked me to take some pictures. I told Eleanor to go home but you know she’s a stubborn girl. She said she’d waited all her life to come to Australia and she wasn’t going home. She stayed in Australia – I have friends there – and she wanted to continue with her own photography. She hoped to sell a few photographs to the travel magazines. Finally, when we got back together a few weeks later, I found out she was going to have a baby. We went to my mother’s home in England to be married. Eleanor tried to reach your parents but the phone had been disconnected and her letters came back. Even the letters to your granny came back.”

“She didn’t try very hard,” Robin said, growing angrier that her sister could be so insensitive. “First we think she’s dead. Then Dad dies from a heart attack. Then Mom moves away. She’s having the time of her life in Australia and our family is falling apart.”

“She missed you terribly. And she felt so guilty that she’d lost touch with you. Believe me, she wrote to you several times but the mail…. Well, it never was delivered, I suppose.”

“But it’s been 15 years, Sean,” Robin turned away and walked over to the window looking onto the harbor.

“But you have to understand, she tried to reach you – even when we got to England, she sent letters to you. We decided to get married and she wanted to tell you. Her letters all came back as undeliverable. When she couldn’t reach any of you she tried to reach your grandmother. But she couldn’t get through to her either. We even came here — in fact, to this very house — when Samantha was born.”

“Here?!” Jane was astonished.

“She decided that she had to try to find her mother before the baby was born. I couldn’t say no. So we went to Annapolis to your old house and found your mother moved away. None of the neighbors had a new address, though. So Eleanor figured she’d come to her grandmother’s house. But the house appeared to be abandoned. No one living here, newspapers piled at the door and a window broken upstairs.”

Robin remembered how the house looked in the months following her grandmother’s death.

“Yes, our grandmother died just after Eleanor went to Europe. What a summer.” Robin sighed and wondered where all this was leading. “No one lived here until I moved in after college.”

“So where is Eleanor now?” Jane interjected.

“I don’t know,” Sean said, looking a little sheepish. “I lost track of her and Samantha.”

“Samantha’s your daughter.” Jane said, clearly trying to put the pieces together.

“She’s 12 now. I didn’t expect I’d ever have a daughter. You see, Eleanor wasn’t happy with me almost as soon as we reached England. I had to work and my assignments with Reuters took me out of the country again. Samantha was actually born here in America. She came early, while we were looking for you. Eleanor decided to go to someplace across the Chesapeake Bay where she was still pretty sure she had friends. She went into labor and had the baby over there.”

Robin couldn’t believe how they had to have crossed tracks so many times — were they still crossing tracks without knowing it?

Sean continued his story. “After Samantha was born, Eleanor gave up and decided to go home with me. The baby needed so much attention and we realized we couldn’t keep looking. I got another job a few months later. I hated to leave but I had to work. Eleanor couldn’t forgive me. It was hard to get a call through or a letter and email was impossible. She and the baby moved to London. My own Aunt Mary offered to watch the baby while Eleanor went to work at an art gallery. She had a show in London that was quite good; I was able to get home to see it. But when I said I was leaving soon, she said she was returning to America. She told me she planned to go to New York and take a class there. When I finally got back to England, she’d taken the baby and returned to America for good. I had promised her I’d find work closer to home. I know I should have but I didn’t. I’ve been shooting news photos for 20 years. We were together long enough to have Samantha. Then she left again. Took the baby and said she’d never speak to me again.

“I didn’t know she meant it,” he said.

“She’d learned how to live without other people by then,” Robin said, bitterly.

“She never called you once she came back to America?” Sean asked, clearly surprised.

“Not a word,” Robin said. “Not one word.”

“Well,” Sean got up. The spark in his eye had faded and Robin realized she believed his story. It sounded plausible. And the look in his eyes made her sure of him.

“Yes, I’m sorry I don’t have anything more. I’m still looking,” Robin said, trying to look hopeful.

“I will, too.” None of them knew what to say next and the silence grew awkward. Robin looked at Jane. Sean gulped the last bit of coffee and stood up. “All right to keep in touch?” he asked.

“Yes, of course,” Robin answered and added quietly, “You’re family.”

Sean shook her hand, offered his business card and was gone.

Robin realized as he drove away, she didn’t know where Sean was going. The address on the card didn’t mean a thing. He said he was off on another assignment.

Robin looked at her friend.

“What do you think?”

“ ‘You’re family,’” Jane whispered and rolled her eyes. “What a crazy story. You believe him?”

“Why not? It may be the truth.” Robin said, hoping it was.

“What are you going to tell your mother?” Jane said.

“Who knows?” Robin sighed. “She doesn’t want to know any more. For the present, Ellen is dead. I think I’ll tell her later.”

Her mother wouldn’t think she had any hard evidence that Ellen hadn’t died, but for Robin this stranger had given her answers. Robin finally had answers she’d longed for these past 15 years. But why wasn’t she satisfied — even a little?

Because it was really only another dead end, Robin thought when she considered all she had heard. As she walked over to sit down with her friend, she fingered the card Sean had given her, filled with his many phone numbers and email addresses. She said nothing as she replayed the conversation in her head.

No, she decided, this wasn’t a dead end. She held in her hand the business card of her sister’s husband. Proof, perhaps, that she might see Eleanor again. Maybe not proof – Sean wasn’t certain he’d find Eleanor. But Robin felt a bit of hope she really hadn’t felt before. She wondered how many times Eleanor may have tried to contact her. After all, they’d moved out of Annapolis a long time ago. Robin wasn’t even listed in the phone book – she still used her grandfather’s listing. Eleanor may not have looked for it. And her mother lived so far away from Eleanor’s home – and with another married name – no, Eleanor certainly wasn’t going to find family very easily. It was too bad, Robin thought, she didn’t come from a big family. As a child, she had wished for all the cousins other families had; she wished it again. Maybe Eleanor would have found someone who knew where the Browne family had gone. Maybe eventually Eleanor would have found Robin and her mother.

Maybe eventually it would still happen. Maybe, she thought, she needed to call that private investigator and update him about this meeting.

Jane woke her out of her reverie. “Robin, my dear girl,” she said, standing and yawning. “I’m going upstairs and go to sleep in your bed. I can’t take any more of this excitement. Call me for dinner.”

Chapter 28

Robin sat there for a moment longer with the card in her hand. She flung it among the coffee cups and reached for a snickerdoodle. Oh for the comfort of a cookie made from her grandmother’s recipes.

I should weigh three hundred pounds from all the cookies I eat, she thought as she reached for more. She took a handful and ate them slowly as she pondered what she was going to do next.

The story she had just heard was fantastic. Who would believe it? Yet, she knew it could be true. Ellen had always had her impulsive moments. She had decided to go to the public high school after the private school right down the street had given her a scholarship. She made the lacrosse team and then didn’t play. She had said she was going to a college in New York or Chicago and ended up in a small town at a small college. Once her mind was made up, you didn’t argue with Ellen. It didn’t matter whether the issue was as small as whether she’d wear black patent leather shoes or sneakers to her friend’s sixth birthday party or whether she would make it home for Christmas. Mom hadn’t even wanted her to go to Europe — especially with her boyfriend.

The sleepless night before finally got to Robin and she dozed and finally fell sound asleep on the sofa. There she slept until she heard the doorbell. The room was dark without a single light burning.

It rang twice before it woke her. She jumped up, kicked the coffee table in the dark, and turned on the table lamp before running to the door. She struggled to recall the past few hours as she reached for the doorknob.

“Jim,” Robin greeted the man at her door. She ignored the look of worry on his face as she wrapped her arms around him. “You’ve missed all the excitement.”

“I came over as soon as I heard my answering machine. What’s going on?”
“Do you want the long version or a summary?”

“Let’s start with the summary.”

“Ellen’s husband was here today. That’s why Jane called you. We didn’t trust him at first.”

“I think I want the long version now.” Jim sat on the sofa and pulled Robin close.

Before she could finish, Jane came stumbling down the stairs, still sleepy and disheveled.

“Don’t believe a word she says, Jim,” she said as she plopped down in a chair and took a cookie. “Thought you were calling me for dinner,” Jane said to her friend.

“In a minute,” she said. “So he gave me his card and left.”

“Left? Where did he go?”

“I don’t know,” Robin said with a look of despair on her face. “He didn’t say.”

“And you didn’t ask?”

“No. I didn’t ask. I couldn’t think straight. He’ll be back. Here’s his card.”

“Robin, it sounds like you’ve had a hard day.”

“A hard weekend,” Jane said. “I guess you didn’t tell him about yesterday?”

“Not yet...”

“I think we need some dinner,” Jim said. “Go put on your faces and some unwrinkled clothes and we’ll go find you something to eat.”

“I love this man,” Jane said. “He’s a wonderful man.”

She turned and went upstairs. “Mind if I wear your clothes?” she called from the stairs. She didn’t wait for an answer.

“She’s right, you know. I am a wonderful man,” Jim said, and gave Robin a squeeze. They both laughed and Robin had to acknowledge how good it felt to laugh. “Yes, you are,” she said and kissed him.

“I’m starving. Get out of here so we can eat,” Jim said. She rushed upstairs to change quickly and see what Jane had borrowed. Soon, the three of them had found a booth in their favorite restaurant and ordered drinks and appetizers.

“Robin, my dear, I don’t know whether you’re getting closer to the answer you want to hear or closer to the answer you don’t want to hear,” Jim said as he took a glass of beer from the waitress.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she said as she put down her drink without taking a sip.

“It could be that you are getting very close to finding out what happened to Eleanor. But it may be that you are going to find out that she stayed away on purpose.”

“I can’t imagine how that could be,” Robin said and then picked up her glass to sip. She needed it, she thought.

Jane passed her the plate of nachos and looked at her. “Really, Robin? C’mon. Ellen didn’t like things the way you did. She always picked out clothes her mother didn’t like. She went to public school. She went to Europe with her boyfriend when —”

“Well, yes, that’s true,” Robin agreed. “I know all that. We’ve talked about it before.”

“Well, maybe it wasn’t as easy as all that for her. Maybe she felt the only way she could be who she wanted to be was to leave. And once she left, she felt the family wouldn’t take her back.”

“You all like things a certain way and you don’t take it lightly when someone strays from the straight and narrow.”

“Do you really think I’m that rigid — or my mother is?”

“Not now but I used to. I think your mother ran a pretty tight ship when we were teenagers.”

“Lots of parents loosen up after they get their kids grown,” Jim said, trying to defuse what looked like an argument beginning to heat up.

“Yeah, Robin. I mean your mother’s great now but when you were in high school, she expected good grades, clean room, neat appearance and boyfriends home by 10:30.”

“I’m glad she’s not checking on you now,” Jim said with a nudge.

“Stop it,” Robin whispered at him.

“You didn’t even question it,” Jane continued. “Eleanor did. And she decided she had to break free. Maybe she thought her life was going to be set for her when she got home. That Bill guy wanted her to marry him, didn’t he?”

“Yes,” Robin nodded. She remembered thinking her sister’s life was set. She was going to have the summer in Europe and then a great job — although now that she thought about it she couldn’t remember what kind of a job it was. Was it a job she even really wanted? And what about Bill? Just because Robin and her mother loved him — and Robin remembered the huge crush she had on him — she wasn’t sure how Ellen felt about him. She hadn’t agreed to marry him, had she?

“Robin, did you hear me?” Jim said.

“Sorry,” she said, realizing she had gotten lost in her thoughts. “Oh, dinner’s here. Smells great.”

“You didn’t hear a word I said, did you?”

“Mmm, I’m sorry, what were you saying?” she said, picking up her burger.

“I have a bit of news....”

“Oh, no, bad news?” Robin didn’t like the way he hesitated.

“Well, I don’t know. It’s both, I think.”

Jim looked at her as if trying to figure out what to say.

“My father asked me to come home and run his business.”

“For how long?”

“Permanently — or until I decided to sell it. He wants to retire but he’s built the company from a one-man operation to the three-shop empire (really, he calls it that) he has now. He doesn’t want to have to lay all those people off.”

“Really,” Jane said, munching on her salad. “What kind of business?”

“Insurance. I know it’s not glamorous but he’s made a good living in Charleston. He even bought an office in the ‘burbs and another in Jacksonville. He has about 60 people working for him.”

“So what does he want you to do?” Jane asked.

Robin leaned back against the booth. The food just didn’t look appetizing anymore. And the noise was getting a little too loud. She couldn’t hear the conversation around her clearly.

“So you’re moving away?” Robin heard herself say. Jane and Jim stopped and looked at her.

“Yes, I guess I am,” he said. “I want you to come with me but I know that’s asking too much. We really don’t even know each other very well.”

Suddenly, Jane picked up her purse, and slid out of the booth. “Be right back,” she said.

“Good timing, Jane,” Robin said as she watched her friend walk away towards the ladies’ room. But Jane stopped at the bar rather than go to the restroom. Robin laughed at the detour.

“Look,” Jim turned to Robin. His face was serious, much more serious that he ever looked before. “I know we’ve gotten to know each other when things have been really rough for you. But I also think I’m falling in love with you. I don’t want to lose you and I hope you feel the same way about me.”

“I do. I know I do,” Robin said and put her hand on his. She felt herself breathe again. She hadn’t realized it herself until she said it. Yes, she had fallen in love with him. What’s more, she counted on him, more than she even had realized.

“You need to stay here. I know and you know that you have to stay here,” he continued. “You’ve got your mother to think about. You want to find out about your sister. I know. And, although I like it in Baltimore, I have to go. I’m not having fun as a stockbroker and I think I’d like to work with my father before he retires. I worked there the summers I was in college. It was good, even if I didn’t realize it yet.”

“When?” Robin asked.

“Next month. I have to give a two-week notice here and then move down there. I’m going to keep my house for now. I need a place to crash when I come up here to see you.”

“What’s wrong with my house?”

“Not a thing. But the house will need my attention and I’ll just have to keep coming back. It’s only a nine hour drive, much less if I fly. Do you think we can work things out?” he asked her.

“I’d like to,” Robin said, wrapping her arms around his neck and burying her face in his neck. She breathed in his warm, clean smell. She stifled a sob.

“What a day,” she said and forced a smile.

“It looked like you needed a few of these,” Jane said. She walked carefully, trying not to spill the crystal liquid in two martini glasses. “Waitress said she’d be right back with the cake.”

“What cake?”

“I don’t know about you two. But I needed cake. So I ordered three pieces.”

Chapter 29

The night was warm and Federal Hill restaurants had left their tables out on the sidewalk for the Sunday night diners. Summer was definitely on the way.

The three friends walked slowly, enjoying the balmy weather. It had been an eventful weekend, and all of them were tired. They walked home in silence, listening to snippets of conversation of people on the street and phrases of music wafting from the neighborhood bars. In the distance, they heard a dog bark, a plane closing in for a landing at the airport, a siren echoing off the rowhouses.

They turned the corner from Cross Street to William and froze when they saw flashing lights reflecting off the buildings. Fire trucks had jammed the street. Water rolled down the street and Robin felt her heart beating hard in her chest. Black smoke poured from the roof of a Formstone house down the block. “My house,” she cried and ran through the thicket of neighbors, TV reporters and hoses. As she raced to the front door, a husky firefighter in yellow jacket and pants grabbed her arm.

“Just where do you think you’re going?” he demanded.

“It’s my house,” she said, looking up at the smoke, imagining fire racing through the rooms.

TV cameras turned toward her as she shouted.

“You can’t go in there. It’s filled with smoke.” The man’s voice softened as she relaxed her arm. She felt the energy flow out of her and was suddenly very tired. “How bad is it? Do you know?”

“Just a little fire. On the roof. Our men are in there keeping it from the neighboring houses. Don’t know what caused it but we think it might have been an electrical short in the roof. You can thank your neighbor here. She smelled smoke and when she couldn’t find anything in her house, called 9-1-1.”

It was Caitlin’s mother, Jennifer, that was the name she couldn’t seem to recall. She stood in front of her house, holding her daughter’s hand. She looked over and waved to Robin, a look of sympathy on her face.

“Anyway,” the firefighter continued, “you won’t be able to stay here. There’s smoke damage and water. Got another place to stay?”

“Yes, of course, she does,” Jane said, coming up from behind her.

“Excuse me,” the firefighter said. “I’ve got to talk to the press here.”

Robin and her friends stood in the middle of the street and watched her house. Her neighbors came and stood beside her.

“This is terrible,” Jennifer said, “I wish I could have called sooner.”

“No, it’s so good you called.”

“You have to worry about fire in a rowhouse, don’t you? Are you going to be all right?”

“Sure, thanks,” Robin said, and meant it. Though she had lived on the street for a long time, this was the first time she had spoken to her neighbor. Of course, they said hello when they met on the street but Robin was sure she had never invited her neighbor in or seen her house. She wasn’t even sure if she was married. Had she ever seen a husband?

“What about you? Can you stay in your house?” Robin asked Jennifer.

“No, not tonight. They want to be sure the fire is out and doesn’t jump to our house. And there’s smoke.”

“Even in your house?”

“Yes, it gets in and makes a mess. That’s what they said. So I’ve already called my ex-husband. Caitlin’s dad. He’s taking Caitlin for a few days while I get things straightened out here. I’ll stay at a hotel near my office in Towson,” Jennifer said. “There’s Jake.” She patted Robin’s shoulder and wished her luck.

Robin began to take in what had happened to her house. The front door had been chopped to splinters. Bits of her grapevine wreath were scattered on the marble steps. The windows were broken upstairs and hoses snaked inside. She watched the smoke, now white, rising from her roof. Water was everywhere. She couldn’t picture how it looked inside. It couldn’t be good, she thought.

A bright light shone in her eye as a camera turned her way again. “Excuse me, Miss?” a tall, thin blonde with a skinny notebook pushed a microphone in her face. “I understand this is your house. Do you know what happened?”

“No,” Robin said weakly. “Not yet.”

“How do you feel?” the reporter asked.

“How do you think she feels?” stormed Jim and pulled her away and led her across the street.

“Could you tell me your name?” she asked.

“Ignore her. You don’t need this right now,” Jim said.

“Thanks anyway, Miss Browne,” the woman called.

“Hey, how did she find that out so fast?” Jane asked.

“Do you want to go to my house?” Jim asked her.

“No, I don’t want to go anywhere,” she said. “Not like this. I have to...”

“Yes, of course,” he replied. The three of them stood together watching as the firefighters did what they could to save Robin’s house, her grandmother’s house. Robin couldn’t imagine what her grandmother would have said if she had come upon this scene.

Finally, the balmy evening grew cooler and the crowd thinned as the cloud of smoke dissipated. One by one the fire trucks left until the scorching at the top of her house, the water still running down the street and the smell of smoke were the only clues of the fire. And the planks of wood nailed over her shattered front door.

The firefighter who had stopped Robin earlier returned. “I don’t advise going into the house tonight,” he said. “It’s dark, bound to be slippery and smoky inside for a while yet.”

“But all my stuff is inside there,” she argued. “I need—”

“Ma’am, it isn’t safe,” he said. “Tomorrow will be soon enough. I can tell you that the fire didn’t cause too much damage. But there’s some smoke damage, water damage and a little breakage. After some clean-up and the electrical repairs and a new roof, you’ll be back in.”

“Of course, sir,” Jane said before Robin could argue again. Robin, realizing she was too tired to fight, merely nodded. “We’ll come back in the morning.”

“The fire marshall may stop by tomorrow with the final report. You’ll need that for your insurance. I know it looks bad,” he said kindly. “But you were lucky and your neighbors were lucky. It could have happened while you were sleeping.”

“Yes, thanks,” Robin said. “I guess you’re right.”

As the firefighter turned to get in his red SUV, Robin turned and looked again at her house. The Formstone was blackened around the windows. It looked so sad. The roof didn’t really look that bad, she thought.

“Robin, dear, we just have to get out of all this water,” Jane said. “Come spend the night with me. I’ll bring you back before I go to school and you can get an early start in the house.”

“I’ll be over bright and early,” Jim added. “I think I can take a ‘personal day’ tomorrow.”

Robin’s cell phone rang. “It’s Mom,” she said.

“Hi, Mom—”

“How’s the house? I heard about the fire! Are you all right?”

“Yes, how did you hear? Yes, it’s fine. I’m fine. I wasn’t inside when it happened and I haven’t gotten inside. I don’t know how it is really,” she said. “How did you hear about this?”

“It’s on the 11 o’clock news. In fact, they’ve been using film of you and your house for the news promo for the last hour.”

“Great. Now I’m famous. What next? I’m on TV,” Robin said to her friends, shaking her head.

“Where are you going to stay? You can come up here if you like,” her mother said.

“No, thanks, Mom. Jane asked me to stay at her place. Jim’s here, too, he’s going to help tomorrow.”

“I’ll be down as soon as I can tomorrow.”

“No, Mom. It will be fine. You’ve been sick.”

“I’ve rested today and I should be well enough tomorrow. Andrew will bring me down after lunch. Unless you think you need me earlier —”

“After lunch will be fine,” Robin said with a sigh. “See you tomorrow. Bye, Mom.”

“Good,” Jane said. “You need your mother.” She grabbed Robin by the arm and led her up the street to Jim’s house. “I’ll go get my car and bring it around. Be right back.”

“You’ll be okay?” Jim said. “Stay with me.”

“I’m not going to sleep a wink. No, go ahead and I’ll go over Jane’s. She’s going to have me up half the night going over everything that’s happened. She’ll be no good in the classroom tomorrow. Well, I wouldn’t be; but who knows with Jane?”

“If you’re sure,” Jim hugged her.

Robin felt herself caving into the huge emotions she’s been suppressing all day. She wasn’t ready to let it all out in front of Jim. It would be different with Jane; she had seen her this way before. She held onto Jim’s warmth and drank in his kindness and strength until she heard the putter of Jane’s little car.

“I gotta go,” she said, wiping a stray tear from her eye. She tried to turn but Jim caught her, kissed her wet cheek and kissed her again. “Tomorrow,” he said.

“Thanks, Jane,” Robin said as the car pulled away.

“Here are the tissues,” Jane said, handing her a full box. “I can tell it’s coming. And I don’t blame you one little bit.”

Chapter 30

Jane’s guest room always felt like Robin’s home away from home. She’d spent a lot of time in this room since Jane moved to the city. After all the excitement of the past 48 hours Robin needed a familiar place. She remembered lots of the furnishings from Jane’s family’s home in Annapolis. The white painted bed. The knickknacks had rested on Robin’s dresser. The ballerina doll leaning against the pillow had been Robin’s, too. The two friends were in pictures all over the walls. As the night turned into a new day, Robin considered those pictures, remembering the events they represented. They’d been friends during so many important times: proms, graduations, funerals. Boyfriends and break-ups. They’d missed each other when they chose different colleges but now they were friends again.

As the sun began to lighten the room’s pink walls, Robin finally gave herself over to sleep. Exhausted, angry and sad, she had found herself counting her blessings as dawn came. For her friends, for her family, for new chances.

“Robin?” Jane nudged her shoulder and placed a mug of coffee on the bedside table. “Robin. Thank goodness you did get some sleep.”

“Jane—I must have fallen asleep. I watched the sunrise and then...”

“It’s 7 o’clock. I just called my principal and got the day off. Lucky for you, I haven’t been absent even once this year. They’re calling in a substitute. I emailed my emergency lesson plans so now I can help you out.” Jane stopped and looked at her friend.

“Tell you what. Go back to sleep for a little while. I’ll check back later and see how you’re doing.”

“No. No. I can’t sleep now. I’ll be fine. I’ve got to see the house,” Robin said, sitting up and wiping the hair from her eyes. “Oh no, I slept in my contacts.”

“I’ll get my drops,” Jane said. Gone only a few seconds, she also brought clean jeans and a sweatshirt. “I figured you wanted something fresher to wear — and maybe something that you don’t mind ruining. And that I won’t mind you ruining. Drink your coffee,” she added.

Robin gulped down the coffee and changed quickly. She was anxious to see the inside of her house. Really, she thought, she was a little frightened about what it would look like.

She laid her own clothes on the desk chair, picked up the coffee cup and walked downstairs. Jane was burning toast. “Want some?” she asked, scraping scorch marks from a crust.

“Think I’ll pass,” she said. “Have more coffee?”

“Sure. Pour me some, too.”

“Almost ready to go?” Robin asked.

“Soon as I’ve finished my breakfast,” Jane said, stuffing buttered bread in her mouth.

“Let’s go.”

The drive around the Inner Harbor from Canton to Federal Hill can be a long, nerve-wracking drive during morning rush hour and today was no exception. Road construction had already closed lanes on Lombard Street and impatient drivers were in no mood to accommodate cars in disappearing lanes. The commanding whistle of a traffic cop here and there eased things a bit. But Robin, feeling nausea building in her stomach, thought the drive was so much worse than usual. She looked up at Federal Hill when it appeared and wondered what she would find when they finally got over there.

The Bromo Seltzer Tower clock said it was only 7:25 but already it seemed like it had been a long day for Robin. A few blocks down Light Street and she was nearly home again. Nothing looked out of place. Shopkeepers were already sweeping the sidewalks outside their stores. The homeless man was sitting in a dirty doorway. Kids with backpacks were walking in twos and threes down the street to Federal Hill Elementary. The children wore shorts. They were expecting it to be another sunny May day.

When the two women turned onto Robin’s street, Robin saw the boarded up door and glanced up to the scorched Formstone to look at the hole in the roof. “I couldn’t see the roof last night,” she said.

“Go on, you get out and I’ll find a parking space,” Jane said, stopping in front of the house.

Robin couldn’t tear her eyes off the house as she walked up the curb. She looked at the boarded door and sighed. And then remembered she’d have to walk around to the alley to get in the house.

She turned down the street past Jennifer’s house —she’d never forget her name again. At Jim’s door, she stopped and wondered whether it was still too early to knock. Jim settled the argument by opening his door. “I was just on my way over.”

“I have to walk around back,” she said.

“I’ll go with you. Did you get any sleep? I have coffee. Do you need some?”

“No, I’m fine,” she said and he folded her thin fingers inside his big, warm hand. The block was short and the alley was quiet. Trash day, she thought, noticing all the metal cans lined up by the gates.

As she came to her own gate, she looked up and gasped. The fire had been mostly at the back of the house. The roof was nearly gone. The brick walls were stained blacker in back. Her worries grew when she saw thick soot around the second story windows.

“It’s so much worse than it looked in front,” she said. “I hate to go in.”

“Come on, babe. Let’s go,”

“Oh dear! What a mess,” Jane cried as she came up behind them. “Your poor roof.”

Robin unlocked the door and saw a kitchen that looked pretty much the same as when she left it. The ceiling had a few water stains on it but the dishes were still in the sink and the cereal box was still open on the counter.

Robin ran her hand across her grandmother’s old table. “Thank goodness, you’re okay,” she sighed.

She pushed open the kitchen door and felt her heart stop. Water covered the floor. The sofa sagged from the weight of the water. Her laptop was on the floor. In the water.

Her grandfather’s chair with the swan arms had been pushed on its side. Jim leaned over the right it and Robin saw that it hadn’t been damaged.

Then Robin saw something that stopped her in her tracks. Her sister’s photos. One was was still straight on the wall but the others were on the floor. They had obviously fallen and been pushed aside in the rush to get to the fire. The window scene was still intact. But Ellen’s pictures of the castle and the Austrian lake dripped water, the frames were broken and the glass cracked. The other two were missing altogether.

“Where are they?” she said, frantically looking around while she held the pieces of two of the photos.

“Here’s one,” Jim said, picking up a cracked picture frame that had slid under a chair.

“And here’s the other,” Jane answered. Water already had stained the picture of the Salzburg streetscape.

“Maybe they’ll dry,” she offered. “Let me take them in the kitchen.” She gathered the photos, carefully stacking them so they didn’t suffer any more damage and so the frames’ sharp edges didn’t hurt her. While she bustled into the kitchen, Robin swallowed and made her way up the stairs.

The steps themselves were nicked and two of the bannisters had been broken. Robin ran her hand along them to see if they could be glued back together.

At the top of the stairs, Robin turned into the front bedroom, her bedroom. The rug was soggy, the walls gray from the smoke. The windows were broken. The smell was acrid.

“It looks okay, Robin,” Jim said.

“No, it might be all right,” she agreed.

The smell got worse as she continued down the hall. The tiny middle bedroom looked like it had been spared except for the smoky-smelling air. The walls were untouched and there wasn’t any water on the floor. The ceiling looked dry.

“Well, this is good,” she said.

“But this isn’t,” Jim said as a warning. He had moved to the back bedroom which was located under the spot where the roof was most seriously burned.

Water dripped from the ceiling and soaked the bed. A bookshelf had fallen over and scattered books were swollen with water.

“Oh, what a mess,” Robin said, stepping over the books to pick up a crocheted pillow her grandmother had made for her. It was black from flying ash. “Maybe I can save this,” she said. A breeze came through the broken window.

“Maybe we should open all the windows,” Jim suggested. “Get the smell out.”

“It’ll take more than a spring breeze,” Robin said.

“Where do we start?”

“With a phone,” Jim said. “You need to call your insurance agent first. And then the fire clean-up people.”

“The numbers are in my computer, floating in water,” she moaned.

“Don’t you have a phone book?”

“No, I don’t keep them around anymore.”

“I’ll go get mine. Did you call your boss?”

“No, too early yet. Well, I guess it isn’t anymore. I’ll call her while you get the phone book.”

Robin walked back to the front bedroom, still carrying the blackened pillow. As she passed the mirror, she noticed the black stain transferring to her sweatshirt from the pillow and threw it on the bed.

She dialed her office number and left a message when no one answered.

“I think the pictures will be fine,” Jane said, starting up the stairs. She met Robin in the middle. “The frames are history but the photos will be okay.”

“Thanks, Jane,” Robin said and sat on a step to survey the work that needed to be done.

“I guess we need to start with trash bags,” she said.

“Here is the phone book,” Jim said as he returned.

After Robin made an appointment with the insurance agent for later that afternoon and arranged for cleaning the next day, she found the trash bags.

The three of them wordlessly picked up broken trinkets that had gotten in the way of the heavy hoses and filled bag after bag. They hauled the sofa out the back door to let it dry in the sun. Robin knew it was going to the dump but as they carried the swan chair outside, she saw with relief that it was still in pretty good condition.

By noon, all the curtains were down, soggy first floor carpets were stretched out on the back lawn, and six bags of trash were lined up by the gate. Jim had opened every window in the house.

Robin offered to let them rest while she walked down to the market for lunch.

“Please,” she said, when Jim offered to go. “I need to go.”

The walk to the Cross Street Market helped Robin get the smell of smoke out of her nose. Instead, she smelled the scent of roses blooming in backyards along her route.

She stopped at a new deli for paninis and grabbed a box of Berger cookies as she waited. She didn’t make it to Charles Street before tearing into the cookie box. As she walked along the route home, she felt comforted by the thick chocolate icing of the first cookie, and then the second. By the time she neared her house, she was well into her fourth.

Her cell phone rang. She popped the last bite into her mouth as she looked to see who was calling. “Hi Mom. I bought lunch. Will you be here soon?”

“I just called to tell you I’m nearly there. I’m at the tunnel. Are you at the house?”

“In the backyard with Jim and Jane. Come around back.”

There was no answer. She must have driven into the tunnel, Robin thought as she reached the back gate. She pushed open the gate and saw there was company. Jane and Jim were enthralled by whatever their visitor was saying. Who was that? she wondered and answered her own question. Of course, she thought, that’s Jennifer. I wonder how her house is.

Robin saw a mix of emotions cross Jane’s face as she listened to the visitor. Instinctively, Robin froze as she realized something was wrong. She let go of the gate but couldn’t move.

As the gate clattered closed, the visitor turned around. Who gasped? It was hard to tell. Robin couldn’t tear her eyes from the woman who stood before her. That blonde ponytail wasn’t Jennifer’s but she knew it well. The worn jeans could have been the same ones she saw 15 years ago. The face, no, the face had definitely changed. The cheeks were gaunt and dark shadows encircled the eyes. But as those eyes met Robin’s, Robin felt her arms go numb. She was speechless. Her heart must have stopped beating. But her legs pushed her forward until she was face to face with Ellen.

“It’s you!” Ellen shouted and threw her arms around her little sister. “I finally found you!”

Robin wrapped her arms around Ellen and the lunch bag thudded into her back. Jane grabbed it away and she and Jim turned to go into the house.

The moments slipped away without a word between the two sisters. Robin didn’t know what to say or how she should feel. In truth, she was elated.

Finally, Ellen laughed and pulled away. “Let me get a look at my little sister all grown up!”

“Wow, Rob, you look just like Dad.”

Robin laughed. “He always said I was the spitting image of Mom.”

“It’s so good to see you again. Finally. I looked for you everywhere,” Ellen said and sat down on the garden bench.

“You looking for me? Don’t you know? You were dead! We’d given up hope,” Robin said and sat beside her. “When you didn’t come home...Where the hell have you been? Where did you go?”

Ellen sighed. Robin could tell she had a speech prepared for this moment.

“It’s a long story and not a very pretty one, I’m afraid,” she began, looking at her hands and twisting a ring. Robin looked at them too: red and rough with chewed nails and a silver ring on every finger. Then she looked up at Robin. “But it has turned out happy. At least I think so. And I’ve found you. Here, of all places. You know, I looked here a long time ago. It must have been after Grandmother died.”

The phone rang. Robin ignored it.

“So where the hell have you been? Where did you go?” Robin asked again. So many questions crowded into her mind. And they all needed answers right now. But this one was the most important: “Why did you leave us?”

Ellen ignored the hard question. “I’m living on the Eastern Shore. I have a son who’s really sick and a daughter — I think you met her at the aquarium.”

“Really!?” Robin tried to remember meeting a Samantha. “No, I think I’d remember a Samantha.”

“She goes by Robbi in school. No ‘e’,” Ellen said. “She thinks it’s much cooler than her first name. Anyway, she came home from a field trip one day last month with her knee all bandaged up. She told me about the lady who helped her out. I had the news on in the kitchen at breakfast this morning. When she saw the story about the fire, she said you looked like the same lady. She mentioned then that the lady had a picture of St. Michael’s in her office. I have the same picture in my kitchen, Robin. I hadn’t been paying attention to the news so I didn’t see you at first. But then there you were in front of Grandmother’s house and it was burning down.”

“Rob! The phone again,” Jane yelled out the door. “The insurance man is on his way. Do either one of you want one of these sandwiches? Before Jim eats them all?”

Ellen stood up. “I’m keeping you. You have so much to do. I’ve got to get back to the babysitter, anyway. She can’t keep Scott for too long anyway. I’ve got to go,” she said. “We’ll get together soon?”

“No, don’t go yet. Mom’s on her way,” Robin said. “I was just talking to her before she drove into the Harbor Tunnel. She should be here in 15 minutes, tops. She’s going to help me with the insurance and stuff. You have to stay. You can’t leave now. She’ll be heartbroken to have missed you.”

“Yes, well, I wish I could. Really. I can’t leave little Scott alone with the babysitter for too long,” Ellen said. She rooted around in her purse and drew out a pen and scrap of paper. “So we don’t lose track again,” she said as she scribbled. “Here’s my phone number. My name’s Ewing now. Well, it isn’t really but that’s the name I go by. It’s my, er, husband’s name.”

Then Ellen put her hand in her pocket. She pulled out two tiny charms. “They’re edelweiss,” she said. “I bought them for you and Mom in Salzburg. I’ve carried them everywhere. See? I planned to come home all along. Here’s yours,” she said. “Mom’s is a little different. Would you give it to her?”

“No, El, give it to her yourself,” Robin argued.

But Ellen shook her head. “No,” she said. “You give it to her. I want her to have it now. I want her to know I planned to come home and .... I’ll come and see you soon.” She squeezed her sister’s shoulder and turned to go.

“Robin!” Jane called again from the kitchen. “It’s that Debbie person. You were supposed to meet her today?”

“Oh no. I forgot. Tell her about the fire. Tell her I found what I was looking for,” Robin said, watching her sister walk away.

Chapter 31

Robin fingered the scrap of paper her sister had handed to her. As she heard Jane opening the back door again, she stuffed the paper deep in her pocket and turned around.

“Where’s Ellen?” Jane asked.

“She had to go,” Robin said simply.

“Had to go!? Just like that? She didn’t even wait to see your mother?”

“Yeah. She said she had to get home to her little boy. I asked her to stay but she said she couldn’t wait.”

Jane was clearly unable to understand. “Why had you let her go without a fight? You’ve looked for her for so long and she’s gone in, like fifteen minutes. She just got here,”

Robin pulled out the paper to show her friend. “I had to let her go. But it’s okay because now I know where to find her.”

“But your mother...Oh, hi, Miss Diane.”

Diane, armed with bucket, mop and cleaners, was letting herself in the yard.

“Hello, girls. Oh, Robin, the house! What a mess!”

“It’s not too bad...” Robin began.

“Robin...tell her,” Jane said.

“Tell me what?”

Jane impatiently waited for Robin to tell Diane the news.

“Ellen was here. You just missed her.”

Diane dropped her bucket and turned her gaze from the roof to her daughter. Robin wasn’t sure her mother understood at first. Diane stood motionless for a moment. Then she blinked and repeated what Robin said.

“Ellen was here. I just missed her. I just missed her? Robin, Ellen was here?”

If Robin expected a cry of jubilation from her mother, she was disappointed. Diane seemed shocked, maybe dismayed, by the news. Maybe it was just finding out she’d missed a chance to see her daughter. Of course, that was it.

“I’ve got her phone number and we’ll get together with her. She said she could only stop for a few minutes. She had to get back home.”

“She left this for you.” Robin handed her mother the tiny silver edelweiss charm. “She told me to tell you she planned to come home when she bought this in Salzburg and promised to see us again soon.”

“Here take it,” Robin said, pushing the charm at her mother.

Diane reluctantly put her hand out and looked at the silvery flower Robin had placed there. Robin thought for a moment that her mother might cry.

Instead, Diane took a deep breath, tucked the charm in her jeans pocket and said, “I guess now isn’t the appropriate time for housecleaning is it?”

Robin laughed and kissed her mother’s cheek. “No, I’d say a celebration is in order — even with a hole in my roof!”

Chapter 32

The afternoon — which should have been mournful after the fire — did indeed turn into a party. Even if the guest of honor couldn’t stay for it, Robin, her mother and her friends celebrated Ellen’s return. In between visits from the insurance adjuster, a handyman and the fire inspector, Robin filled glasses and passed around the box of cookies. When the soda ran dry, she found a bottle of Champagne still cold in her refrigerator. Jennifer appeared with a bakery box filled with brownies; Jim retrieved pretzels and nuts from his own kitchen. The acrid smell of smoke reminded them once in a while of the damage above them but Robin dismissed it, still excited by her sister’s reappearance.

The good feelings lasted all afternoon as curious neighbors arrived to see what had happened and how Robin was. She found herself unable to feel bad. In spite of the bags filled with her damaged belongings, in spite of the soggy couch she knew she would have to throw out, in spite of the gaping hole in her roof that was now covered with a bright blue tarp, Robin still felt the thrill of seeing her sister.

As the dinner hour approached and the number of visitors dwindled, Diane rose to leave. “I must get home. I promised Andrew to be home by dinner. He’ll want to hear all the news, too.”

Robin walked with her mother around the block to her car. She hugged her mother and made her promise they’d get together with Ellen within the week.

“Of course, dear, I want to see her very soon, too,” Diane replied.

As she watched Diane drive away, she felt Jim’s arms wrap around her shoulders. “Well? Some day wasn’t it?”

Robin turned around. “You are so right.”

“Robin,” Jane interrupted the tender scene. “I’ve got to get back home. I have school tomorrow. Are you coming with me?”

“Yes,” she said, looking up at Jim.

“Stay with me,” he whispered. Before she could turn him down, he asked another question. “How about dinner first? Then I’ll drive you over to Jane’s.”

“I know when I’m not wanted,” Jane said. “Don’t rush home. I’ll leave the light on for you.”

“Thanks, Jane. See you at your place in a little while.”

Chapter 33

It was still early when Jim walked Robin to Jane’s front door. “I’m sorry I ran out of steam,” she said. “It’s been a hell of a day....”

“I understand,” Jim said, wrapping his arms around her. “I’ll call you tomorrow. Are you going to work?”

“I had better. Rebuilding my house is going to be expensive.”

“Then I’ll call you at work. Pick you up for dinner then?”

“Yes,” she said, grateful for his sensitivity. “I promise to be hungry.”

She kissed Jim good-night and rang the doorbell.

“You already?” Jane asked.

“Well, I like that,” Robin asked.

“I just didn’t think I’d see you for hours.”

“Wouldn’t you know it? The minute we sat down, I crashed. I couldn’t make it past the first glass of wine. I came home to go to bed. I’m just exhausted.”

“Well, head off to bed, then. Call me if you need anything.”

“Well, I could use some clothes for work tomorrow. I haven’t washed mine yet. I guess I should have thought of that today.”

“I’ll be right up and we’ll see what I have that you’ll like.”

Robin trudged up the steps to the bathroom. Her hands still smelled smoky to her so she washed them carefully.

She was still holding the towel in her hand when a terrible thought crashed into her head.

My mother knew, she said, strangling the towel. She knew all along. She knew Ellen wasn’t dead. I wonder if she knew where Ellen was.

Robin was still standing in the middle of the bathroom holding the towel when Jane appeared.

“Jane!” Robin said.

“What’s up?”

“Jane. My mother knew. She knew. She knew, Jane. She knew.”

“Robin. Calm down. Your mother knew what?” Jane took her friend by the hand and led her to the guest room and helped her sit in the antique rocker. Jane took the rumpled towel from Robin’s hands and sat down on the bed across from her.

“Now tell me. What did your mother know?”

“My mother knew. She has known all along. She kept it from me. How, Jane? How could she do that?”

Robin ran her hands through her hair and turned to look out the window at the alley below.

“Robin,” Jane said gently. “Robin.”

Robin turned to her and felt tears welling in the corners of her eyes. The tears were hot. They hurt as she struggled to keep them back. “Tell me what’s wrong,” Jane asked her.

“Oh, Jane, I think my mother knew Eleanor wasn’t dead. She knew Eleanor had gone off and was living somewhere else. She kept it a secret from me. All this time. All these years. She never told me. She let me go on wondering about Ellen. She let me look for her.”

“Hon, you don’t know that, really, do you? Your mother wouldn’t do that to you. She just wouldn’t,” Jane tried to reason with Robin.

“No, I really don’t know, I guess, but suddenly it all makes sense. Everything makes sense now. It didn’t before. I couldn’t figure out how Ellen could disappear and then come back and we never knew. I never knew until February. Until only a few months ago. But I think my mother knew.”

“Robin. Calm down. You aren’t making sense. What makes you think your mother knew Ellen was still alive? Do you think she knew all about what she’s been doing all this time?”

“It’s just a feeling but all of the sudden I thought it. Why did she want me to stop looking for Ellen? What was it with the nightmares? Why didn’t she have Ellen’s social security number for the private detective? Why didn’t Ellen wait to see Mom when they haven’t seen each other in 15 years? And Mom! She was just weird, she didn’t look as excited as I thought she would. It was just weird.”

“Then call her and talk to her.”

“No,” Robin said and stood up. “I’m going to see her. I’m going to ask her to her face. I can’t believe I never thought of this before. Jane, will you come with me?”

“As tired and crazy as you are, you shouldn’t be going,” Jane argued.

“I’m going. Are you?”

Jane sighed. “I’d better. The roads won’t be safe if you’re driving. Let me put on something besides my pajamas.”

Chapter 34

I-95 was quiet for the end of a holiday weekend. For I-95, that is. Trucks barreled past and plenty of state troopers were out stopping speeding mini-vans. Robin said nothing once they got onto the highway. Exhaustion finally got hold of her and she fell asleep. Jane tuned into a local college’s jazz station to keep her company. The sun was beginning to set as Jane turned onto Route 40 for the last leg of the 45 minute trip. Robin awoke and straightened up. She rubbed her eyes. “Damn,” she said, “I fell asleep in my contacts again.”

“I have drops in my purse,” Jane said.

“Are you sure you still want to go to Havre de Grace?” she asked as Robin dropped the solution into her eyes.

“I have to. I just have to.”

As they pulled up to the house, Diane was sitting on the porch with Andrew. She rose from the chaise longue when she saw Robin climb out of Jane’s little car. Jane stayed inside the car and out of the way.

“I have to talk to you, Mother,” Robin said. She strode up to the porch. “Hi, Andrew.”

Andrew stood to greet her and offer her his seat. “Is that Jane with you? I’ll go say hello.”

“Robin, whatever is the matter?” Diane said as she returned to her chair.

Robin didn’t sit down. She clenched the porch railing for support and asked: “How long have you known Ellen was alive?”

“What?!”

“Mother, you knew, didn’t you? You’ve kept it from me all this time. Haven’t you?”

Diane looked as if she was going to deny it but then she nodded. Slowly and with pain in her eyes, she nodded. “Yes, I knew. I’ve wanted to tell you for a long time but I didn’t know how. I kept thinking you were going to find out on your own anyway so I wouldn’t have to tell you.”

“How could you? How could you keep a secret like that from me? How could you?” Robin released the railing and slid onto the porch step. She leaned against the railing, suddenly very weak and tired.

Diane sat beside her. “I didn’t mean to keep it from you. Certainly not for all this time. But once I let you believe Eleanor was gone, how could I bring her back? I’m glad you know now.”

“Glad.... You killed my sister 15 years ago. You led me to believe she was dead! Then Dad died and Grandmother died and you moved away. And I’ve been missing all of then — all of you — for so long. When I could have had my sister!”

“Robin, don’t be so melodramatic. You were a child when she disappeared. We all thought she had died. Your poor father never knew she was alive.”

“You lied to Dad, too?”

“No, not Dad. I didn’t hear from Ellen until after he died.”

“You heard from Ellen? You heard from Ellen!”

“Yes I have the letter she sent. Come with me. I’ll show it to you.”

Diane held open the screen door for her daughter and she led her up to her bedroom. She pulled open her top dresser drawer and pushed aside the scarves and handkerchiefs to retrieve a battered pink stationery box.

“Sit down over there and I’ll show you,” Diane said.

Robin sat on the tiny slipper chair she had used — was it just yesterday?

“This letter was forwarded to me right after I moved here. Ellen sent it to our house in Annapolis,” Diane said, slipping a single sheet out of an envelope covered with stamps and post office markings. She looked at Robin, tears in her eyes, but Robin looked only at the letter.

It said,

“Dear Mom and Dad and Robin,

“I’m sorry it has taken me so long to write again. Finally, I have an address of my own. Sean and I have arrived in the Outback and have a post office box in Alice Springs so we can get mail again. I hope to hear from you soon...”

Robin looked up. “There were other letters?”

“I didn’t get any other letters before this one?” her mother answered.

“And after?”

“No, I didn’t get any more,” she said, opening the box again. “But you did. Three of them.”

“They’re unopened. You kept them from me but you didn’t even open them?”

“No, I had told Ellen I’d have nothing more to do with her when I wrote back. I didn’t even give her my new address. These three arrived before the post office stopped forwarding our mail. I don’t know if she sent others.”

Robin looked at the three envelopes in her hands. One looked like a card so she opened that first. And it was a card, a card for her 16th birthday. Funny, Robin thought, she didn’t even remember her 16th birthday. An important birthday and one Ellen had remembered from a place called Alice Springs. And then she recalled that day. It had been the one-year anniversary of the day they got the news Ellen had disappeared. No wonder she didn’t remember it as her birthday. Yes, she remembered the day. A quiet, somber day. Robin opened the card and read the note. “She was pregnant when she wrote the note, Mom. And you didn’t even know.”

“No,” Diane took the card when Robin offered it. “That couldn’t have been her daughter...she must have lost it.”

“She may have needed you,” Robin said, accusingly. She picked up the heavy envelope and slit it open. Inside were photos from Australia: strange rocks and wide expanses of golden grasses and bent trees. A letter inside announced that these photos were going to be published in a travel magazine in South Africa. The photos fell to the floor as Robin slit open the last envelope. It was a plea from her sister to write to her. “I’m so lonely here when Sean is out on assignment,” Ellen had written. “I miss you all. I miss home. I do love it here and I love what I’m doing and don’t regret what I did. Ever. (Ever was underlined.) But I’d love to hear from you when you have a moment to write.”

“I could have written. I could’ve visited her.”

Diane shook her head. “No. It simply wasn’t possible. What your sister did — leaving us all for a strange man to go halfway around the world — no she was wrong. I had to protect you. I couldn’t let you know what had happened. I had to protect you.”

“From what?” Robin was clearly puzzled by what her mother had said.

“The scandal of what she did,” her mother said quietly. “You were just a child. You couldn’t understand that what she was doing was wrong. She left everything. She left us. She gave us all up for some man we didn’t know and would never know.”

Robin didn’t understand what the big deal was. There was no murder involved, no kidnapping or robbery or any other crime. But she sensed that her sister’s actions had caused her family pain. She looked at her mother who still held that first letter in her hands. No, she thought. Her mother caused her own pain and she’d hurt and betrayed the whole family in the process. Especially me.

Robin felt the anger return hot to her cheeks. She gathered the letters and stood up.

“I can’t believe you did this to me,” she said to her mother. Without another word, she left.

“Good night, Andrew,” she said to her mother’s husband who stood by the curb talking to Jane.

“Let’s go, Jane,” she said. Robin got into the car and sat looking straight ahead. She didn’t see the quizzical look Andrew gave her. She didn’t see her mother come to the door to ask her to come back inside. She absentmindedly stroked the letters on her lap as Jane turned the car back toward Baltimore.

“She knew, Jane,” Robin said finally.

“What did she say?”

As they dodged more mini-vans and tractor-trailers along I-95, Robin told her friend about the letters, about her mother’s strange reasoning for keeping the truth from Robin.

“You were an impressionable young girl,” Jane said, trying to understand and trying to help her friend understand. “You know how strait-laced your mother could be. She liked things to be her way; she hated it when Ellen questioned. This must have been a nightmare for your mother.”

“It’s no excuse. I trusted her. She’s my mother; I’m supposed to trust her.”

“I don’t know what to tell you, Robin,” Jane said. “It’ll be all right. After all, you finally did find your sister. That’s important.”

“Yeah. You’re right.”

“You don’t have to understand your mother. You don’t have to forgive your mother.”

“And I can’t,” Robin interrupted.

“I know,” Jane said quietly. “But some day you’ll need your mother. I wish I still had mine to talk to.”

“Well, you’re probably right but right now, I’m so mad.”

“Fine. Be mad. Have you got the toll?”

“Sure,” Robin reached into her pocket to pull out two crumpled dollar bills. A tiny silver charm slipped from between the bills. Robin caught it before it slid to the floor.

“Have you got the two dollars?” Jane asked. “What are you looking at?”

“Here,” Robin said, passing her the cash. “This is a charm my sister brought back from Austria.” She unlatched the clasp of the necklace she was wearing and slid the charm onto the chain. She sighed.

“What a weekend. I lost my house. Found my sister. Fought with my mother,” Robin said.

“So what do you want to do tomorrow?”

Robin hung the charm around her neck. “Something else.”

Epilogue

Things don’t always turn out the way you hope they will. Sometimes they do. That weekend, after Robin’s house caught on fire, I was sure she was about to marry Jim. Just a feeling I had. But I was wrong.

Just as Jim had planned, he moved back to Charleston a few weeks after Memorial Day weekend to go to work for his father. Then his father had a heart attack and stopped working sooner than he had expected to. We saw Jim only a few times before he decided he needed to stay close. Of course, falling in love with his office manager wasn’t part of the original plan either.

You know it’s funny, but I don’t think Robin cared too much. That may be oversimplifying it. I’m sure she missed him, probably a lot. He was a great guy. Yet, all of a sudden, she had a whole lot of new people in her life and all the stuff with her house to deal with. Yeah, she probably missed Jim, but she, well, in the end she just let him go. I can understand that. He was way too nice. Who needs that?

One thing troubles Robin and it shocked the hell out of me. Robin and Ellen really haven’t seen each other too much. If Ellen has told her side of the story, Robin hasn’t told me about it. All I know is Ellen is married, well not really married since she never divorced Sean, to a farmer somewhere over the Bay Bridge. Ben is his name; they named their son Scott after Mr. Browne. I don’t know what’s wrong with the little boy. He’s about seven and bedridden. Ellen can hardly get away from him.

Robin told me Ellen is happy — even if she’s pretty much homebound. She spent enough time wandering the world, I guess. She likes the farm work. She’s proud of her daughter and adores their little boy.

Robin’s mom took Ellen’s return pretty hard at first — it didn’t help that Robin was so mad at her. But Ellen needed her mother and her children needed their grandmother. And Miss Diane was thrilled to find a place in their lives. She was thrilled to have grandchildren and she wanted to get to know them. She even started looking for a little house on Kent Island, one in a neighborhood with a marina. Robin says she already got a little boat so she can take the children sailing. Miss Diane always was pretty resilient.

Robin hasn’t forgiven her mother yet. Not yet but I’m sure one day she will. Robin isn’t one to hold grudges. And Miss Diane calls her every week trying to rebuild those bridges. Robin listens for a few minutes and then makes up some excuse to get off the phone. That’s been hard on both of them, I think. One day it will be okay again.

Summer was a busy time for Robin anyway. She spent long days at the aquarium only to come home to see what progress had been made on the house. It turned out that the house needed lots of work after the fire: new wiring, new roof, new walls, new floors. When it was all done, the house gleamed. It was perfect. I even helped Robin pick out new furniture. Except for her grandfather’s chair and the kitchen table. They were refinished and put back in their regular spots. But the rest of the house was brand new.

So what did Robin do? She sold the house. She told me she couldn’t stand reliving all the memories there. It was in the hands of new owners right after Labor Day, the same day she put a down payment on a condo overlooking Inner Harbor East.

No more Formstone and exposed brick. This new place shines with stainless steel and glass and concrete. Robin brought only two pieces of furniture from the old house. She put the old table in her new dining room and the rocking chair with the swan arms got a place of honor in the living room. Ellen’s pictures hang in her little study. There’s a big picture window in the living room with a beautiful view of Federal Hill but I don’t think Robin looks that way too often.

Then last week, Robin called to tell me she was going on a trip. She promised to be back by New Year’s. She told me she was going alone. She’d put her life on hold for long enough. She had decided she wanted to see the world. It sounded like a good idea to me. I asked if she planned to go to the places in Eleanor’s pictures. No, she said. She didn’t think she wanted to see them for herself. Not Austria. Not Australia. Someday, maybe she’d go there. This time she was going to France, Scandinavia and Thailand. Why those countries. She wanted to see something for herself, places no one she knew had seen. She picked those.

Before she left, Robin gave me her cell phone number and promised to answer it anywhere in the world. The phone company had told her the phone would get good reception everywhere. And Robin said she would take her new laptop and keep in touch. Besides, she added, she had counted on Google so much over the years, she had to take Google maps with her. This way Robin knew she’d never get lost.

THE END