Kat shook her head.

“‘If a man had enough to eat, he’d want to grow a second mouth.’ He also had a dirty way of saying it, but I won’t repeat it here.”

Kat reached out and took her mother’s hand. She tried to remember the last time she had done that—reached out to her very own mother—but no memory came to her.

“What about Dad?”

“You always thought it was your father who wanted you to get out of this life. But it was me. I was the one who didn’t want you stuck here.”

“You hated it that much?”

“No. It was my life. It’s all I have.”

“I don’t understand.”

Mom squeezed her daughter’s hand. “Don’t make me face what I don’t need to face,” she said. “It’s over. You can’t change the past. But see, you can shape it with your memories. I get to choose which ones I keep, not you.”

Kat tried to keep her voice gentle. “Mom?”

“What?”

“Those don’t sound like memories. They sound like illusions.”

“What’s the difference?” Mom smiled. “You lived here too, Kat.”

Kat sat back in her chair. “What?”

“You were a child, sure, but a smart child, very mature for your age. You loved your father unconditionally, yet you saw him vanish. You saw through my fake smiles and all that sweetness when he came home. But you looked away, didn’t you?”

“I’m not looking away now.” Kat reached out her hand again. “Please tell me where he went.”

“The truth? I don’t know.”

“But you know more than you’re telling me.”

“He was a good man, your father. He provided for you and your brothers. He taught you right from wrong. He worked long hours and made sure that you all got a college education.”

“Did you love him?” she asked.

Mom started busying herself, rinsing a cup in the sink, putting the mayo back in the fridge. “Oh, he was so handsome when we met, your father. Every girl wanted to date him.” There was a faraway look in her eye. “I wasn’t so bad back then either.”

“You’re not so bad now.”

Mom ignored the remark.

“Did you love him?”

“The best I could,” she said, blinking until the faraway look was no more. “But it’s never enough.”

Chapter 25

Kat started back toward the 7 train. School must have been letting out. Kids with giant backpacks shuffled by, their eyes down, most playing with their smartphones. Two girls from St. Francis Prep walked by in their cheerleader uniforms. To the shock of all who knew her, Kat had tried out for cheerleading her sophomore year. Their main cheer was the old standby: “We’re St. Francis Prep, we don’t come any prouder, and if you can’t hear us, we’ll shout it a little louder.” Then you repeat the cheer louder and then louder still until it all felt a tad inane. The other cheer—she smiled at the memory—was when your team made a mistake. They’d do a quick clap while shouting, “That’s all right, that’s okay, we’re gonna beat you anyway.” A few years ago, Kat had gone to a game and noticed that they changed the cheer from “we’re gonna beat you” to the more politically correct “we’re gonna win.”

Progress?

Kat was just in front of Tessie’s house when her cell phone rang. It was Chaz.

“You got my text?”

“About the license plate? Yeah, thanks.”

“Dead end?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Because,” Chaz said, “there was one thing about the license plate that bothered me.”

Kat squinted into the sun. “What?”

“The registration was for a black Lincoln Town Car. Not a stretch. Do you know anything about stretches?”

“Not really, no.”

“They are all custom-made. You take a regular car, you strip the interior, and then you literally slice it in half. Then you pull it back, install the prefab exterior, rebuild the interior with a bar or TV or whatever.”

More kids ambled past her, heading home from school. Again she thought back to her own days, when school dismissal was boisterous. None of these kids said a word. They just stared at their phones.

“Okay,” Kat said, “so?”

“So James Isherwood’s registration didn’t read ‘stretch.’ It could be an oversight, no big deal. But I decided to take a deeper look. The car also doesn’t have a livery license. Again, that isn’t a huge deal. If the car was privately owned, that wouldn’t be necessary. But the boyfriend’s name isn’t Isherwood, correct?”

“Correct,” Kat said.

“So I looked some more. No harm, right? I called Isherwood’s house.”

“And?”

“He wasn’t home. Let me cut to the chase, okay? Isherwood lives in Islip, but he works for an energy company headquartered in Dallas. He flies out there a lot. That’s where he is now. So, see, he parked his car in long-term parking.”

A dark, cold shiver eased its way down the back of Kat’s neck. “And someone stole his license plate.”

“Bingo.”

Amateurs steal cars to commit crimes. That was messy. Stolen cars are immediately reported to the police. But if you swipe a license plate, especially a front one from some long-term garage, it could be days or weeks before the theft is reported. Even then, it is harder to spot a license plate than an entire car. With a stolen car, you can be on the lookout for a specific make and model. With a stolen license plate, especially if you’re smart enough to steal it off a car with a similar make . . .

Chaz said, “Kat?”

“We need to find out everything we can about Dana Phelps. See if we can ping her phone location. Get her recent texts.”

“This isn’t our jurisdiction. They live in Connecticut.”

The front door of Tessie’s house opened. Tessie stepped outside.

“I know,” Kat said. “Tell you what. E-mail all you got to a Detective Schwartz at the Greenwich Police Department. I’ll contact him later.”

Kat hung up the phone. What the hell was going on? She debated calling Brandon, but that seemed premature. She needed to think it through. Chaz was right—this wasn’t their case. That was clear. Plus, Kat had her own issues right now, thank you very much. She would pass it on to Joe Schwartz and leave it at that.

Tessie was making her way toward her. Kat flashed back to when she was nine years old, hiding behind the kitchen door, listening to Tessie cry about being pregnant. Tessie was one of those people who kept it all hidden with a smile. She had eight kids in twelve years in an era when husbands would sooner drink from a septic tank than change a diaper. Her children were scattered around the country now as though tossed by a giant hand. Some kept moving. Usually at least one still stayed at their childhood home. Tessie didn’t care. She didn’t like the company or dislike it. Motherhood was over for her, at least the labor-intensive part. They could stay or they could leave. She might make the occasional tuna fish sandwich for Brian or she might not. It didn’t matter to her.

“Is everything okay?” Tessie asked.

“Fine.”

Tessie looked doubtful. “Sit with me a minute?”

“Sure,” Kat said. “I’d like that.”

Tessie had always been Kat’s favorite of Mom’s friends. During Kat’s childhood, despite the chaos and exhaustion, Tessie always found time to chat with her. Kat had worried that she was yet another burden or obligation, but somewhere along the way, she realized that wasn’t the case, that Tessie enjoyed their time together. Tessie had trouble communicating with her own daughters, and Kat, of course, had the same issue with her mother. Some might call their rapport special—that Tessie should have been Kat’s mom or something like that—but more likely, it was just that they weren’t related and could both relax.

Maybe familiarity—accent on the familia—did indeed breed contempt.

Tessie’s house was a tired Tudor. It was spacious enough, but when it had housed ten, it seemed as though the walls were buckling from the onslaught. There was a fence across the driveway. Tessie opened it so they could head into the backyard, where she kept her small garden.