When she knew she was going to be released from prison, she’d sent Mrs. Barry a shopping list of groceries. At eight o’clock, Molly went back downstairs and began to prepare the supper she had planned and had been looking forward to for weeks now: a green salad with a balsamic-vinegar dressing; crisp Italian bread, heated in the oven; a light tomato sauce that she made from scratch, served over linguine cooked al dente; a glass of Chianti Riservo.

When it was prepared, she sat in the breakfast nook, a cozy spot that overlooked the backyard. She ate slowly, savoring the spicy pasta and crunchy bread and tangy salad, enjoying the velvety warmth of the wine, looking out into the dark yard, enjoying the anticipation of spring, only weeks away.

The flowers will be late, she thought, but soon things would be blooming again. That was another of the promises she had made to herself-to dig in the garden again, to feel the earth, warm and moist, to watch for the tulips as they sprang up with their potpourri of color, to once again plant impatiens along the borders of the flagstone walk.

She ate slowly, reveling in the silence, so different from the constant, mind-numbing noise at the prison. After tidying the kitchen, she went into the study. There she sat in the darkness, her hands wrapped around her knees. As she sat, she listened for the sound that had suggested to her there was someone else in the house that night Gary had died, the sound, familiar yet unfamiliar, that had been slipping in and out of her fragmented nightmares for nearly six long years. There was nothing but the wind outside and, nearby, the ticking of a clock.

When Fran left the studio, she walked across town to the four-room apartment she’d rented on Second Avenue and Fifty-sixth Street. It had been a jolt to sell her Los Angeles condo, but now that she was here, she realized that, as Gus had perceived, New York was indeed in her blood.

After all, I did live in Manhattan until I was thirteen, she thought as she walked up Madison Avenue and passed Le Cirque 2000, casting an admiring glance at the lighted courtyard that led to the entrance. Then Dad made a killing in the stock market and decided to be a country gentleman.

That was when they’d moved to Greenwich and bought a house only a short distance from where Molly lived now. The house was in an exclusive Lake Avenue neighborhood. It turned out, of course, that they couldn’t afford it, and the house was followed by a car they couldn’t afford and clothes they couldn’t afford. Maybe it was because he panicked that Dad couldn’t make money in the market again, Fran thought.

He loved being active in town affairs and getting to know people. He believed that volunteers make friends, and he was a dream volunteer. At least until he “borrowed” donations to the library fund.

She had been dreading the thought of sorting through the boxes she had shipped East, but the sleet had let up, and the cold was bracing. By the time she’d put the key in the lock of her apartment, 21E, she’d developed a second wind.

At least the living room is in pretty decent shape, she told herself as she switched on the light and looked around the cheerful room with its moss-green velvet couch and chairs, its red and ivory and green Persian carpet.

The sight of the still almost-empty bookshelves galvanized her into action. She changed into an old sweater and slacks and got to work. Putting some lively music on the stereo helped relieve the monotony of emptying boxes and sorting books and tapes. The box with the kitchen equipment was the easiest to go through. Not that much in it, she thought wryly. Shows what kind of cook I am.

At quarter of nine she sighed a fervent amen and dragged the last of the empty boxes out to the disposal closet. It takes a lot of loving to make a house a home, she thought with satisfaction as she walked through the apartment, which at last did seem like home.

Framed snapshots of her mother and stepfather and of her stepbrothers and their families made them feel closer. I’m going to miss you guys, she thought. Coming to New York on a fast visit had been one thing, but actually moving here and knowing she wouldn’t be seeing any of them regularly was much more difficult. Her mother had put Greenwich behind her. She never mentioned having lived there, and when she remarried, she urged Fran to assume her stepfather’s name.

No way, Fran thought.

Pleased with all she’d accomplished, she debated going out for dinner, but then settled for a grilled cheese sandwich. She ate sitting at the tiny wrought-iron table in front of the kitchen window that offered a generous view of the East River.

Molly is having her first night home after five and a half years in prison, she thought. When I see her I’ll ask for a list of people I can talk to, people who’ll be willing to talk to me about her. But I have some questions of my own that I’ll try to get answered along the way, not all of them about Molly.

Some of these were questions that had been bothering her for a long time. No record had ever been found of the $400,000 her father had taken from the library fund. Given his history of betting on risky stocks, it was assumed that he had lost the money that way, but after his death not a single scrap of paper had turned up to show where he had made an investment of that size.

I was eighteen years old when we left Greenwich, Fran thought. That was fourteen years ago. But I’m back now, and I’ll be seeing a lot of people I used to know, talking to a lot of people in Greenwich about Molly and Gary Lasch.

She got up and reached for the coffeepot. As she poured, she thought of her father, and of what the lure of a hot tip would do to him. She remembered how anxious he had been to be invited to join the country club, to become one of the in crowd of men who regularly teed off together on the golf course.

The suspicion had begun to rise unbidden. Given their failure to find any record of the sum of money Dad had embezzled, she had to have doubts. Was it possible that someone in Greenwich, someone her father had been trying to impress, had given him a hot tip and then taken but never invested the $400,000 Dad had so foolishly “borrowed” from the library fund?

“Why don’t you give Molly a call?”

Jenna Whitehall looked across the table at her husband. Dressed in a comfortable loose silk shirt and black silk slacks, she appeared dramatically attractive, an impression enhanced by her charcoal-brown hair and hazel eyes. She had arrived home at six o’clock and checked her messages. There had been no call from Molly.

Trying not to let her irritation show, she said calmly, “ Cal, you know I left a message on Molly’s answering machine. If she wanted company, she’d have gotten back to me. Clearly she doesn’t want company tonight.”

“I still can’t figure why she’d want to go back to that house,” he said. “I mean, how can she go into that study without remembering that night, without thinking about picking up that sculpture and smashing it into poor Gary ’s head? It would give me the creeps.”

“ Cal, I’ve asked you before, please don’t talk about it. Molly’s my closest friend, and I love her. She doesn’t remember a thing about Gary ’s death.”

“That’s her story.”

“And I believe it. Now that she’s home, I intend to be with her whenever she wants me. And when she doesn’t want me, I’ll give her space. Okay?”

“You’re very attractive when you’re mad and trying not to show it, Jen. Let it out. You’ll feel better.”

Calvin Whitehall pushed back the chair from the dining room table and crossed to his wife. He was a formidable-looking, broad-shouldered, broad-chested, heavy-featured man in his mid-forties, with thinning light red hair. Thick eyebrows over ice-blue eyes enhanced the aura of authority that emanated from him even in his home.