At times different emotions intruded, bringing me to my knees: Guilt that I had not been with them, guilt that I was alive and they were dead; rage that they had been victims of street violence, rage that I could not avenge their deaths. These were the moments I felt murderous, wanted to kill whoever had killed my children and my husband.

On those occasions I would call the Twenty-fifth Precinct to talk to Detective DeMarco, wanting to know if any new evidence had turned up.

He never sounded anything but regretful, even sad, when he told me no. He promised they would break the case. He meant well. But I was unconvinced. I never believed him.

Memories were my only source of comfort. I fell down into them gratefully, recalling Lissa, Jamie, Andrew, and little Trixy with the greatest of ease. I relived our life together and took joy from this.

But then one abysmal day the memories would no longer come at my bidding. And I was afraid. Why could I no longer recall the past, our past? Why were my children's faces suddenly so blurred and indistinct? Why did I have such trouble picturing Andrew's face in my mind's eye?

I did not know. But when this loss of total recall persisted for a week, I knew what I had to do. I must go to Kilgram Chase. I wanted to be in Andrew's childhood home, the place where he had grown up. Perhaps there I would feel close to him once more, perhaps there he would come back to me.

Yorkshire, March 1989

Spring had come early, much earlier than anyone here at Kilgram Chase had expected.

I had arrived from Connecticut toward the end of January to find everything covered in snow, and the first part of February had been bitter, with sleet, freezing rain, and intermittent snowstorms. But the weather had changed in the middle of the month. The rain and harsh winds had ceased unexpectedly; there had been a general softening, a warming much welcomed by everyone here, most especially the farmers.

Now, on this first Friday in March, the trees were bursting with tender green shoots and the first fluttering little leaves. Grass was beginning to sprout, and the borders at the edges of the lawns were alive with purple, yellow, and white crocuses and delicate, starlike snowdrops. Daffodils danced down near the pond and under the trees in the woods. Tall and graceful as they nodded in the light breeze, their brilliant yellow bonnets reflected the bright afternoon sun.

I stood at the mullioned window in the library, looking out toward the moors, thinking that perhaps I ought to take a walk later.

I had not been able to go out much since I had arrived almost five weeks ago. Within the first few days I had fallen sick, felled by a bad bout of flu, and I had spent over ten days in bed.

Diana, Parky, and Hilary had nursed me through it, done the best they could to make me better. But I had been a bad patient, not very cooperative at all; I had refused almost all of the medicines they had offered me and done little to speed my recovery, hoping to catch pneumonia and die. I had not. But then neither had I been very well; I was slow to get up on my feet and about. When I first arrived I had been exhausted and undernourished, and the aftermath of the flu virus left me feeling even weaker. This physical debilitation combined with my mental apathy to make me more listless and enervated than I had been at Indian Meadows.

Although I was here in Andrew's childhood home, I continued to face dreary empty days and sleepless nights, and that awful nothingness was ever-present.

Not even Diana could cheer me up very much when she came back to Yorkshire on the weekends, after working at her shop in London all week. How right my mother had been when she had told me that you don't leave your troubles behind you when you go to another place.

"Pain and heartache travel well," she had said to me the day she took me to Kennedy to catch my plane to London. And indeed they did.

Yet I did feel closer to Andrew here at Kilgram Chase, as I had believed I would. My memories of him and my children now came back to me unbidden, and their well-loved faces were clear, distinctive in my mind's eye once again. Very regularly my thoughts turned inward, and I was able to live with them within myself, in my imagination.

The days passed quietly, uneventfully. I did very little. I read occasionally, watched television; sometimes I listened to music, but for the most pan I sat in front of the fire in the library, lost in my own world, oblivious to everyone most of the time. Of course Diana made her presence felt when she was here and tried to rouse me from my lethargy. I really made an effort, tried to perk up, but I wasn't very successful. I had no one and nothing to live for. I simply existed. I had even lost the will to kill myself.

Now, moving away from the window, I crossed to the Fireplace and piled more logs on top of those already crackling and burning up the chimney. Then lifting the tray with the coffee things on it, I took it back to the kitchen.

Parky looked up as I came in and exclaimed, "Nay, Mrs. Mal, you needn't have bothered with that! I would have sent Hilary or Joe for it later."

"It's no trouble, Parky, and thank you, it was a lovely cup of coffee. Just what I needed."

"You didn't eat much lunch, Mrs. Mal," she said, her eyes filled with worry. "Picking at your food is no way to improve your health and get your strength up."

"I know. I do try, Parky. And what I did eat I really enjoyed. The grilled plaice and chips were delicious."

She went on rolling out the pastry on the big slab of marble, saying, "It's a right bonny afternoon. Too bonny to stay cooped up in that there library, if you don't mind me saying so. You should get out, have a good blow on the moors. It'll do you good, that it will, Mrs. Mal."

"I was just thinking about taking a walk, actually, Parky."

She smiled at me, nodded her approval, and continued. "Mrs. Keswick will be arriving a bit earlier than usual this weekend. About four-thirty, or thereabouts. In time for tea," she said.

"That's nice," I answered. "Parky, can I ask you something?"

"Of course you can, Mrs. Mal."

"I've been wondering why you and Joe and Hilary and the gardeners call me that? For ten years I've been Mrs. Andrew to you all. But since I came back in January, it's been Mrs. Mal. Why?"

She stared at me, flushing slightly and looking discomfited. "It's just that… that… well, we didn't want to upset you further," she began haltingly. "We thought that to keep mentioning Mr. Andrew's name would be… well, painful."

"No, Parky," I interrupted softly. "It wouldn't. I am Mrs. Andrew, and I really would prefer you to keep on calling me that."

"I'm sorry if we've upset you," she said, sounding concerned. "We'd never do anything to hurt you. We were only trying to be mindful of your feelings."

"I know you were, and honestly, I do appreciate that, and I am grateful to you for the kindness you've shown me these last few weeks."

"You were in such a bad way when you got here, and we didn't want to distress you anymore than you already were. We felt we had to be careful. It was like… like walking on eggs."

"I'm sorry, Parky."

"Oh, there's no need to apologize, Mrs. Mal, I mean Mrs. Andrew. We understand. We loved Mr. Andrew and the wee bairns-" Her mouth began to tremble and her eyes filled, but she took a deep breath and finished. "Such a tragedy, so hard to live with…"

"Yes, it is." I coughed behind my hand, trying to control myself. I knew I might easily break down if I didn't keep a tight grip on my emotions. My grief was never very far below the surface.