“That would be great,” I said. That was an understatement.

—

The weekend was quiet and Jack and I spent it together. We did some walking, took in a movie at the old movie theater that had recently been converted to four smaller ones, and brought home a pizza laden with everything you can imagine for a late dinner.

“So your ad gets published in Indiana tomorrow,” Jack said, sprinkling hot pepper flakes on his first slice.

“I don’t think Sandy’s leaving the phone for a minute.”

“If someone recognizes her, they’ll call.”

“What if it’s twenty years since she left and her looks have changed so much, no one recognizes her?”

“I’ve got an idea on that, but let’s give it a couple of days. Anything new on your father and the mystery woman?”

“Nothing. But I have a new thought. We lived in the house I grew up in for about ten years, and my mother was very friendly with one of the neighbors, a woman named Elsie Rivers. If Elsie’s still there, she might be able to remember something—if my mother confided in her, which is iffy.”

“Sounds like a good idea. She listed in the phone book?”

“There’s a Rivers on the right street. It’s funny, I haven’t been back to the old house since my mother died. Aunt Meg put it up for sale and took care of everything. Maybe I’m old enough to see it again.”

“Want me to go along?”

“I’d love it.”

“What’s a Sunday for?”

—

Houses get smaller and trees get bigger. We had planted the dogwood in the front yard not long after we moved in, a small, wispy thing that produced lovely pink flowers in the spring and bright red berries in the fall, only not many of either. Now it had spread itself to shade most of the downstairs of my early home. Even leafless it had the grace and delicacy of a mature dogwood, and I felt my heart do funny things as I looked at it from the car.

Jack took my hand. “You OK?”

“I thought it was such a big house.”

“You were such a little girl.”

“I guess so.”

“Want to ring the bell?”

“No.” But I couldn’t take my eyes off the house and the tree.

We sat in silence for another minute. Then Jack said, “How do I find Elsie Rivers?”

“Circle the block. She lived behind us, one or two houses down.”

We drove slowly to the corner.

—

“No,” the plump woman with big glasses said in amazement. “You’re Francie’s little girl? You’re Kix Bennett?”

She wrapped her arms around me and I felt as though I had come home to my own, the prodigal daughter returned. A mite tearfully I introduced Jack and she pulled us inside to the warmth of her living room.

“Oh my Lord,” she said, “if only Francie could have lived to see this. Sit down, kids, sit down. Let me just push away the paper. I read the Sunday paper all over the living room.” She gathered up sections quickly and dropped them on the floor where they were out of the way.

We accepted her hospitality because we couldn’t refuse. She made tea—I remembered her and my mother sitting over teacups in the afternoon—and found half a coffee cake that was restored to life with the heat of a toaster oven. Then we talked, Jack listening more raptly than I had anticipated. I told her everything that had happened since the death of my mother. She wept as she remembered moments of their friendship, my mother’s illness, her own last moments with me. I didn’t linger or dwell. When we were up to date she was smiling just as I remembered her.

“So you’re a married woman now with your own home. Oh, Francie would have loved it. And Eddie, too. Never was a nicer man than your daddy, Kix.”

I felt a little embarrassed. It wasn’t going to be that easy, asking for secrets. “I was especially remembering him recently,” I said. “Someone mentioned the Thanksgiving Day parade and I remembered how he used to take me.”

“I’m not surprised. You were the apple of his eye. I’ll bet your mom never went to those parades.”

“She didn’t.”

“Too cold for her. She hated the cold weather. I think she had southern blood in her veins. She was always putting on a sweater when I was taking mine off.”

“I remember,” I said. “But my dad wasn’t like that.”

“Oh, he couldn’t be. He was always out meeting clients. I remember he used to go through shoe leather like nobody else.”

I felt comforted by hearing these little details of my parents’ lives. As she spoke, I could see my mother checking the thermostat—never putting it higher because that would cost money—and then going for a sweater. And I remembered Daddy’s shoes. I always wait till I get a hole in the second one to have them soled, he would say. How wonderful to hear their voices again, to see them as they were.

“Elsie, I’m going to ask you something a little odd, something you may know about. When my father took me to the parade, we used to meet someone there, a woman that I never saw anywhere else. She didn’t work with Dad, but she may have lived near Central Park West in the Sixties where we watched the parade. Do you have any idea who she might have been?”

“Not the faintest. Why would I?”

“I thought maybe Mom talked to you about her.”

A shadow of a frown formed on her amazingly smooth forehead. She had round apple cheeks and fewer wrinkles than women ten years younger than she. “I don’t think I understand,” she said.

“My father had one sister, my aunt Meg, who I lived with after Mom died. As far as I know, he never had any others. If he had some woman friend, maybe my mother knew her or mentioned her to you.” I couldn’t come out and make an overt suggestion of a breach of my father’s fealty.

“Your father was as good as they come, Chris, as loyal and true as a husband and father could be. That woman was just someone taking her kids and herself to the parade. There’s no more to it than that.”

We stayed a little longer because she didn’t want to let us go. Finally Jack took his detective’s card out of his pocket, wrote my name and our home address and phone number on it, and gave it to her. She hugged us both and walked us outside the door, the cold apparently not affecting her. She stood there waving till we started up the car, then threw a kiss and went inside.

“Quite a gal,” Jack said.

“I’d forgotten the sweaters and the shoe leather. They were always so careful, always saving for a future that never came.”

“It became your future, and I think you’re living the life they wanted for you.”

“I think she knows something, Jack.”

“That’s why I gave her my card. If the spirit ever moves her and she feels she can’t talk to you, she might call me at the station house.”

“And you’ll tell me whatever she says.”

“Of course,” he said easily. “What else?”

—

There was no message on the machine from Sandy and I decided not to call. I would hear from him when he was ready, or when he had something to tell me. The call came after we had finished dinner.

“Nothing, Chris,” he said, sounding like the end of the world. “Not a single call.”

“Give the ad the whole three days, Sandy. People may not want to call on a Sunday.”

“This has just got to be the right place. Even if she didn’t live there herself, the person who wrote to her knows her.”

“I think we’re going to find her,” I said. I hadn’t told him half the things I’d learned since Thursday, but I was very encouraged by the new information.

“I’ll call you,” he said, and hung up.

“Nothing?” Jack asked.

“Nothing. I think the time has come to make a visit to St. Stephen’s.”

18

Summer or winter, I never mind the drive to St. Stephen’s Convent. There is always the rush of feeling when I see the roofs and spires in the distance. It was my home for fifteen wonderful years, and I left as a friend of the convent and a friend of every nun I had loved while I was there. The woman I knew best and whom I consider my closest friend to this day was Sister Joseph, now serving her first term as General Superior. While she is considerably older than I, she is distinctly of my generation, not of the one that preceded her. As an administrator she runs the convent the way a successful business should be run, and I wouldn’t flinch at the thought of having her take over a large secular company and watch it grow, although that will never happen.