She unlocked the little one-car garage and raised the overhead door. There was her mother’s Subaru. A taillight was broken. She walked along the driver side. The left front fender was scraped, too. Evie sniffed. Did she smell gasoline over Jean Naté?

Boxes were clustered near some old car batteries on the floor by the car door. One box contained cigarette cartons. Another was nearly full of liquor bottles. Evie pulled one out from between the cardboard inserts. More Grey Goose. Apparently vodka and cigarettes were being delivered by the caseload.

Evie pushed the boxes away from the car door and got in. The interior smelled sweet, like fermented apples. She looked around and found the source: a rotting apple had sunk into the drink holder. She gouged it out with a tissue and tossed it into one of the nearby boxes. Then she buckled the seat belt, slipped the key into the ignition, and turned it halfway.

The lights on the dash came on. She rolled down the window to let out the cloying smell. Adjusted the mirror. And then turned the key farther to start the engine.

It caught, gave a sputter and a wheeze, then died.

Evie sighed. She turned the key again. Wha-wha-wha. The engine cranked. And cranked. But no matter how much she pumped the gas, it wouldn’t catch. When she tried turning the key again, the engine barely roused itself and the engine light dimmed.

That’s when she realized that the needle on the gas gauge was pointing to empty.

She slammed her hand against the steering wheel. The horn gave a feeble bleat. She wanted to scream. It probably wasn’t the first time that her mother had parked the car and left it running until it ran out of gas.

Evie sat for a moment, pulling herself together, then popped open the glove box. She looked in vain for an AAA card. She was pulling out the owner’s manual when her cell phone rang. She almost didn’t bother to look, thinking it would be Seth, his feelings hurt by her brusque response.

But it was Ginger.

“Are you at the hospital yet?” Ginger asked.

“I was about to leave.”

“How bad is it?”

“Disgusting. Stinky. Garbage everywhere. Cockroaches. Pantry moths. Squirrels. I’d give it a twelve on a scale of one to ten.”

Ginger groaned.

“I started cleaning out the kitchen. Tossed out a mattress. Covered a broken window.” She gave the car key one more futile turn. “And now the damned car won’t start. So I’m going to have to take the bus to the hospital.”

Evie leaned forward and picked up a white paper bag from the floor of the passenger seat. It was printed with the black-and-red logo for Ruth’s Chris Steak House. Inside was a leftovers container that she didn’t dare open. Beneath it was an empty champagne bottle. Veuve Clicquot.

“It wasn’t bad when I was there last,” Ginger said.

“When were you here last?”

“Mom’s birthday.”

Two months ago. Evie had sent a card, but for the first time she hadn’t called. Now that felt mean. How big a deal would it have been to pick up the phone?

“I brought her a cake,” Ginger said, rubbing it in.

That explained the cake in the refrigerator. “Did you take her out for a steak dinner, too?”

“You’re kidding, right? I don’t even take myself out for steak dinners. I brought her a lasagna.”

And there was the baking dish with blue moldy stuff in the fridge. Maybe Frank had been the source of the steak dinner. How many bottles of champagne had they gone through before this now empty one for the road?

“The house was just the usual messy,” Ginger said. “And Mom was pretty upbeat. She was excited about how she’d be getting money each month, I guess because her Social Security kicked in.”

“So you haven’t seen her since her birthday?” Evie asked. That was surprising. Ginger had always been the “dutiful” daughter.

“We were supposed to get together, but she kept canceling. You know, that’s nothing new.”

Evie did know. “Guess what she’s drinking these days.”

“Vodka.”

“What brand?”

“I don’t know. Smirnoff?”

“Grey Goose.”

“So?”

“It’s expensive. There’s the better part of a case of the stuff in the garage. And a big flat-screen TV in the living room.”

“Really?”

“She didn’t have the TV when you were there?”

“Uh, no. I would have noticed.”

“So how come she’s got a brand-new TV but the place is falling apart? I mean really, literally falling apart. She didn’t say anything when you saw her at the hospital?”

“They had her so blitzed out on pain medication and tranquilizers and anticonvulsants, she barely even opened her eyes.”

Anticonvulsants would be for delirium tremens. Her mother had had those before, after she “fell down the stairs” and fifteen-year-old Evie found her unconscious.

“Ask her yourself,” Ginger said. “You are going over, aren’t you?”

“Right now,” Evie said, getting out of the car. She walked out of the garage and pulled the garage door down with a whump. “But I bet this will be just like the last time she crashed. And—”

“Yeah, right,” Ginger cut her off. “As if you even know what it was like the last time. Or the time before that. You’d cut and run.”

Evie didn’t say anything. Her fingers cramped around the phone as she walked toward the bus stop.

“You think she’s jerking us around again, don’t you?” Ginger said. “That this is one more fire drill designed to get our attention? Well, it’s not. So brace yourself.”

Chapter Thirteen

A little while later, Mina looked out her kitchen window and saw Sandra Ferrante’s daughter walking up the street as she talked on her cell phone. She wondered why she’d decided not to drive her mother’s car. Family could be so complicated.

Cats, on the other hand, made lovely, undemanding companions who required nothing more than food, water, and a little bit of attention. Ivory had emerged from under the couch and threaded her way back and forth across Mina’s legs.

Mina put a package of frozen chicken on a plate to thaw, high on a shelf out of the cat’s reach. She’d make a pot of her mother’s chicken cacciatore. Neither Mina nor Annabelle had been particularly close to their mother, who had been, for the most part, as perfunctory a cook as she was a parent. She’d lavished attention on their brother, and later on his grave after he died at twenty-one in Iwo Jima.

Mina would have liked to have had a child. A daughter, she thought. But she’d been far too old to start a family by the time she and Henry married, though for the first few years they’d tried. So now Brian was the closest thing she had. And she was the closest thing to a parent he had left.

Mina fished the replica of the Empire State Building from her pocket and set it back on the mantel in the living room. It was uncanny how the girl zeroed in on it. She looked out the living room window, across the driveway to Sandra Ferrante’s. The girl had left her mother’s windows wide open. The house must have been in desperate need of a thorough airing out.

At least Sandra Ferrante’s house looked lived-in. The house on the other side had been dark and unoccupied all winter. Why someone hadn’t broken in, she couldn’t fathom. The Jamesons hadn’t even left timers on the lights. Whoever was supposed to be taking care of the property was doing so haphazardly, and Mina had to keep clearing away flyers that accumulated in the storm door.

Now Angela Quintanilla had gone and died, and her house would be empty, too—which reminded Mina. She should write a condolence card and drop it at Angela’s house. If the family was there, she’d stop in and pay her respects.

From a drawer, Mina pulled out the pile of sympathy cards she’d purchased over the years. She hated ones that were religiously preachy, or sappily poetic, or so euphemistic that you couldn’t even tell someone had died. She picked out one with a spray of lily of the valley against a pale blue background. Inside was the message Sorry for your loss.