Evie took a cautious look to make sure Brian wasn’t within earshot. “Has he given up on getting you to sign away the house?” she asked quietly.

Mrs. Yetner stared at her. “How do you know about that? Finn must have told you.”

“I overheard your nephew asking about it. Then I found the agreement papers under your couch where Ivory was hiding.”

“Hiding? But Ivory likes you.”

“Apparently Ivory doesn’t like Brian. He was here late last night trying to get her out from under the couch so he could take care of her.”

“Take care of her?” Mrs. Yetner cocked an eyebrow. “He said that?”

“Pretty much word for word. He didn’t know I’d be here.”

“Imagine that. And you say the papers were under the couch?”

Evie nodded. “After he left and I looked underneath for Ivory, I found them. You know what else was there? The little whistle that goes on the spout of your kettle.”

Mrs. Yetner beamed. “I knew it. I knew I couldn’t have lost that, too. And Brian was here for the cat? If you believe that”—Mrs. Yetner lowered her voice—“I’ve got a bridge to sell you. My silver safety net? Pfff.”

“Safety net?” Evie said.

“Another of my nephew’s cockamamie schemes.”

“Maybe it’s a coincidence, but that’s the same term my mother used when I asked her about some cash I found in her house. And I’m wondering if Brian got my mother to sign an agreement like the one he wanted you to sign.”

“Oh, dear. Your mother signed away her house?”

“I don’t know.” Evie set the take-out boxes on the table. “Monthly cash payments were part of the agreement your nephew left for you to sign. Maybe he offered my mother the same deal, only she didn’t have the good sense to turn him down.” She ladled soup into bowls and set them on the table along with plates and glasses of water.

Mrs. Yetner pursed her lips and gave her head a shake. “My Brian and your mother?” She considered that for a few moments. “No. Oh my, no. I’d be very surprised at that.” She sounded so sure of herself.

Evie said, “The outfit behind it might be the same one that tore down a house a few blocks up.”

Mrs. Yetner looked stricken. “I thought Finn was going to put a stop to that.”

“He wanted to, but they moved the equipment over there while he was having one of his neighborhood meetings.”

Mrs. Yetner groped on the table for a little plastic container with compartments for each day of the week and handed it to Evie. “Would you? I need to take one of these. What day is it? Tuesday, right? Please tell me it’s Tuesday.”

“You haven’t lost track.” Evie gave Mrs. Yetner the pill behind the little door marked TU.

Mrs. Yetner took the pill with a swallow of water and set down her glass. Then she lifted a spoonful of soup and blew on it. Took a sip. She closed her eyes. “This is as delicious as it smells. Where did you get it?”

Evie told her about the little bodega not far away. “They tucked a take-out menu into the bag. I’ll leave it on your counter for when you’ve got your eyes back.”

Mrs. Yetner laughed. Then she turned serious. “So how is your mother doing?”

Evie hadn’t wanted to get into all the gory details, but it all came tumbling out. The hepatic coma. The acetaminophen poisoning. The rotted gas tank, and how the man at the gas station suggested that it had been vandalized.

Mrs. Yetner lowered her spoon. “Evie, dear, did it occur to you that someone might have been trying to do your mother a favor? I know you love her. But neither you nor your sister has been around.” Mrs. Yetner reached across the table and patted the back of Evie’s hand. “Perhaps it was a friend, someone who felt there was no other way to keep her off the road?”

Evie hadn’t considered that, but it was certainly possible, and it made her wonder if Brian hadn’t deliberately hidden his aunt’s glasses to protect her as well. After all, they hadn’t been under the bed or on the bathroom sink. They’d been nearly buried in fake moss. Putting the most positive spin on it that Evie could, maybe he thought it was the only way to slow Mrs. Yetner down enough to allow her hip to heal.

“But who?” Evie said. “Does my mother still even have any friends? Frank Cutler’s the only one who’s come to the hospital to see her.”

“He was at the hospital?” Mrs. Yetner’s eyes turned bright. “When?”

“Yesterday. I ran into him in the café. I told him she was in intensive care. He didn’t know that they only allow family to visit.”

“I don’t think that man even knows how to be a friend, not unless there’s something in it for him.” The comment didn’t surprise Evie. Frank Cutler could have pushed Mrs. Yetner from in front of a speeding truck and she’d have found a reason why it was self-serving.

Later, over cups of tea and Nilla Wafers from Mrs. Yetner’s cupboard, Evie said, “That’s a wonderful old map you have upstairs on the bedroom wall.”

Mrs. Yetner smiled. “It was my father’s, of course.”

“This neighborhood used to be Snakapins Point, and it looks as if it was once part of Snakapins Park. Did you ever go there?”

“I was very little when we moved into the house,” Mrs. Yetner said, blowing into her tea. “By then the amusement park had closed. It’s been Higgs Point ever since I can remember.”

“Your father must have known Finn’s great-grandfather. He built the park, and your father developed all of this land that was once part of it.”

“Of course they knew each other.” Abruptly Mrs. Yetner set down her cup and pushed herself to her feet. “So, are you ready to hear about the day the plane crashed into the Empire State Building? Because I think I’d like to tell you about it.”

Chapter Fifty

Mrs. Yetner picked up the Empire State Building souvenir from the mantel. She looked at it for a moment, then set it on the coffee table. With the walker, she shuffled a few steps over to her chair, backed up, and sat. Evie tucked the crocheted throw over her legs, then ran into the kitchen to get her purse. She brought it back and pulled out a cassette recorder that, thank God, she always carried. She sat on the couch, opposite Mrs. Yetner, and turned it on.

“Tuesday, May 21, 2013. Evie Ferrante talking to Wilhelmina Higgs Yetner.” Evie spelled the name, looking to Mrs. Yetner to make sure she got it right. At Mrs. Yetner’s nod, she continued, “We’re at Mrs. Yetner’s home at 105 Neck Road, the Bronx, New York.”

She played that much back. Then she pushed Record again and set the machine on the coffee table, the microphone facing Mrs. Yetner.

“You know, those Catholics saved my life,” Mrs. Yetner began.

Evie smiled. She knew Mrs. Yetner was making a joke, but also knew she was probably referring to the Catholic War Relief Services, whose offices had been on the north-facing side of the seventy-ninth floor of the Empire State Building. One of the secretaries who worked there had told a reporter that from her desk she could see the pilot’s Clark Gable mustache right through the cockpit window as the plane struck the building. That pilot and both of his passengers had been killed.

But Evie didn’t interrupt to clarify. Oral histories took time to tell, and they were richest when the interviewer kept quiet and let them bubble up of their own accord. Not only that, people were surprisingly suggestible and obligingly conjured imagined details just to satisfy their audience.

“I had applied for a job there, but they turned me down,” Mrs. Yetner went on. “They thought I needed experience to be a twenty-five-dollar-a-week stock-and-file clerk.”

The sound of the vacuum cleaner started again upstairs. Evie could hear it being pushed across wood floor.

“Some of the people in that office were burned to death sitting at their desks,” Mrs. Yetner said. “I remember looking through the names of the dead in the newspaper and wondering if one of them was the girl who got my job.”