rd did not sle

one to bed with a glass of scotch and the satisfied air of a man whose merger had gone smoothly.

ng room, the one she kept locked, with a single

now why she h

d her chin in front of two hundred strangers, Victoria had felt th

issue paper and found a sma

ASHFORD.

row it away. Instead she had folded it into tissue and placed it in this d

.

a whispered. "You'

e band to the lamp, and the memor

ive year

raging when the nu

he frantic voices in the corridor. She remembered the nurse's face most of a

r daughter,

red-faced and screaming,

rush she had been promised, the instant, ove

che, as if she were holding something

ngs," Charles ha

had murmured.

e blackout, had backed out of the room with her hands clasped tig

at smelled of bleach and old paper, Bren

ad double-checked the bands. She had triple-checked the charts. She had pored over

rd except

ts, identical caps. She could still feel the moment she had reached for the bands and re

ad gu

livered two daughters to two mo

side the door. "Brenda, are you

min

er palms agai

16 right now and say I made a mistake. We coul

lawyers, silent and cold. The Ameses, a young couple with tar on their boots

upending two families, shattering two hours of joy, on

m her daughter at home: Mom, are

creen. She looked at h

," she whispered. "

lked back into the corridor, and from that night forward she ne

sband. Not her priest. Not

ht, Brenda Hall lit a candle in the church near her house, and p

om clock chime

a silent house, holding a strip of faded plastic that had meant nothing

y

unsettled her more than any board meeting, any lawsuit, any scandal. A girl in a cheap un

A coincidence.

band down

of Helen Whitaker at twenty-six, laughing in an off-the-shou

Ella Ames had bent to pick up the fallen tray, her

not seen

not been loo

e on the desk, one of the old landlines her mother had insisted on, and dia

icked. Her voice was perfectly calm. "

hour, Mrs

hts in my building." She paused. "I want everything. Her b

ask the

p of plastic, then at her m

id softly. "

very straight, very pale, with one hand pressed to t

far below the hill, in a small apartment above a laundromat, a