That weekend I went over to my parents' house for Sunday dinner. I do this every few weeks, although I'm not really sure why. We're not close; the best we can do is a mutual state of amicable and faintly puzzled politeness, like people who met on a package tour and can't figure out how to end the connection. Sometimes I bring Cassie with me. My parents love her-she teases my father about his gardening, and sometimes when she helps my mother in the kitchen I hear my mother laugh, full-throated and happy as a girl-and drop hopeful little hints about how close we are, which we cheerfully ignore.
"Where's Cassie today?" my mother asked after dinner. She had made macaroni and cheese-she has some idea that this is my favorite dish (which it may well have been, at some point in my life) and she cooks it, as a small timid expression of sympathy, whenever something in the papers indicates that a case of mine isn't going well. Even the smell of it makes me claustrophobic and itchy. She and I were in the kitchen; I was washing up and she was drying. My father was in the sitting room, watching a Columbo movie on TV. The kitchen was dim and we had the light on, though it was only midafternoon.
"I think she went to her aunt and uncle's," I said. Actually, Cassie was probably curled up on her sofa, reading and eating ice cream out of the carton-we hadn't had much time to ourselves, the last couple of weeks, and Cassie, like me, needs a certain amount of solitude-but I knew it would upset my mother, the thought of her spending a Sunday alone.
"That'll be nice for her: being looked after. The pair of you must be shattered."
"We're pretty tired," I said.
"All that back and forth to Knocknaree."
My parents and I don't talk about my work, except in the most general terms, and we never mention Knocknaree. I looked up sharply, but my mother was tilting a plate to the light to look for wet streaks.
"It's a long drive, all right," I said.
"I read in the paper," my mother said carefully, "that the police were talking to Peter and Jamie's families again. Was that yourself and Cassie?"
"Not the Savages. I talked to Ms. Rowan, though, yes. Does this look clean to you?"
"It's grand," my mother said, taking the baking dish out of my hand. "How's Alicia now?"
There was something in her voice that made me look up again, startled. She caught my gaze and flushed, wiping hair away from her cheek with the back of her wrist. "Ah, we used to be great friends. Alicia was…well, I suppose she was almost like a little sister to me. We got out of touch, after. I was just wondering how she was, is all."
I had a fast, queasy flash of retrospective panic: if I had known that Alicia Rowan and my mother had been close, I would never have gone near that house. "I think she's all right," I said. "As much as one could expect. She still has Jamie's room the way it was."
My mother clicked her tongue unhappily. We washed up in silence for some time: clink of cutlery, Peter Falk cunningly interrogating someone in the next room. Outside the window, a pair of magpies landed on the grass and started picking over the tiny garden, discussing it raucously as they went.
"Shoo," my mother said automatically, rapping the glass, and sighed. "I suppose I've never forgiven myself for losing touch with Alicia. She'd no one else. She was such a sweet girl, a real innocent-she was still hoping Jamie's father would leave his wife, after all that time, and they'd be a family… Did she ever marry?"
"No. But she doesn't seem unhappy, really. She teaches yoga." The suds in the basin had turned lukewarm and clammy; I reached for the kettle and added more hot water.
"That's one reason we moved away, you know," my mother said. She had her back to me, sorting cutlery into a drawer. "I couldn't face them-Alicia and Angela and Joseph. I had my son back safe and sound, and they were going through hell… I could hardly go out of the house, in case I'd meet them. I know it sounds mad, but I felt guilty. I thought they must hate me for having you safe. I don't see how they could help it."
This took me aback. I suppose all children are self-centered; it had never occurred to me, at any rate, that the move might have been for anyone's benefit but my own. "I never really thought about that," I said. "Selfish brat that I was."
"You were a little darling," my mother said, unexpectedly. "The most affectionate child that ever lived. When you came in from school or playing, you'd always give me a massive hug and a kiss-even when you were almost as big as me-and say, 'Did you miss me, Mammy?' Half the time you'd have something for me, a pretty stone or a flower. I still have most of them kept."
"Me?" I was glad I hadn't brought Cassie. I could practically see the wicked glint in her eye if she'd heard this.
