Here She Lies

flowers from the garden. We ate the tarragon chicken sandwiches she had prepared; the chicken salad, one of those dishes that improved with age, was even more delicious than yesterday when I’d made it. I was impressed by how Julie had freshened the leftover loaf of ciabatta as I’d shown her by dampening it and setting it briefly in a low oven. She had extendedthe iced tea and made a fresh fruit salad with lemon juice and a sprig of the wild spearmint that grew abundantly outside.
    “I read in the Eagle that Zara Moklas’s body is being flown back to Hungary on Monday,” Julie said. “Her uncle came to get her.”
    “I haven’t seen anything else about it in the paper for a few days,” I said. “I get the feeling the investigation isn’t going much of anywhere. I don’t think they’ll ever find out who did it.”
    “They never located that guy?” Bobby asked. “Thomas...”
    “Soiffer.” The name was ground into my brain; whenever I heard it or even thought it I saw blood and heard malarms.
    “Nope, never found him,” Julie said.
    In the window behind Bobby the afternoon dramatically brightened as a cloud moved along. The lawn outside Julie’s house turned Technicolor green. Two birds landed simultaneously to peck at the ground.
    “Well,” Julie said, standing up to clear the table, “anyone for coffee? Bobby? I think I’ll have some.”
    “I’ll pass, but thanks.” He lifted Lexy up and sniffed her diaper. “Time for a change.”
    I helped Julie clear while Bobby took Lexy upstairs. In the kitchen, where the baby monitor now sat by the phone, we listened to him change her diaper and fiddle with something in the room. I pictured her becoming restless as his voice murmured, “Do you want Mommy? Is it Mommy time?” and right on cue my milk dropped.
    “Want me to give her a bottle?” Julie asked.
    “I think I’ll nurse her.”
    “Leave the dishes. I’ll take care of it.”
    I peeled off the rubber gloves and headed upstairs, intercepting my family, all two of them, in the hall on their way to find me. Bobby and Lexy had the very same smile, only hers was all pink gums and so, so very sweet. When we were all together my love for them felt not so much equal as completely merged ; love for one was love for the other, like nested cups or echoes. Separating Bobby out of this feeling was a brutal emotional surgery and at this moment, encircling them both in my arms, it felt completely impossible.
    I nursed Lexy on the rocking chair in the Yellow Room. Bobby stretched sidelong on the bed and watched us. He had put his suitcase at the foot of the bed (reflexively, I assumed, as sleeping arrangements were undetermined and I for one had assumed he would again sleep in the Pinecone Room). I felt a need to smash the coziness of the moment because we were drifting together without having resolved a single thing.
    “Did you bring the file?” I asked.
    He exhaled. “I brought it.”
    “This is probably as good a time as any to talk.”
    He opened his suitcase. The manila file was on top of his folded clothes. Sitting cross-legged on the bed, he opened the file and rested his handsome, squarish hand on the top page. The hand that knew ligament from bone, that expertly probed muscle and had healed the pains of countless inmates.
    “The credit reports are practically in another language,” he began. “I must have gone through these reportstwenty times and I really can’t find anything, well, interesting.”
    It was true: the voluminous credit reports, with their lists and codes and keys, were almost impossible to read. I could imagine how frustrated Bobby felt trying to pry information from the long, impenetrable documents. He hated bureaucracy in any form, which was frankly absurd since he had made his career in government service. But I didn’t feel an iota of guilt; I had suffered through the mind-numbing papers, so why shouldn’t he? In the two months since I’d bought our reports from the three major credit reporting bureaus, my searching fingers — and now Bobby’s — had softened their edges to tattered curls. And still, interesting was not the word I’d use to describe them.
    “The credit reports don’t show much of anything,” I said. “It’s the credit card bills, mostly. And the e-mails. That’s where you need to concentrate.”
    “I realize that. I’ve been studying the bills. I’ve called every retailer and vendor that posted every one of these charges we can’t