Public Secrets

dining area’s through here, but this spot in front of the terrace windows is just perfect for cozy little suppers.”
No, that wasn’t right, she thought as she mechanically followed. Bev had put plants in front of those windows. A jungle of plants in old pottery bowls and urns. Stevie and Johnno had brought her a tree once, grunting and panting as they’d hauled it in. They’d done it as a joke, but Bev had left it there, and bought a silly plaster robin to sit on one of the branches.
“Emma?”
“What?” She jolted, dragging herself back. “I’m sorry.”
“Oh, that’s quite all right.” The woman was delighted that Emma seemed to be mesmerized. “I was just asking if you cooked?”
“No, not very well.”
“The kitchen is up-to-the-minute. I had it remodeled just two years ago.” She pushed open the swinging doors and gestured. “All built-ins. Microwave, Jenn-Air range, a convection oven, naturally. Acres of counter space. A pantry, of course.”

Emma stared at the streamlined, soulless kitchen. It was all white and stainless steel. Gone were the copper pots Bev had kept shiny and hung from hooks. There were no more little pots of herbs on the windowsill. No high chair for Darren, no clutter of cookbooks or colorful apothecary jars.
The woman droned on, obviously considering the kitchen her pièce de résistance , while Emma stood, grieving.
When the phone rang, she closed a slick white cabinet door. “Excuse me, just a moment.”
“Are you all right?” Michael murmured.
“Yes.” She wanted to be. “I’d like to go upstairs.”
“Listen, Jack.” Ms. Steinbrenner’s voice had lost its cooing flow. “I’m not interested in your complaints or your lawyer’s threats. Got it?”
Michael cleared his throat. “Excuse me.” He offered the woman an easy smile. “Would it be all right if we wandered through?”
She waved them away and snarled into the phone. “Listen, asshole.”
“Sounds like she’ll be tied up awhile,” he said lightly. “You sure you want to go up?”
No, she wasn’t sure. She was anything but sure. “I can’t come this far and not finish.”
“Right.” Whatever her claims against fragility, he put an arm around her shoulders as they started up.
The doors were open—the bedroom door where her father and Bev had once slept. Where Emma had sometimes heard them laughing late at night. Alice’s room, which had always been so bland and neat, had become a sitting room with walls of books and a console television. Her room. She stopped, gazing in.
The dolls were gone, the Mickey Mouse night-light, the frilly pinks and whites that Bev had indulged her in. No little girl had slept there, dreamt there, in a very long time. It was obviously a guest room now. Silk flowers, a Hollywood bed plumped with vivid cushions, reading material carefully arranged. Roman shades had replaced the priscillas she remembered, and wall-to-wall carpeting the pretty, frivolous shag rug.
“This was my room,” she said dully. “There was wallpaper with little roses and violets, frilly pink curtains at the windows and a big white quilt for the bed. I had dolls on the shelves, and music boxes. I guess it was the kind of room all little girls want, at least for a while. Bev understood that. I don’t know why I thought it would be the same.”

He remembered a quote he’d read in college, one that had stuck. “‘All things change; nothing perishes.’” He shrugged self-consciously. He wasn’t the type of man who quoted. “It is the same, in your head. That’s what counts.”
She said nothing, but turned and looked down the hall to Darren’s room. The door was open too, as it should have been that night.
“I was in bed,” she said flatly. “Something woke me up. The music. I thought it was the music. I couldn’t really hear it, but I could feel it. The bass vibrating. I tried to guess what the song was, and what people were doing. I couldn’t wait until I was old enough to stay up for the parties. I heard something. Something,” she murmured, rubbing an annoyed hand on the headache that was building behind her temple. “I don’t know what. But I—footsteps,” she remembered abruptly, and her heart began to thud against her ribs. “I heard someone coming down the hall. I wanted it to be Da or Bev. I wanted them to talk to me for a while. Maybe I could con them into letting me go downstairs. But it wasn’t Da or Bev.”
“Easy.” He could see the sweat beading on her