The Keepsake: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

door?”
    “No, I can handle them.” She paid him and started up the walkway, wheeling her suitcases toward the front steps. There she paused, as though searching for her keys, until the taxi drove away. The instant it vanished from sight, she turned and headed back to the road.
    A five-minute walk brought her to a long gravel driveway that cut through thick woods. The moon had risen, and she could see the path just well enough not to stumble. The sound of the suitcase wheels plowing through the gravel seemed alarmingly loud. In the woods crickets had fallen silent, aware that a trespasser had entered their kingdom.
    She climbed the steps to the dark house. A few knocks on the door, a few rings of the bell, told her what she’d already suspected. No one was home.
    Not a problem.
    She found the key where it was always hidden, wedged under the stack of firewood on the porch, and let herself in. Flipping on the light, she found the living room exactly as she remembered it since she’d last visited two years ago. The same clutter filled every available shelf and niche, the same photos framed in Mexican tin shadow boxes hung on the walls. She saw sunburned faces grinning from beneath broad-brimmed hats, a man leaning on a shovel in front of a crumbling wall, a redheaded woman squinting up from the trench where she knelt with trowel in hand. Most of the faces in those photos she did not recognize; they belonged to another woman’s memories, another woman’s lifetime.
    She left her suitcases in the living room and went into the kitchen. There the same clutter reigned, blackened pots and pans hanging from ceiling racks, the windowsills a depository of everything from sea glass to bits of broken pottery. She filled a teakettle and put it on the stove. As she waited for it to boil, she stood in front of the refrigerator, studying all the snapshots taped to the door. In the midst of that jumbled collage was one face she did recognize. It was her own, taken when she was about three years old, seated in the lap of a raven-haired woman. She reached up and gently stroked the woman’s face, remembering the smoothness of that cheek, the scent of her hair. The kettle whistled, but Josephine remained transfixed by the photo, by those hypnotic dark eyes gazing back at her.
    The whistle of the kettle abruptly cut off, and a voice said, “It’s been years since anyone’s asked me about her, you know.”
    Josephine whirled around to face the lanky middle-aged woman who’d just shut off the burner. “Gemma,” she murmured. “You’re home after all.”
    Smiling, the woman strode forward to give her a powerful hug. Gemma Hamerton was built more like a boy than a woman, lean but muscular, her silvery hair cropped in a practical bob. Her arms were ridged with ugly burn scars, but she brazenly showed them off to the world in a sleeveless blouse.
    “I recognized your old suitcases in the living room.” Gemma stepped back to give Josephine a thorough perusal. “My God, every year you look more and more like her.” She shook her head and laughed. “That’s some formidable DNA you’ve inherited, kid.”
    “I tried to call you. I didn’t want to leave a message on your answering machine.”
    “I’ve been traveling all day.” Gemma reached into her purse and pulled out a newspaper clipping from the
International Herald Tribune.
“I saw that article before I left Lima. Does this have anything to do with why you’re here?”
    Josephine looked at the headline: CT SCAN OF MUMMY STUNS AUTHORITIES. “So you know about Madam X.”
    “News gets around, even in Peru. The world’s become a small place, Josie.”
    “Maybe too small,” Josephine said softly. “It leaves me no place left to hide.”
    “After all these years? I’m not sure you need to anymore.”
    “Someone’s found me, Gemma. I’m scared.”
    Gemma stared at her. Slowly she sat down across from Josephine. “Tell me what happened.”
    Josephine pointed to the clipping from the
Herald Tribune.
“It all started with her. With Madam X.”
    “Go on.”
    At first the words came haltingly; it had been a long time since Josephine had spoken freely, and she was accustomed to catching herself, to weighing the dangers of every revelation. But with Gemma, all secrets were safe, and as she spoke, she found the words spilling faster in a torrent that could no longer be held back. Three cups of tea later, she finally fell silent and slumped back in her chair, exhausted.