At this Claire laughed out loud and fixed me with a square look that said: Let there be no nonsense between us. I did not normally try to put anything over on her. I could see she was mentally scanning everything she had read about bereavement.

Eventually I said: “I don’t know why, but I feel drawn to young women these days. I want to be in their company. I want to help them out.”

Claire tipped her head to one side and gave me one of her deep, regretful smiles. I knew then that the London trip was in the bag, and that Alison would be allowed to go with me.

23

From work, I took a meandering route to Corcoran Street, feeling the need to be in my mother’s company. My afternoon teaching session had gone well. The group had been more attentive than usual, and Ben Shahn’s Still Music seemed again to be eloquent and full of possibilities.

Now that the London trip was taking shape, Antonio was everywhere. He’d been an invisible presence in the gallery, observing the way I drew knowledge out of people they didn’t even know they had. He accompanied me down the streets we had once walked together, past the mansions built by turn-of-the-century shipping magnates, now luxury apartments and military museums, past the block-long embassies on Massachusetts, some of which, Robin said, must be worth more than the countries they represented, past the hotel famous for the sting operation that brought down the mayor. Incarceration did him no harm in the long run; when Antonio and I first met, the mayor had just been elected for another term.

When I turned onto R Street, though, Antonio dropped away. I had the sensation of Maddy’s small hand in mine. My steps had brought me past the little brick house with the purple door. A former garage nestled between two brownstones, it had acquired the local nickname Hobbit House. When Maddy was small, she always insisted we detour past it, so that she could study the faux-medieval ironwork and the gas carriage lamps, and solemnly inform me that’s where she was going to live forever and ever.

I quickened my pace to my parents’ house, and rang the bell before letting myself in. The heavy door gave way all at once, delivering me onto the fur-choked mat. Would they never fix their locks or replace their doormats?

“It’s me!”

Coffee, wet dog, old wood: essence of home. Maddy had loved that smell. She’d loved everything about their house: the pictures crowding the stairway walls, the piles of books, the handmade pottery squatting on shelves, and the bulging cartons on the back porch that had been there long before recycling became fashionable. My own childhood and my memories of Maddy had a way of merging together. The place still half belonged to her.