“I have no idea. It’s crazy, isn’t it? And then the speculations that she’s sick. Maybe she was dying of natural causes. I don’t…” My voice trailed off. I’d lost my train of thought as I breathed in Oliver’s scent. I wished he’d put his arm around me. I wanted to feel his fingers press against my shoulder. Were my feelings toward him completely one-sided? I was eight years his junior. I’d thought that was a lifetime when I first met him. Now I didn’t care. Please touch me before I go out of my mind.

But he stepped away so he could look at me. “We’re never going to know the answers to all this,” he said, nodding toward the articles in his hand.

I felt suddenly despondent. “I know,” I said. “But at least we can speculate, just for the fun of it.”

He smiled at me, and maybe he even said something more to me, but the gallery lights all settled in the blue of his eyes and I seemed to momentarily lose my hearing.

He was, suddenly, extraordinarily beautiful.

Chapter 52. Anna

Chapter 52

ANNA

April 2, 1940

At breakfast that morning, Anna prepared her own plate so that there was not as much food on it as Freda would dish out. She’d taken to doing that lately, the only way to keep Miss Myrtle’s questions about her withered appetite at bay. This morning, though, Miss Myrtle must have noticed, for she wrote down the name of her doctor on a piece of paper and set it next to Anna’s coffee cup. Then she lifted her own cup to her lips and took a sip.

“The police found Martin Drapple’s body on the banks of Queen Anne Creek,” she said, setting her cup down again. “Some children stumbled across it and they were acting funny and their mama finally got it out of them. She went down to the station and…”

Anna didn’t hear the rest of the sentence. Her hand was frozen around her fork.

“Pauline told me last night,” Miss Myrtle continued. She picked up her knife to crack the top of her soft-boiled egg. Anna turned her head away from the sight.

What questions would an innocent person ask? she wondered, though her foggy brain would not cooperate. Miss Myrtle saved her the effort.

“His head was bashed in, poor troubled soul,” she said. “I thought he was such a lovely man and gifted artist, but something was terribly wrong with him. Pauline said that Karl told her he beat his wife and the children sometimes. Can you imagine? I’m guessing she did it. The wife. But if he beat her, who could blame her? I hope she gets away with it.”