Quickly, he gathered the leather-bound volumes, banded them together, stuffed them inside the interior suitcase pocket. He shoved the suitcase back into the closet. He arranged the shoes in front of it as best he could, but he worried that he was fudging the arrangement.

He closed the bedroom door—remembering to first engage the lock—just as he heard Grace and Monica enter the house via the garage access door. He rushed to the catwalk. He leaned against the railing and peered down at the two women as they emerged into view.

“Hey,” he said to Monica, in his best nonchalant tone. “What did your doctor say?”

She answered, but he barely heard her response. As he dug his hands into his pockets, purely out of habit, he realized he had left behind his lock-picking set in Grace’s bedroom.

34

“I had blood work done,” Monica said to Troy. Moving slowly, she sat on a sofa in the family room. Troy had come downstairs but he remained standing, rocking from one foot to the other, like a child who badly needed to urinate. He kept glancing upstairs, where her mother had gone to her room shortly after they arrived home.

“What’s wrong?” Monica asked. “You’re fidgeting.”

“I’m cool.” With what appeared to demand a strenuous effort, he sat in the chair across from her. “Any ideas of what he hopes to find?”

“He wasn’t sure. Since my symptoms began so recently it’s tough to make a diagnosis. It could be rheumatoid arthritis, or something else.”

“What do you think it is?”

“I know what it’s not. It’s not all related to my going through a grieving process. Perhaps my fatigue is tied to my emotional state, but not my other physical symptoms, it’s something more than that.”

“Lamar’s a good doctor,” Troy said absently. “He’ll get to the root cause. Give him time.”

“What have you been doing today? You seem distracted.”

“Just puttering around the house, organizing my office, that sort of thing,” he said.

He was lying to her again. It was obvious, like a replay of their discussion last night. Considering how his gaze kept shifting to the upper floor, she was of half a mind to believe he had stashed a mistress in a closet upstairs. But she didn’t have the energy to press him on it.

She didn’t have the energy for much of anything, actually, a trend that worsened each day. Several of her colleagues and friends had called and texted her over the past couple of days, offering condolences about Lily’s passing, and some had wanted to come over and visit, to check in on her, and Monica had barely responded to any of them. She appreciated their concern, but she just didn’t have the energy to be social.

“I’m going to lie down,” she said.