“You did?”

“Yep. She called, asking where we keep the tarragon,” he said. “She sounded fine.”

“She’s probably in better shape than we are.”

“Well, she did have a better night’s sleep.”

Robin slipped the Polaroid out of her purse, gazed into the young girl’s eyes. Put out the motherfucking fire.

“I think she’s going to be okay,” he said. “I mean . . . okay as she can be.”

Robin thanked him for saying that, which was the only response she could think of. The truth was, she wasn’t sure Mom would be okay, or even that she ever was okay, with this big chunk of her past tamped down so tight, packed away from the world. And the only person who could help her, gone. That’s it, Renee. That’s it. Let it out. Don’t run from it . . .

“Eric?”

“Yeah?”

“Are you sure my mom doesn’t have some weird connection to April Cooper?”

“Robin, come on.”

“Well, why was Quentin Garrison so convinced that she did?”

“You know Occam’s razor,” he said. “What do you think the simplest explanation would be in this case?”

“Quentin Garrison is a nutjob.”

“Bingo.”

“In his confession, he said he’d wanted to do an expert interview with my dad.”

“Maybe on some level, he knew he was being crazy.”

“Or maybe he just didn’t want the cops to find out about this giant bombshell until he had proof.”

“Honey?”

“Yeah?”

“What do you want for dinner tonight?”

Robin sighed. “Way to change the subject.”

After they ended the call, Robin pulled herself to her feet, the subject still unchanged in her mind.

She headed back to her desk thinking of her mother, of all the things she didn’t know about her, and then Quentin’s mother.

Last night after they’d gotten Mom to bed, Eric couldn’t sleep. He’d used a service they paid for at Anger Management to see if Kate Sharkey Garrison had a rap sheet. He’d only found one arrest, but it was a strange one.

Fifteen years ago. Quentin was probably about twelve . . .

Drugs?

Actually no, though I’d guess there were drugs involved.

Huh?

She broke into a wax museum on Sunset Strip. Tried to steal a life-size figure of Marilyn Monroe. Looks like it made the papers. It was in some column called Weekly Weird News . . .

Once she was at her desk, Robin did an advanced search for the column and found it. Kate Sharkey Garrison’s drugged-out mug shot was front and center. Robin wondered if this wasn’t part of Quentin’s illness—the belief that everyone else’s mother was like his own, weak and deviant.

The headline read, MARILYN’S BIGGEST FAN. Robin started to read. When she got to the third paragraph, she stopped breathing. “Oh my God,” she whispered. Then she hit print.