Nicola put an arm around Renee, rubbed her shoulder.

“I was frightened,” Renee said, tears forming in her eyes. “I mean . . . I had to be, right? I . . . I had to have felt threatened. Terrified. I had to have felt like that gun was my only hope.”

Robin moved closer. She put her arms around Renee and drew Nicola in too. “Of course you did,” Nicola said. And the three of them stayed like that for a long while. Robin felt safe. Like a child.

There was something else about the article that bothered Robin, but it wasn’t anything Mom or Nicola could help her with. It was the phrasing on the note.

Mom pulled away, wiped a tear from her cheek. “Oh honey, I forgot. You must see what Nikki gave me.” She stood up, and Robin’s eyes went right to it—the glittering aquamarine heart at her throat. “Isn’t it beautiful?”

“Very,” she said, her gaze moving from the necklace to Nicola’s smiling face. “Nicola showed it to me right after she bought it. I told her I knew you’d love it.”

Mom’s eyes widened. “Really?”

“You love aquamarine. Everybody knows that. It’s your color too.”

Nicola winked. “I swore her to secrecy,” she said, and Mom’s smile grew bright enough to hurt.

“I’m so happy that you two have been getting to know each other again.”

Nicola said, “Robin and I talked about Kate Sharkey. Quentin Garrison’s mother.” Robin thought about the Polaroid she’d shown Nicola. She’d put that back last night, finally, while Eric and Mom were asleep.

Mom said, “You did?”

“I was quoted in an old article that Robin found about Kate. Remember the wax museum in L.A.?”

“Not really . . .”

“Anyway, she asked if you knew her too, and you know what? I wasn’t sure whether you did or not.”

Renee said, “I only knew her through you.”

“And you never mentioned that either, Mom? You never told the cops?”

“It wasn’t relevant,” she said. “Kate was Nikki’s friend. I never even knew she’d ever been married or had a son.”

Robin started to respond, but Nicola spoke first. “Robin’s right,” she said. “It is strange. Me knowing that family like I did. So many years ago. Isn’t it strange, Renee?”

“It’s a smaller world than we realize,” she said. “You know, Detective Morasco’s wife has perfect autobiographical memory. She literally never forgets a face. And he said that she once told him that there are only a handful of people in the entire world she hasn’t seen at least twice.”

Robin thought of Quentin Garrison’s small family and her own small family, orbiting each other for so many years before finally colliding. She thought of April Cooper and Gabriel LeRoy, somehow fueling it all. All these connections . . . Strange seemed a mild word for that, “small world” even milder.