“Nicole was a beauty,” he tells me. “And so talented. Jesus. Not to mention, just brilliant. Willa had known her for years, but that summer was the first time I met her, and I knew right off. She just had it. She could have been a star. Broadway. Movies. Whatever she wanted.” He frowns. “I wondered what she was doing, wasting her time down there in Texas.” He leans in for a closer look at the photo. “I tried to talk her into sticking around. I wanted her here.” He shakes his head. “Willa and I wanted her here.”

I’m staring at my mother’s gold sandals again. Her hot pink toes. And that terrified feeling is rising up in me. I shove it back down and focus on Brody’s words. He’s staring at me now. And something in his eyes makes me uncomfortable. I’ve seen that look before.

“If you’ve got any of Nicole in you, you’ll have the world on a string, Avril.”

But that’s the thing. I don’t know if I have any of my mother in me, because I don’t know who she was.

At least not yet.

Brody gives me a pat on the shoulder. And I try to ignore the way his fingers play over my skin. The feeling of his hand lingering on my bare arm. I’m too busy adding that bit of information—the part about how my mother could have been a star—to my list of things to remember. It’s like I keep gathering these left-behind pieces of her, hoping to stitch them together into something that might resemble an actual living, breathing woman. Flesh and blood. A kind of hand-sewn quilt I can cover myself with when I get cold.

“Thanks for bringing the files up,” Brody says, and I nod.

“Sure.”

There’s that casual smile of his again. Just a little too broad and a little too relaxed to be real. I head toward the door. Down the hall to the stairs. But when I turn back to look over my shoulder, Brody is still standing there. Staring at the photo of my mother. He isn’t smiling now, though. His face has hardened. There’s something off about it.

When I get back to her desk, Glory gives me a nervous look. “Everything okay?” she asks. I nod and she asks me if I want to take a walk. “Fridays are pretty easy days around here,” she explains. “Half the New York people don’t bother showing up to their offices, so there aren’t many phone calls for Brody. And everything else can wait.”