DRIVING WAS NOT one of Carrie's skills. As a Manhattan kid used to public transportation, the first car as a rite-of-passage tradition hadn't registered with her—which was a good thing, since there was no way in hell Rose would ever have bought her a vehicle. Carrie had finally taken driving lessons when she was attending cooking school because the Culinary Institute was located in upstate New York, where there were no subways, but she never really relaxed when she was behind the wheel. She couldn't forget that she was operating a machine that could maim and kill. After quitting the institute, her first act had been to sell her car and stop driving as a public service.

But now, once again, she was behind the wheel—this time of a rented Volvo because someone had told her they were safe cars—on her way to a satellite suburb of New Haven, where she was going to meet her great-uncle Paulie. Finding him had proved to be easy. He'd stayed in the city of his birth and there was only one Paul Leporello listed with New Haven information. Carrie had dialed his number and he had picked up on the second ring. He lived in a place called Seaview Manor—he called it “the joint”—and he would be happy to talk to Carrie about her family.

“It's going to be a total waste of time,” Carrie had moaned to Zoe. “Seaview Manor is a nursing home, and Uncle Paulie's eighty-three. I'm going all the way out to the wilds of Connecticut to ask an old man who probably can't remember his name why my mother cloned her gown and kept a secret stash of press clippings. He's not going to be a help. He's not going to know why my mother and my grandmother didn't speak to each other for thirty-four years.”

“You are not allowed to back out on this,” Zoe had said sternly.

“Did I mention I'll be driving on major highways? The speed limit will probably be astronomical.”

“We're talking about Connecticut, not the autobahn. Stay in the slow lane.”

“Clearly, the man didn't know anything about my mother. Sending those roses, for God's sake.”

“Okay, forget Uncle Paulie. Call Lu Lawson and get the story from her.”

“Are you and Howie channeling each other these days? Because he keeps telling me the same thing.”

“Howie's a smart guy.”

“But Lu's old too. She probably can't remember any more than Uncle Paulie.”

“She's three years younger than he is. And she's together enough to live in her own home.”

But calling her grandmother was impossible. It was bad enough that Carrie was poking around her mother's past trying to uncover secrets Rose had wanted to keep hidden. Calling the woman against whom her mother had issued a lifetime fatwa would be a postmortem betrayal Carrie couldn't handle.