“Anything that will help me remember is important.”

“You sure you want to? Remember?” Kathy asks. “I mean it was pretty gruesome . . .”

“Yes.”

“Okay. There was yellow tape over the door. Your mom had given mine a spare key for emergencies, so I swiped it off her desk and Billy used it to open the door. We slid under the tape.” She swallows hard. “The place was a mess. Chairs knocked over, broken glass, splotches of dried blood, and a huge wine-colored stain on the floor where they found your mom.” She cringes. “Sorry.”

I gently touch her arm. “It’s okay. Go on. Please.”

“I freaked, yanked Billy out of there. But not before we saw the wooden dining chair that’d been dragged beneath the round thermostat. There were tiny red handprints on either side of it. Dried blood.”

“She was cold,” I say. “So I turned up the heat.”

Thomas and Kathy stare at me.

“But she was dead,” Kathy finally says.

I hitch one shoulder. “I didn’t know that.”

Kathy takes an involuntary step back. “How could you not?”

“She kept talking to me.”

Little bird?

Yes, Mama?

Come out, little bird. Come out.

It was Mama all along. I’m here, I say and walk through the open gate.

FORTY-EIGHT

Sylvie

The house is dark, but I know my way. Hook just inside the right door for my coat. Shoes off, that’s what separates us from the horses. The kitchen is straight ahead. That’s where Mama bakes snacks. Today it’s pain au chocolat—a gooey chocolate croissant hot from the oven. I eat while she does her work. It’s on the telephone. Sometimes the people on the other end cry. Mama tries to help them.

I flick on a light. The Baileys have decorated in shabby chic style. To the right of the front door, plush couches covered in off-white canvas form an L in front of a wood-burning fireplace. A perfectly threadbare Persian rug is centered beneath a glass coffee table made from the frame of an old warehouse dolly with an iron handle and rusty wheels. There’s a tan leather chair and ottoman in the corner with a curved brass lamp. When we lived here, the sofas and chairs were soft and worn, but it’s hard to recall what they looked like. I was so young when Mama died. Was murdered.

To the left of the front door is the kitchen, and ten feet past its soapstone counter is an antique dining table with upholstered chairs. The only thing that remains from my time here is the crystal chandelier over the table—a cascade of teardrops that once made shimmery rainbow prisms that I chased along the walls. Mama found it in the antique shop around the corner. It’s similar to the one I bought for thousands and hung in my LA apartment.

Come out, little bird, Mama says. Her voice is now rich, the words French-inflected. And so I find the spot on the far wall and slide down it, curl on my side. I open the red door and Mama takes me back . . .