“It’s a fancy restaurant in the West Village. The name is from a Longfellow poem, ‘Paul Revere’s Ride,’” Rachel explained. “When Claudia called me to figure out a date for dinner, she told me she had big news. Then a week later, when I saw her, she was upset. She said her boyfriend, the genius, had pretty much thrown her over for his old girlfriend. Apparently Claudia had been staying at his place a lot of the time, but he forced her to go back to her own apartment because his girlfriend was coming back for a visit.”

“Wait, this was at the end of August?”

“Yeah. The girlfriend was coming in for a few days over Labor Day weekend.”

All of the oxygen left the room suddenly, and I was left in a vacuum with a thudding heart. Labor Day weekend was when I had last visited New York. I’d stayed at Jesse’s, but I’d seen Martin for dinner and had ended up spending the night with him. Now, thinking of the calls Martin had made to my sister in the fall—and never told me about—I was starting to put the puzzle pieces together. I thought my sister couldn’t shock me anymore, but she’d done it again. Claudia had always wanted whatever I had, but I couldn’t believe that she would go after Martin. But what other explanation was there? She could have carved me up with a kitchen knife and it wouldn’t have been so painful.

“Lily, are you all right?” asked Rachel. “You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”

“I’m fine. Just… tired. I haven’t really been sleeping.”

“This has got to be so hard on you,” Rachel’s voice was warm and sympathetic. “ I wish I could help. I feel like I really blew it the last time I saw Claudia.”

Behind me, someone coughed and I looked around. There was a man sitting in the pew just behind us, and even though his head was bowed, I thought for a heartbeat that I recognized him. He looked like the guy I’d seen in the Bronx, the one who’d made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up as I’d left the subway station. But I dismissed the thought almost immediately: the man was wearing a plain black coat and wool cap, a look that was common as subzero temperatures in New York in January.

Rachel’s voice broke into my thoughts. “I should have been supportive, but I reacted badly. I told her this guy was a cult leader, and she needed to be deprogrammed. I think she really needed to talk to someone, but she couldn’t stand hearing any criticism of him. She got up and left in the middle of dinner.”

“Did you talk to her afterwards?”