I hadn’t planned to tell the police that I’d come over here again, but I wanted to scream at whoever had pulled apart my sister’s place. Couldn’t the Crime Scene Unit cops have put anything back? I picked up the books and haphazardly reshelved them, setting the Poe volumes together and fitting the others wherever I could. The painted porcelain bunny rabbit that had been my father’s last gift to Claudia lay on the floor, cracked and missing an ear. For some reason, that bothered me more than the rest of the destruction. I wrapped him up in my scarf and settled him into my leather bag. A small piece of blue stationery lay on the floor, catching my eye.

My dearest C,

Words cannot express how proud I am of you, or of all you have accomplished in such a short span of time. You are as mighty as the phoenix rising from the ashes, a woman of astounding beauty, intelligence, and wit. It delights my heart to see you blossom, and I hope that I shall always be with you, every step of your journey. You are forever in my heart, as I am in yours.

A

First M, now A? What book had it fallen out of? I scanned the shelves. There was poetry by Rilke, Byron, Shelley, but wait… I put my hand on a hardcover titled Rising From the Ashes. I stared at the cover, a dreamy image of a woman and soaring bird that looked like a cheap rip-off of a pre-Raphaelite painting by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The name of its author was Dr. Alexander Gorevale. I flipped open the first few pages, but there was no inscription. Was I imagining a connection? The phrase “rising from the ashes” was commonplace, so the fact that it was used in the book title and the note could have been a coincidence.

There was a small black and white photograph of Gorevale on the dust jacket. He was gray-haired and lean-faced, perhaps in his mid thirties, serious in a tweed jacket. The book was twenty years old, so he had to be in his fifties now. The brief author biography told me that after earning his degree in psychology at Cambridge University, Dr. Gorevale opened his practice in London, later moving to Dublin, and then Boston. In addition to teaching at Radcliffe, Dr. Gorevale saw patients in both Boston and New York. I put the note inside the book and dropped them into my bag.