"I forgot about those," he said.

"Had them tacked up all over his walls. Strangest thing. After a year or so he had a portrait of just about everyone in the neighborhood and every one of his teachers and friends. Then one day he packed them all up and put them in a box. Said he was done with them."

"Why silhouette portraits?" Sheila asked, grinning at this peculiar glimpse into his past.

"I dunno." He shrugged, slightly embarrassed. "I guess I just liked them."

Sheila watched him for a long moment, hoping to glean something from his mannerisms, whether he really didn't remember or he was a vault. Either way, she gave up.

Talk eventually drifted around to the future, none of them eager to discuss the elephant in the room. Norma asked what Martin was working on—he lied and told her he'd started research for his latest book about Jim Allen Biggs, a Miami serial killer—and if Sheila was eager to get back to "headshrinking." Sheila skirted the unintended offense by politely replying that she was eager to get back to it but she was glad for the break, and to finally meet Norma and Ruby.

Martin didn't mention he planned to leave shortly after his mother came down from her room. He hadn't discussed it with Sheila, certain she would try to convince him otherwise. But he'd made up his mind. He wasn't going to let James Barclay keep him from his city, his work, his home.

The buzz of Ruby's chairlift announced her arrival at quarter to twelve. After considerable grunts and groans she stood in the living room doorway, hunched over her walker. "I'm famished," she said. "What's for breakfast?"

"More like lunch," Norma said. She pushed herself out of the recliner with a grunt of her own. "I'll whip something up."

Sheila rose from the sofa. "Let me help."

"Nonsense. You're guests. You've done more than enough already." Moving past Ruby, she muttered, "You slept like the dead, woman."

Ruby tutted. "Must have been all the excitement yesterday."

For lunch Norma made chicken soup and tuna salad sandwiches with the crusts cut off, the way Martin had enjoyed them as a kid.

"At least now we know why he acts so entitled," Sheila said, observing the leftover crusts on the cutting board. Norma clucked her tongue disapprovingly, but Martin couldn't help notice the ghost of a smile on her face as she turned to swipe the crusts into the trash.

They ate in silence, Ruby gumming her food to death, spoons scraping the insides of bowls. Martin struggled with how to broach the subject of leaving. Several times he caught Sheila watching him eat, until he frowned at her and she began studying her soup bowl as if looking for signs and patterns among the noodles.

He opened his mouth, just about to announce his intentions when the telephone rang. The jarring old-fashioned brrrrrrrrinngggg! startled everyone at the table.

"I'll get it," Norma said, standing abruptly. She grabbed the receiver off the wall and for an instant Martin saw blood on her hands, smearing on the cream-colored plastic, just like that morning. "Hullo?" She paused a moment, scowling, then held out the receiver. "It's for you, Marty," she said with a quizzical tone.