Lester intervened, speaking in a confidential whisper. “Mr. Filbert grew up on the West Coast. There was a rift in the family. They haven’t seen each other in thirty years or more.” He sounded like a funeral director discussing prices of coffin linings. Concerned, discreet, sincere, but embarrassed at the necessity.

Ted was worried that in order to uphold Lester’s narrative he might have to fall weeping on the old woman’s breast. As soon as he knew who she was.

“Barbara? Barbara, you have a visitor,” the young woman said to a sleeping woman in a wheelchair. Then, turning to the aide beside Miller, she said, “Anora? Miss Miller has a visitor.”

Anora was a round-faced woman with an island accent. Ted guessed Trinidad. She was thrilled that her charge had company. She said something else after expressing that, but he missed everything but the pronoun “she.”

“I understand,” Ted said. “We were never close.”

That non sequitur earned him a microfrown of confusion and another round of rapid-fire, heavily accented English. He looked to Lester for help, but judging by the way his suddenly quiescent partner was intently studying a bingo card, he had cut Ted loose.

Barbara Miller had a pinched face with papery thin skin. The bones of her skull were her dominant feature, around deep-set eyes and sunken cheeks. She was long past looking old; she’d graduated to ancient.

Anora shook her arm gently and murmured. Miller’s eyes popped open and bored into Ted’s. “Who are you?”

“Is there somewhere we can talk?” Ted asked.

For a moment Ted caught suspicion behind those glaring eyes. But she was also intrigued. Bored beyond all reason, ready for an adventure.

“Take me to the library,” she ordered.

Lester and Ted followed as Anora wheeled the crone out of the great room and down the hall. The library wasn’t an ideal forum for private conversation. A wide archway was all that separated it from the main lobby, but as there was no one else there, Ted thought it was as good as they were going to get. Three walls were covered from floor to ceiling with mahogany shelves holding thousands of bestsellers. Someone had a budget for books and kept the room stocked. Ted wondered if anyone but the staff ever read them.

“How are you, Miss Miller?” Lester pulled over a chair and sat next to her.

Ted sat facing them. Anora took a couch on the far side of the room.

“My name is Lester, and this is my friend Ted. How are you doing?”

“Do I know you?” Miller asked.

“We’ve never met.”

“I didn’t think so. Who’s this Ted? I heard what you told Little Miss Smiley Face back there, but that’s horse hockey. I don’t have any family out west. Or anywhere else.”

Ted thought she was sharp enough—and tough enough—to weather another ninety-three years. “My name’s Ted Molloy.”