“She’s gone,” she says again, louder this time, and then gets up from the table and leaves the room.

I float there in the moonlight until the sadness, the longing for my sister and the real world, overtakes me and sends me back to where I actually belong.

JUNE

The next morning I don’t get out of bed right away. I lie there thinking about my visit with Leslie Swann in the new light of what Ezra told me last night. Did my mother actually do those things, or did crazy Leslie make it all up? Did my father disappear, or did something horrible happen to him? Each time I’ve gone looking for answers about what happened back then, it has only created more questions.

My mind then drifts to the strange interaction I had with Ezra’s mother, Willa. When she called me April. Did she actually think I was my mother? And what did she mean, you promised? Could my mother and Willa have had some agreement between them? Seems strange for a woman to collude with the same woman who has had an affair with her husband. Could Willa know things about my mother?

Without even trying, a sneaky plan forms quickly in my mind. It involves tricking a senile old woman and pretending to be someone I’m not, but it may also mean getting some answers.

I head into my parents’ room to execute the first part of my plan. As I step into the room, a blinding ray of light catches me in the eye. I move forward and can see that it’s the late-morning sun shining off the glass face of a watch. It sits, on its own, in the middle of the bed.

I definitely don’t remember it being there before—or anywhere in the room, for that matter. It feels like someone put it there, in plain sight, for me to find. It’s my father’s watch. I know it immediately. The black leather band, the thick square face of it, and the Roman numerals are as familiar as the man himself was. I turn it over to find the inscription on the back: To Simon with love. My mother gave it to him for their first-year wedding anniversary, well before I arrived on the scene. My father wore it every day.

I close my fingers over it. How did it get here? A powerful shiver travels across my shoulders. Maybe it fell out of one of the shoe boxes when I was going through things the other night. Maybe my mother hid it just like she did the ring. My mind works fast, coming up with logical explanations.