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‘We have nothing else to report right now.’”
    “What a lying bastard,” Beatrice said. “What about those markings? Maybe somebody knows something about them. What an ass. What’s the point in keeping that a secret?”
    “I think everybody knows by this point, but maybe he wanted to keep it out of the paper for some reason. I’m surprised that Annie didn’t report it. She never lets him stop her.”
    “Speaking of Annie, her husband called and wants me to sit with the kids this morning. You mind if I take Lizzie over there?”
    “Not at all. Where’s Annie?”
    “She was called out on a story in the middle of the night. Mike didn’t seem to know much. Believe me, I grilled him.”
    “Humph,” Vera said. “I bet you did.”
    Vera scooped up their plates and placed them in the sink, turned around, and looked at Lizzie. “Done?”
    “Done,” she said, nodding emphatically, and raised her arms for her mother to lift her out of the high chair.
    Beatrice reached for the paper and glanced over the article. “Hmm. It says where the funeral is on Wednesday.”
    “Where?” Vera asked, smoothing back Lizzie’s hair. The child gave a little squeal. “Lizzie doesn’t like people messing with her hair.”
    “Neither do I,” Beatrice said and chortled. “Just like her gram.”
    “Don’t wish that on her, Mama.”
    “Now, would it be so bad to have another bright, beautiful woman in this family?”
    Vera couldn’t help herself and laughed. Her mother was one of the most intelligent women in Cumberland Creek. Of course, that didn’t say much. But at one time, she was also one of the smartest women in the world—some breakthrough with her physics research. Vera didn’t understand a thing about it. Nor did she understand the other part—the quantum physics. Beatrice fell in love with it later in her career and received international recognition for her work. Vera sighed. She, the daughter of a physicist and a physician, had struggled all the way through school with math, then science, especially chemistry. Which reminded her. Her mother had stopped talking so much about him.
    “You haven’t mentioned Daddy in a long time,” Vera said.
    Beatrice’s back was to her. She was at the sink, rinsing off the dishes. But it looked like she stiffened. Well, Vera might not be a physicist, but she was a dancer, had studied movement her whole life, and could read anybody’s body—even a person like Beatrice, who was astute at keeping the personal to herself.
    “What is it, Mama?”
    Beatrice loaded up the dishwasher, grabbed a black-and-white checked towel from the drawer. “Vera, your father is gone. When I was in Paris, well, he finally left me,” she said, her voice cracking ever so slightly. Jaw firm.
    Vera searched her mother’s lined face, bright blue eyes, slightly pursed lips for an answer. She had never believed that her father was haunting her mother. There were no such things as ghosts. But she knew Beatrice believed it with all of her heart. Nobody had questioned Beatrice Matthews too thoroughly about it. After all, she was a brilliant, formidable woman. Still walking to get her groceries, still reading good books, helping to take care of a small child. And her mind was as good as—if not better than—it was when she was thirty. So, Vera had always conceded, if her mother wanted to believe her father was hanging around, what was the harm? But now this, this had her concerned. It was not like her mother.
    “Just like that?” Vera said. “He left?”
    “Yes, Vera. Just like that. Now, give me the baby, and don’t get your panties in a cinch over it. I need to get over to Annie’s place. “
    Vera put Elizabeth in the stroller, which she kept in the foyer, with a diaper bag ready to go. “Okay, Mama,” she said. “Whatever you say.”
    “Well, now,” Beatrice said. “Forty-one years old and you’re finally learning to listen to me. Ain’t that remarkable!”
    Vera kissed Lizzie, then