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Mike walked behind Samantha, he saw every corner through different eyes. His sister had decorated these rooms as well as the ones downstairs. At the time, Mike had bragged to Dave that all you had to do was tell his sister what you wanted the finished product to look like and she could do it. Dave had said he wanted his apartment to look like an English gentleman’s club, and that’s what it looked like. Now Samantha looked as out of place amid the dark colors as she would have in an all-male club.
    In the bedroom the walls were painted dark green and the windows leading onto a balcony were hung with curtains of green-and-maroon-striped heavy cotton velvet. The bed was a four-poster with no canopy, and the linens were printed with plaids and sporting dogs. Watching, he saw Samantha lovingly run her hand over the comforter. “Did my father ever stay here?”
    â€œNo,” Mike said. “He did everything by mail and telephone. He was planning to come here, but—”
    â€œI know,” she said, looking at the dog prints on the wall. Being in this room was almost as though her father weren’t dead, almost as though he were still alive.
    Mike showed her a wine safe next to the bedroom, then two bathrooms done in dark green marble, a sitting room with red and green plaid chairs and bookshelves filled with the biographies her father loved. On the fourth floor was a guest bedroom, and a study with a heavy oak desk and French doors opening onto a balcony. Opening the doors, she stepped out and saw the garden below.
    She had not expected a garden in New York—certainly not a garden such as this one. In fact, looking at the lush green lawn, the two tall trees, the shrubs about to burst into bloom, and the beds of newly set annuals, she could almost forget she was in a city.
    Turning back to look at Mike, her happiness showing on her face, she didn’t notice his frown. “Who takes care of the garden?”
    â€œI do.”
    â€œMay I help? I mean, if I were to stay here, I’d like to help in the garden.”
    His frown gave way to a slight smile. “I would be honored,” he said and should have been pleased by her words, but for the life of him he couldn’t figure out what was bothering him. He wanted her to stay, but now he was almost wishing she wouldn’t, and his ambivalence had something to do with the way she moved about the rooms—Dave’s rooms. Something about the way she was still gripping that photo of her mother to her breast made him want to tell her to leave.
    â€œWould you like to see the kitchen?”
    When Samantha nodded, he went to the west side of the room and opened a door, exposing a narrow, dark stairway leading downward. “It’s the servants’ stairs,” he explained. “The house hasn’t been remodeled into apartments, so you and I will have to share a kitchen.”
    She looked at him sharply.
    â€œYou don’t have to worry about me,” he said, annoyed that once again he was defending himself. Maybe he should give her a police statement that swore to his clean record, swore he wasn’t a rapist or a murderer or had ever had so much as a speeding ticket. “I know less about kitchens than I do about computers, so you won’t be running into me in there very often. I can work a refrigerator and that’s about it. Even toasters confuse me.”
    Saying nothing, she continued to look at him, letting him know that she was far from convinced of his good intentions.
    â€œLook, Sam, maybe the two of us got off on the wrong foot, but I can assure you that I’m not a…a whatever you seem to think I am. You’ll be perfectly safe here with me. Safe from me, that is. All your doors have good, sturdy locks on them, and I don’t have keys to the locks. Your father had the only set. As for sharing the kitchen, if you want, we can set a schedule for use. We can arrange our whole lives around