the threshold. He takes in the dark interior, the steep staircase, the stained glass in a side window.
She gestures with her hand toward the stairs. “Third floor,” she says. “All the way to the top.”
“You saw my car,” he says when he reaches the landing.
“Well, it’s a different cruiser. How many have you had?”
“Since the first, three.”
Since she drove away in the first.
“I thought it was an undercover stakeout. Then I saw the license plate.”
The scent of turpentine is strong. Webster follows Sheila into a large room with several windows on three sides. The sun makes rectangles against the white walls. There’s a long wooden table that has on it paintbrushes in glasses, old rags, bottles of turpentine and linseed oil, a palette, dozens of squeezed tubes of color, and various rags. On the floor, all along the perimeter, are canvases of different sizes, each facing the wall.
“You’re a painter?” he asks.
She spreads her hands.
He knows nothing about the woman in front of him. They spent nearly three years together and fifteen apart. Though everything about her is somewhat familiar—her stance, the sound of her voice, her body, her gestures—she’s a stranger to him.
“I came to talk about Rowan,” he repeats.
“Is she all right?”
“She is, and she isn’t.”
“Is she sick?”
“No,” he says.
Sheila stands at the other side of the room, her arms crossed over her chest.
“Could I get a glass of water?” he asks.
She gives him a dull look, but walks past him. He follows her to the kitchen, cluttered but not unappealing. The table and the chairs have come from an older generation. The walls retain a printed wallpaper, definitely a relic from years ago. Utensils are lined up on hooks near the stove. Along another wall are bookcases, one shelf filled with cookbooks.
“You live here alone?” he asks.
She nods, turns on the tap, and lets the water run. She pours him a glass of water and sets it on the table. He reaches for it.
“You still living with your parents?” she asks.
“They died years ago,” Webster says.
“I’m sorry,” she says, and she looks as though she means it.
“I still live there,” Webster says. “I inherited the place.”
“My sister sold me this house for a buck. I grew up here.”
Webster is amazed at their civility. Shouldn’t they be screaming at each other? Weeping? Throwing things?
From where he stands, Webster can see planes coming in to Logan. That he would enjoy. Watching the five o’clock rush hour from that balcony out back. A beer in hand.
“What are you doing here?” Sheila asks again.
“I thought it might help. To talk to you about Rowan. She came home drunk a few nights ago. She’s not herself. She seems to be spiraling off the rails.”
Sheila is silent.
“Rowan’s changing. And not for the better.”
Sheila bites the inside of her cheek.
“She’s beautiful, Sheila. She looks just like you. She’s been a real good kid—up until now.”
Every cell in Sheila’s body has changed since he last saw her.
“Are you sober?” he asks.
“I am. Ten years.”
He’d taken a chance. He might have found a drunken Sheila.
“I assume we’re officially divorced,” she says.
“We are.”
“On what grounds?”
“Abandonment. It was all I had. My lawyer tried to find you, but you weren’t in the system anywhere.”
“What year was this?” she asks.
“Ninety-eight?” he replies, not quite sure.
“I was in Mexico.”
“I don’t think he tried very hard,” Webster says.
She twists her hair in the back and lets it fall onto one shoulder. It’s a gesture he remembers, and it startles him. It’s Rowan’s gesture now.
“So you’re not married?” he asks.
“No. Are you?”
He shakes his head. He points to a gold ring on the middle finger of her left hand.
“It belonged to someone I once loved,” she says.
Once loved.
A threadlike pain moves from one side of Webster’s chest to the other.
“I’m sorry,” Sheila says, “but I can’t do what you ask. I know you came all this way for a good reason. But you don’t know me anymore. You don’t know me at all.”
The silence in the kitchen lasts so long that Webster finds his breathing shallow. “She’s seventeen,” he says.
Sheila shakes her head.
“She thinks she’s an alcoholic. Or maybe I think she thinks she’s an alcoholic.”
“Is she?”
“She’s acting out, and it’s dangerous.”
Sheila winces. He notices that her hands are trembling.
“This is a shock. Your coming here.” She pauses. “I was her mother,” Sheila says, “and then I wasn’t. You of all people should know that. I severed the mother-daughter tie the minute I got in the car drunk with Rowan in the