background, the young boy who appeared in some of the other photos, sitting at the edge of the couch, head down, prying the top off a bottle. Patty wondered what he was doing in the midst of these gatherings, like a mascot of sorts.
Patty closed the album and slid it to the center of the kitchen table. Her grandmother had apparently known Forrest quite well at the camp, though if these parties were illicit, maybe it wasn’t surprising that Lucy didn’t know about them. Or maybe Lucy was ashamed of her mother’s behavior. Was it possible her mother had a boyfriend? Patty’s grandfather had died before the war; she didn’t remember ever seeing a picture of him.
Tomorrow, when her mother got home from work, Patty would show her the photos and ask her some questions. But first, she would need to find out a little more. What had happened to her mother during the war? How had she met Patty’s father? What happened to him?
Patty stood up and had to grab the counter as dizziness unsteadied her. She got the pad of paper that her mother kept by the phone, and a pen, and as she sat down, she poured the last of the wine into her glass. Then she started to make a list.
* * *
In the morning, Patty looked at the piece of paper from the night before, her handwriting more florid and loopy than usual. Certainly messier than when she was sober. She pushed the hair out of her eyes, feeling the beginnings of a headache, and drank a glass of water before studying the list.
George Rickenbocker—Miyako?
Reginald Forrest (Dead!!)
Benny Van Dorn—Same one?
Jessie???
Girls?
Miyako Takeda. Pretty. Shoes. Thin.
Mom? Did she?
Patty sucked in her breath, staring at her handwriting. She remembered writing the list the night before, sounding out the name Rickenbocker and drawing the line to signify the relationship with Miyako. She did not remember the rest, especially that last line.
Did she?
Her drunk self wondered if her mother had killed a man. What did her sober self think?
* * *
An hour later, teeth brushed and her hair pulled back in a tight bun, Patty sat with the phone cord threaded through her fingers, drinking the remains of her coffee over ice. She had been on hold long enough for her heart to stop pounding, long enough to doodle a series of cubes on a notepad, carefully shaded, their sides tapered in vanishing-point perspective, just as she had learned in high school art class. She was so absorbed in the drawing that when the man came back on the line, his throat clearing startled her.
“Miss Stapleton?”
“Yes?”
“Sorry about that, it took me a while to find the right reel. So. That’s Van Dorn, V-A-N space D-O-R-N. Benjamin.”
“Yes. I mean, I can’t be positive, but Benny’s not short for anything else, is it?”
“No—no, I don’t think so,” the man said. He really was very nice; in fact, Patty thought they might be having a little phone flirtation. She forgot for a minute the very serious nature of what she was doing, that she was betraying her mother and possibly committing a crime. “Benjamin Van Dorn. And George Rickenbocker. And you need this by when?”
“Well—the article is supposed to run this Sunday.” Really, Patty had no idea how long it took to write a newspaper feature, or what happened once it was written. “And I need to turn it in by tomorrow. If I can.”
“That should be no problem. I can probably call you in about an hour.”
“That’s really nice of you. Seriously.”
“Well, your taxpayer dollars at work, right?” He laughed. He seemed remarkably jolly for a government employee.
Patty thanked him and settled the phone back in its cradle, surprised her ploy had worked. She had said she was fact-checking for an article, but it didn’t seem like citizen records should be that easy to consult. And it was true that all she was trying to confirm was that it was the same Van Dorn, because that was about as far as she had gotten. And she’d asked about Rickenbocker too, with the vague idea that if she got more information on him, she might be able to look him up somehow. Her grandmother’s lover. He could easily still be alive. Odds were slim that he was local, but still...
Patty’s thoughts tumbled and churned, her hangover making them difficult to organize. Finding Rickenbocker, even asking her mother about him—it wouldn’t help them build a stronger case to convince Inspector Torre that Lucy had