up, I pulled the first all-nighter of my college career. I paced back and forth the length of my short room, approaching the Hazel problem from every angle. If the woman had evidence, we would have to undermine it. If she didn’t, we would have to poke holes in her story. Hazel, this caregiver whom I’d never met, had become my enemy. I needed to figure out how to discredit her, show that she was unhinged, envious, greedy.
At four in the morning, an idea appeared, fully formed.
* * *
Later that day, I called my mother while Charles was at work and had her scour the apartment looking for whatever had tipped off Hazel. I remained with her on the phone while she flipped through the stack of letters crammed into the oval-shaped velvet container on her desk. Nothing. The contents of both of our bedside nightstands. Nothing. The drawers of her dressing table. Nothing.
I thought about the photographs of our family that hung in the hallway: Peter and me growing up on Cape Cod, my mother and Charles on various trips, a few shots of my stepsiblings, grandparents, and other more distant relatives. There was a single shot that included Ben. Taken on the Southers’ lawn, the photograph featured an enormous taxidermied crocodile that Ben had killed, a canoe of equal length behind it, and Ben and my mother kneeling next to each other behind that. They were leaning forward, beaming into the camera, their knees no doubt secretly touching. Charles was standing to one side, looking down at his shoes, his expression inscrutable. Lily, presumably, was the photographer. The shot was revealing only if you already knew about the affair. It was an odd choice to exhibit on a family wall, to be sure, but hardly evidence.
“I have a plan, but for it to work, I need to have some idea of what Hazel knows,” I said. “Can you think of anything?”
After a long pause, Malabar said, “Oh God, Rennie. I know exactly what Hazel saw.”
“What?”
“I can’t believe I did something so stupid.”
“Mom?”
“Give me a minute,” she said.
I heard her put the receiver down and then, a few seconds later, pick up another in a different room.
“You’re going to think I’m an idiot.”
“No,” I assured her, bracing myself. “Just tell me what it is.”
“I kept a file.”
“A file?” I repeated. “What do you mean? A file on you and Ben?”
I heard a metal drawer slide open and suddenly understood. In my mother’s office, beside her desk, was a nondescript three-drawer file cabinet. I knew its contents well. The top drawer held travel- and food-related information—notes for articles Malabar planned to write, clips of her published pieces, pamphlets for resorts where she hoped to vacation. On my most recent visit, my mother had proudly shown me her signed contract with Globe Pequot, the publishing house that was to publish a compilation of her Do-Ahead Dining columns in the coming year. In that same file, she kept her notes and test recipes for Wild Game.
I had never bothered much with the second drawer, which held dull financial records—bank statements, real estate appraisals, copies of old tax returns. But the bottom drawer was a gold mine of information. In it were alphabetized files on every member of our family: Christopher—photographs, his birth certificate, the many condolence letters; Charles—their wedding announcement, information on Plimoth Plantation, his health records; Peter and me, separate files but with similar contents—birth certificates, report cards, childhood drawings, scribbled love letters to our mother. Malabar also kept a file for each of her parents, another for correspondence with friends, and one for unpublished short stories, which I hadn’t known she wrote. And at the very back was a hidden file that contained the makings of a scrapbook of her love affair with Ben.
“I kept it where I thought it would be impossible for Charles to reach,” my mother said. “Not that he would ever snoop.”
My mother was right. Charles was not the sort to spy; that wasn’t his style. Nor was it possible for him to stoop over or get down on his knees easily.
“It never occurred to me that anyone else would look,” she said.
“What’s in it?” I willed my voice to conceal my panic.
“Everything,” Malabar said.
I heard contents rustling. “InterContinental hotel stationery. Matchbooks from every restaurant we’ve been to. Cocktail napkins. Amtrak ticket stubs. Delta Shuttle receipts.” Then she paused, and I could hear a smile in her voice. “A love note.”
“I thought Ben didn’t put his