I used to beg my mother, Gabriella, not to bring me to this house. Why should we go? Rosa hated her, hated me, and

Gabriella always cried after the long L ride home. But she would only set her lips in a tight smile and say, “I am obligated, cara. I must go.”

Albert led me into the formal parlor at the back of the house. The horsehair furniture was as familiar to me as my own apartment. In my nightmares I dreamed of being trapped in this room with its stiff furniture, the ice-blue drapes, the sad picture of Uncle Carl over the fake fireplace, and Rosa. thin, hawk-nosed, frowning, seated poker-backed in a spindle-legged chair.

Her black hair was iron-colored now, but the severe, disapproving stare was unaltered. I tried taking diaphragm breaths to calm the churning in my stomach. You’re here because she begged you, I reminded myself.

She didn’t stand up, didn’t smile-I couldn’t remember ever seeing her smile. “It was good of you to come, Victoria.” Her tone implied it would have been better if I’d come on time. “When one is old, one doesn’t travel easily. And the last few days have made me old indeed.”

I sat down in what I hoped was the least uncomfortable chair. “Yes,” I said noncommittally. Rosa was about seventy-five. When they performed her autopsy, they would find her bones were made of cast iron. She did not look old to me: She hadn’t begun to rust yet.

“Albert. Pour some coffee for Victoria.”

Rosa ’s single virtue was her cooking. I took a cup of the rich Italian coffee gratefully, but ignored the tray of pastries Albert proffered-I’d get pastry cream on my black wool skirt and feel foolish as well as tense.

Albert sat uneasily on the narrow settee, eating a piece of torta del re, glancing surreptitiously at the floor when a crumb dropped, then at Rosa to see if she’d noticed.