“I’ll be glad to tell you that if you tell me why you’re trying to find her.”

“I’m afraid I can’t give out confidential client business over the phone. But if you tell me your name and what you know about Mrs. Sestieri we’ll get back to you when we’ve discussed the matter with our client.”

I thought we could keep this conversation going all day. “The person you’re looking for may not be the same one I know, and I don’t want to violate a family’s privacy. But I’ll be in a meeting on La Salle Street this morning; I can stop by to discuss the matter with Mr. Ranier.”

The woman finally decided that Mr. Ranier had ten minutes free at twelve-thirty. I gave her my name and hung up. Sitting at the piano, I crashed out chords, as if the sound could bury the wildness of my feelings. I never could remember whether I knew how ill my mother was the last six months of her life. Had she told me and I couldn’t-or didn’t wish to-comprehend it? Or had she decided to shelter me from the knowledge? Gabriella usually made me face bad news, but perhaps not the worst of all possible news, our final separation.

Why did I never work on my singing? It was one thing I could have done for her. I didn’t have a Voice, as Gabriella put it, but I had a serviceable contralto, and of course she insisted I acquire some musicianship. I stood up and began working on a few vocal stretches, then suddenly became wild with the desire to find my mother’s music, the old exercise books she had me learn from.

I burrowed through the hall closet for the trunk that held her books. I finally found it in the farthest corner, under a carton holding my old case files, a baseball bat, a box of clothes I no longer wore but couldn’t bring myself to give away… I sat on the closet floor in misery, with a sense of having buried her so deep I couldn’t find her.

Peppy’s whimpering pulled me back to the present. She had followed me into the closet and was pushing her nose into my arm. I fondled her ears.